If you go the Lancaster public library and check out “Rules For Radicals” by Saul Alinsky you will find this inscription on the front page. “In honor of Lois Herr presented by the Women’s Alliance”. If you are not familiar with the book here are a few of the “Rules“…

• Power is not only what you have, but what an opponent thinks you have. If your organization is small, hide your numbers in the dark and raise a din that will make everyone think you have many more people than you do.
• Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.
• Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.
• Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
• Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
• Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.

At a recent rally against the Pitts-Stupak Amendment Lois Herr condemned Pitts and his friends for being “Radicals” the question is, who is the radical? Lois Herr has a history of support for The Women’s Alliance, so the question is, does she support having “Rules For Radicals” by Saul Alinsky being donated in her honor?

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