ABSTRACT
The first systematic strategy of local community organization is described by Saul Alinsky in Reveille for Radicals. The term "radical decentralization" embraces such common terms as community control, neighborhood development, and neighborhood self-help. Self-help strategies have a great deal of attractiveness for those who are concerned about the poor and to the larger indifferent community. The debate over radical decentralization differs from other decentralization controversies in that it focuses on: attempts to establish the legitimacy of a neighborhood, community or ethnic group as a legitimate entity to which power is allocated. Whatever the realities of lower class life, a good deal of the strategy of neighborhood action groups will ordinarily be oriented to the goals that lower class people have for themselves. Nevertheless, if an organizational strategy is chosen for dealing with lower class problems, then some of the typical characteristics of lower class people and their background of experience with organization present impediments to building viable action groups.
