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234 testing This is Harvey Schwartz. I'm in, uh, Oakland, California with Tim Sampson. Um, today is the 19th of August of 1998. Um, this is part of the Oral History Collection of the Labor Archives at San Francisco State University. Tim, I wanted to ask you, um,

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If I might Uh, where you were born, when you were born, a little bit about your, your background. OK, I was born in 1935. Um, year of the Social Security Act in January, uh, in Chicago, uh, on the campus at the University of Chicago Lying In

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Hospital. One second. Can you tell me a little bit about your um Kind of, uh, growing up, what it's like growing up in Chicago. Why were you born on the campus, by the way? It was just the hospital. OK. It was a good hospital. Uh, a,

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uh, Kind of world class hospital in Chicago. Uh, and my father had gone to the university as a graduate student. He was a graduate student there in criminology, and he actually, a close friend of his was, uh, the, uh, A great organizer Saul Olinsky, and he

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and Olinsky. Who had kind of hung out together as young men and were graduate students in criminology together and, and, uh, as the story is told, Sal did his criminology fieldwork by attaching himself as an observer to the Capone mob and and uh learning the inside

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of the of the mob operation. They kind of liked Saul. He was a lively guy. Sal kind of hung out of my father's house when they were growing up together because uh um my uh uh father's uh family was more securely middle class than uh Sal's

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and they had better food. Uh my grandfather, my father's father was uh. Um, self-described as a junk dealer, he actually dealt in, today we'd call him a recycler. He recycled burlap bags which were used to contain most everything in those days, and, uh, he dealt and

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used burlap and made a good living for his family. Um, when I was born, my father was, uh, uh, my, um, Uh, my father was a social worker and, uh, and, um, Really prior to my um uh birth had worked in uh social work in Chicago

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where he was active uh in the um office and professional workers of the CIO and um was the president of the small local that represented social workers in private agencies. The large public aid local was um the president was Soloinsky's wife Helene and uh then my

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father kind of went in that period of time with people on the left and and the CIO was uh a communist organized uh union like a number of the CIO unions were they were very good organizers and uh. And um so my father was kind of

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a uh uh in the pejorative term of the uh 1950s, a fellow traveler. I don't think he was a party member and he never talked a lot about his um union time. I've never had a lot of discussions with him, but I know that that union

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time was an important time for him. When I was born or shortly after I was born, he began to move up the social work, um, ladder. Men were. Um, most social workers were women and the men moved much more rapidly into administrative positions, and he moved

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as a child welfare worker to work for the state of Illinois in Springfield, the state capital, and then he went, got a, uh, a, uh, kind of middle management job at an agency in Saint Louis, and we moved fairly, uh, rapidly and then to Westchester County

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where he directed an agency and we're back in Chicago. When I was in the 7th grade and then, and then went to, uh, I went to, uh, junior high school, the, the 9th grade at, uh, in Baltimore where he was the director of a Jewish family

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and children's agency. And uh I went to a year of high school in Baltimore and then I came back to Chicago after 2 years of high school um when uh Robert Hutchins was the president of the University of Chicago and they had a program for uh

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young people to go after 2 years of high school to college and I was accepted into that program and. Uh, took me a long time to graduate from college because I dropped out and whatever, but that's how I started my college career. So when I got

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to social work school, graduate school, um, 10 years later, 12 years later, I, uh. They have a paper which you write uh to kind of familiarize yourself with your uh class and upbringing roots and they're called your hometown paper and you write about your hometown and

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its influence on you and I never really had a hometown in the sense of I didn't grow up in one place because of this kind of uh moving on my father's part, uh, but Chicago is my hometown since I was born there and I kind of

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kept coming back there and. Uh, then I went back as a student there and I went back again and so forth. So I wrote my paper about Chicago and I remember I traced the um. The Uh, the color line on the south side, um. Uh Each

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time I came back it was at a different point. The line of segregation between black and white, it was at a, uh, at a different point. And so I kind of used my coming back and the color line changing to look at race and class in

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Chicago and kind of how I felt about that and what the impact was. So I'm kind of a Chicago boy and, uh, uh, that's kind of my early history. What you mentioned, um. By the way, when you mentioned, uh, when you mentioned the office and professional

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as being, uh, very left inspired, you, you mentioned it in connection with the, it sounded for a second like the whole CIO, but you meant office and professionals specifically within CIO. Well, most of the CIO, uh, many of the CIO organizers. We were, um, Communist Party

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members and whatever my father told me that it was not the same thing but part of the, uh, organizing lore from my father. My father told me that, uh, he learned from those organizers, uh, they would, uh, the, uh, merit of writing up what happened in

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meetings and so he said that the saying that he learned was, um, you have the meeting, I'll write up the minute. Right, sounds like labor union. Oops, maybe I shouldn't have said that. So, so I always, uh, uh, I was brought up to, to to understand

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that the record of a meeting that you had was, uh, uh, uh, at least as important and perhaps more so in certain instances, uh, than the meeting itself, right, um. By the way, that. Needle is jumping really well. I felt there's one little tiny thing that

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I must have. Touched when I came out of the car, um. Do you remember anything, anything, any, uh, personal anecdotes about So Lelinsky from your youth? Do you remember any, uh, no, I didn't really, uh, uh, my father knew Lelinsky as a young man before he

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got married before I came. Um, what I do, what I do remember is that, um, I met Olinsky, uh, in, um, Um, I'm trying to remember the year that it, uh, Happened, um, In the early 60s, um. Uh, Olinsky, um. Uh, had a place in Carmel.

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He was actually ultimately to die in Carmel after suffering a massive stroke or heart attack, whatever it was, dropped dead on a Carmel street, but he came out pretty regularly to his place in Carmel for several reasons. One, Uh, was to be with. Uh, second wife

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and, uh, who we kind of installed there and the other, uh, and have a place of refuge from his travels and then for a period of time he was kind of negotiating. To do organizing in in California. As a matter of fact, there was the talk

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of a project um here in Oakland. I made a funny joke about it because The Hoinsky project that brought him to national attention in kind of his modern period was after he did Back of the Yards, he did other organizing and had his industrial areas foundation

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and did his work, but um with the advent of uh. Uh, kind of the civil rights movement, he got involved in the black community in Chicago with church people and started an organization called the Woodlawn Organization which became nationally known. Um, and which embraced, um, the

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civil rights movement, the Southern Civil Rights Movement, supported it and whatever, but was kind of the idea of it was, um, black people in the North organizing and, uh, Wollensky and church. Coalitional organizing wasn't like the civil rights movement, but it had the same. Uh, it

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was the same assert assertion of rights, if you will, and, uh, involved some battles with the Mayor Daley. So the Woodlawn Organization spells TWO and they called it, uh, the Woodlawn Organization, but it spells TWO. So when they were, when Oniske was dickering with church people

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here to organize in Oakland. I made the uh uh joke that they would call it the Oakland organization TOO. And that was the kind of play on words, but that never, that never came about and actually what happened was that the Olinsky, um, struck up a

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relationship with, uh, Gordon Sherman, who was a, a businessman who started Midas Mufflers, and Gordon Sherman gave him a lot of money to, uh, continue his work in Chicago, uh, continue to base his work in Chicago. So Lewinsky gave up an idea that he had of

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moving his operation out here. Well, when he came out here. To visit, uh, and to, uh, check out things out here. Um, then my father got in touch with him, so we went several times and visited him in Carmel, and, um, at that time I was

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already had begun to be working and organizing and interested in organizing. I had worked at a neighborhood center, um, after I got out of graduate school in Los Angeles and had started kind of my organizing work and I was very interested in, um. In Lewinsky's Lewinsky

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having made a major practical and theoretical contribution to organizing work, I always say that Lewinsky is to kind of modern American organizing as Freud was to psychoanalysis, kind of a founding father, and his ideas about power and his ideas about strategy and tactics and some of

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his structural organizing ideas all were very important ideas that have been Um, a part of organizing, uh, really since, and many, many people, uh, have benefited from that, and that, that was the nature of that, uh, contribution. I don't think of it as being an Olinsky

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school of organizing. I think of his ideas as much more, uh, eclectic than that and, and influencing a lot more people. Uh, who, who don't see themselves as Olinsky people, but they learned how to think about power strategy and tactics, uh, and coalitions and, um, mass

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organizing from, uh, uh, Olinsky's ideas. So even, even, and even those that, um. Uh, have come after that didn't have any direct contact with Lewinsky. There's a whole kind of sequencing of people who were trained by Lewinsky and were directly influenced. Well, When my father introduced

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me to Olinsky and I visited several times with him and I then I then was involved in getting in in two direct things with Owensky. The organization that I had started with some others called the California Center for Community Development hired Owensky for a consulting. Uh,

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arrangement where we went to, um, actually it was at Asilomar we went to, uh, the state, uh, owned conference grounds there and spent the day kind of picking Olinsky's, uh, brain around the work that we were doing and then I enrolled in a, uh, two week,

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uh, uh, Olinsky training event that was put together by. Uh, a number of the church people were interested in getting him more permanently to work out here, but they had like a two week training event and I went and, uh, Mike Miller, uh, went from SNCC

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and, And uh Uh, so I actually had the benefit of spending several weeks in a, in one of his, uh, uh, uh, seminars and then later I, I entertained briefly, uh, ideas that I might like to work with him but it it didn't, uh, just it

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didn't work out he didn't have any, he didn't have anything for me and at the time and uh uh. I got other work and so it didn't, that didn't happen but uh and I wasn't a close friend of his or anything but since my my father

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had known him and we had visited together with my father, uh it was more than. Most people got and I did have the two week training thing. Right. The two week training thing is in, around 1966 in that period? Yeah. Um, I was going to go

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back in time, but before we do, we might as well finish on this particular thread. In what ways have you yourself personally A benefit from Bilensky. And you, you make reference to uh the wide pattern. For organizers. Well, uh, I think the ideas that Lewinsky introduced

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into organizing that are most important are a clear understanding of power and how it works. So we're very confused about power in American society. It's part of the mystification of the relations of power. Um, so power is seen as something negative, and it's not polite to

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talk about it. And um the sources of power are mysterious and people don't understand how they can um gain and exercise power in in positive ways and they simply have in some ways to carry around kind of a negative notion that power um is what those

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in power have and what they do to you so. It's and the notion that you can get any of this this mysterious ingredient power and use it, um, well Olinsky had had ways of thinking and talking about that I think that were that are very helpful.

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I mean he was fond of saying that power is a neutral concept and power simply refers to the ability to act, to do what you want to do, and And then he talked about power as flowing from um on the one pole money on the other

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pole people and those are the classic poles and so if you don't have money you have to have um people and kind of a further extension of so and lots of people and a further and that's kind of an antidote, an organizing antidote to the kind

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of mythological notion that um individuals can change the world. In individualism, the notion is personal responsibility and if there's a problem you act on it yourself and whatever and all of that is um um it it it you know it has uh um a kernel of

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truth. It's not like it's a total wrong thing but it's a, it leads you down a a dead end. You, you can't, you can't change the large things that affect your, your life by yourself. Um, and it doesn't teach collectivity. It doesn't teach cooperation. It doesn't

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teach, um, you know, Organizing together to, to, uh, uh, you know, as a power building process, so Lewinsky emphasized more. On that set of things and helped people, I think, to think clearly about. Then the other thing is that he had an absolutely marvelous A sense

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about strategy and tactics and had such ideas as for example he introduced the notion of physics to thinking about tactics, you know, for every action there's a Uh, equal and opposite reaction of that kind of notion so that you get in Olinsky, um, strategic thinking that,

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that flows around, um, gets you to think a step ahead. It's kind of like when you first learn how to play, uh, chess or checkers or something, you learn the moves and you learn to make your move. If you're going to become very good, you have

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to learn to anticipate the other person's response and build your response on that response. Most people never get to that point, and once you get to that point, now you're in a very strong position because then you can do something, get a reaction, and then use

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the reaction to, to take the next steps that you want. And since the other side is not tending to think that way. You have a way of kind of getting ahead of the game and getting, you know, skilled in the thing, so I think that sense

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of tactics where Um, in the Lewinsky jargon, um, there's a phrase, the action is in the reaction. It's like you act and you by anticipating your opponent's reaction and planning for it, in fact, by anticipating your opponent's, um, Uh, not only their what they they're what

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they're likely to do, but the several possibilities that and preparing for both, um, you know, you then are in position really to, to, uh, uh, play the game if you will differently and to and to make things, um. Uh, happen that you couldn't, you're, you're not

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simply, um, you're not simply reacting, you are in fact acting, the other person's reacting and you're then prepared to act again. So I think, and I, I then I also think the other thing that Olinsky was very clear about since he was trying to build large

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organizations, the only way. One of the only ways you really can build a large organization in most circumstances is you have to put together the pieces that are already there. You, you, um, the notion that you can build a strong people's organization. By simply one by

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one you'll start one by one, putting people together is also fictional. People are already, um, as Lewinsky was fond of saying, people are already organized. The job of the organizers to find out how they're organized and use that knowledge and change those patterns to put those

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pieces together in a stronger way. So his notion of urban organizing was that. Uh, people are in street corner groups, they're in social groups, they're, they're in groupings around barbershops and bars and beauty parlors. They're in churches. They're, they're, it's not that they aren't in organizations

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and so if you want to organize them. You want to pull those things together in a larger organization and one way to do that is to have an organization where you can't join the organization by yourself. You don't join as an individual. You only join as

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a unit. The church joins, not the, he doesn't go to a church and get one or two members to join. He goes to a church and gets the church to buy in as a congregation. Uh, he goes to, you know, a soccer club in a Latino

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neighborhood and gets the soccer club to join the organization, not individual people off the street, and then if you've got individual people, you basically tell them you wanna get into this, you gotta get some friends and neighbors and start a block group or start something that

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you can be in organizationally and that builds that the. Uh, that fabric of the organization in a different way than if you're trying to do one by one now one by one organizing, um. The way unions do and the like, um, uh, is, is different and,

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and still, uh, useful and useful in circumstance to develop to build direct membership organizations, but even there informally what you have to think of is what, what are the networks. I remember I spent a whole day with Chavez once and the day consisted of I got

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up early and drove from Fresno to uh Delano where he was living and I picked him up and we drove back. Up to Madeira. Uh, and, uh, uh, He wanted to see this Pentecostal minister there and talk to him and we then after he had that

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conversation we went back and uh and uh I said to him, uh, you know, Cesar, we spend this whole day for you to go and talk to this minister. Why did we do that? He says he's going to make me 20 members. He's gonna make 20

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members of the of the of the union. National Farm Workers. Well, he wasn't trying to get that minister as an individual person. He knew that minister had Farm worker members of his ministry and that's what even though Caesar was organizing in in a model of an

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organization that the church didn't join individual farm workers were members but the network was the this small Pentecostal storefront church. Um, so even in In in direct membership structure where you you do join as an individual, all individuals are not equal. The issue is the, the,

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the networks and then when I teach on this, I say you knock on the door and you visit with somebody and you wanna get them in your organization and you knock on the next door and visit with them and you wanna get them in the organization,

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but what if I told you that the person. In one house just moved here from Florida. They don't know anybody. They have no relatives. They have nothing. They're kind of talking and they're a lively person. You would like to have them next door. The person's a

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grumpy or reticent or whatever, but what if I told you that person has 53 relatives living within this community? Who would you like to spend your time with in building your organization? This lively person from Florida who's not hooked up, well, they may eventually get hooked

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up and make a contribution. We don't want to say no, but I sure as hell would like to get this person. I got 53 relatives living here in my organization because I'm going to get something. You know, with them, so the, the, the Alinsky taught how

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people are connected, that you find out how they're connected, and that's the development of those connections and those informal and formal organizations in a community that you bring together to build um a mass base. Can you give me an example of where you've employed that yourself?

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An historic example from your own career. Uh, Well, I use it every day, um, in, in, in, uh, You know, when organizing in the union at school, you try to identify people in departments who are um uh uh leaders amongst their friends and colleagues, and um

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you try to get those people who um have networks, uh, and you try to find out about the networks that they have both in their department and kind of cross campus by finding out about their interests and what, what they, what they do and who they

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know. And um you try to follow those network lines as you try to get people to join the union on you know on the campus that would be an example another example in my current organizing is I do home care worker organizing here in Oakland and

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we're always trying to find out the home care workers don't have a common workplace they work in the home of elderly and disabled people um for whom they do home care. Um, so we're trying to find out what their connections are in their neighborhood. Um, do

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they know other home care workers in their neighborhood? Um, uh, what are their family connections? You know, those kinds of things to try to work through those, um, uh, networks and, and build, uh, uh, support for the unions of, um, uh, Political and legislative agenda and

00:27:50.280 - 00:28:09.720

its contract agenda and so forth, so it's similar basics, similar kinds of. Right, um. Tim, maybe we could move back a little bit in time and You go to the, um, you go to University of Chicago and you go after 2 years after high school, kind

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of moving back to kind of move, move back that way. Actually, I have one question which might seem Kind of a curious one, but Can you, can you, can you at all look back and say why you followed your dad's footsteps into social work? I mean

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some people have, have parents who do wonderful things and then the kid does something different, entirely different, it may be fine, but it's different. Do you have any sense of why you Well, first of all, uh, let me tell you a little bit more about, My

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life with my father and you know and how I did get into social work. My father, uh, my own mother became, um, mentally ill. She was schizophrenic, uh, when I was, uh, 4 or 5 years old, and she had several, they would call them nervous breakdowns,

00:29:06.310 - 00:29:21.980

and then she eventually was, uh, admitted to a state hospital in Illinois, Elkin, Illinois, and she never came out of that hospital. She died in the hospital. I think as a small boy I went to visit her once, but then I didn't have any contact with

00:29:21.980 - 00:29:38.020

her. So I was, my father was a single parent, uh, for a while, and after, and it was of course very distressing to him, his wife, that his wife became ill and he had to ask his family for money and it was, you know, very difficult,

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and it was my, I have a younger sister. I had a younger, she died, but I have a younger sister at that time and There were the two of us and my dad, and he then married, um, remarried, and that marriage didn't work very well, um.

00:29:55.320 - 00:30:10.350

And after a couple of years, then he divorced that woman and then I'm just, I'll just finish his history briefly and then I'll go back. Did you actually give his name? Yeah, his name is Jerome Samson, Jerry Samson. And your mom for the record was, uh,

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her name, my own mother's name was, uh, uh, Isabel Blumenstock. OK, so he, so he got divorced. Uh, so he got divorced from his second wife. And then he um uh came to California. And, and, and when I went to the University of Chicago in 1950

00:30:32.780 - 00:30:49.750

from Baltimore, he went to California. And um made a new life and Do you want, uh, let's turn, let's turn it over again, short on tape. He's got another, we're going to call the stand aside one.