Alinsky Style Organizing

This chapter provides an overview of how Saul Alinsky’s practices of building democratic power have shaped modern day community organizing. It explains why the Alinsky tradition is useful to the study of community organizations through a description of his enduring core principles of collective power, “native” leadership, and confrontational politics. The chapter makes the case for the continued relevance of Alinsky’s main tenets as well as the need to critique and adapt those methods to new contexts in the 21st century. While it focuses primarily on Alinsky-style organizations, this chapter takes into account a larger ecosystem of organizations and the varying schools of thought that influence the practice of community organizing. It also offers a critique of where Alinsky’s approach falls short in confronting racial and gender barriers to engagement in building power for social change. In addition to exploring the development of Alinsky’s organization, the Industrial Areas Foundation, the chapter features themes of organizational structure and process as they relate to Alinsky’s core principles that are reflected in similar types of organizations. The chapter brings together the theoretical underpinnings of Alinsky’s approach with the practical implications for how community organizing has progressed. It describes where community organizing today diverges from traditional Alinsky-style organizing, especially in trends towards the professionalization of practice, new organizing practices, and the nationalization of grassroots organizing through intermediaries

Mutational analysis of pulmonary tumours with neuroendocrine features using targeted massive parallel sequencing: a comparison of a neglected tumour group

Background: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The typical and atypical carcinoid (TC and AC), the large-cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC) and the small-cell lung cancers (SCLC) are subgroups of pulmonary tumours that show neuroendocrine differentiations. With the rising impact of molecular pathology in routine diagnostics the interest for reliable biomarkers, which can help to differentiate these subgroups and may enable a more personalised treatment of patients, grows. Methods: A collective of 70 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) pulmonary neuroendocrine tumours (17 TCs, 17 ACs, 19 LCNECs and 17 SCLCs) was used to identify biomarkers by high-throughput sequencing. Using the Illumina TruSeq Amplicon-Cancer Panel on the MiSeq instrument, the samples were screened for alterations in 221 mutation hot spots of 48 tumour-relevant genes. Results: After filtering >26 000 detected variants by applying strict algorithms, a total of 130 mutations were found in 29 genes and 49 patients. Mutations in JAK3, NRAS, RB1 and VHL1 were exclusively found in SCLCs, whereas the FGFR2 mutation was detected in LCNEC only. KIT, PTEN, HNF1A and SMO were altered in ACs. The SMAD4 mutation corresponded to the TC subtype. We prove that the frequency of mutations increased with the malignancy of tumour type. Interestingly, four out of five ATM-mutated patients showed an additional alteration in TP53, which was by far the most frequently altered gene (28 out of 130; 22%). We found correlations between tumour type and IASLC grade for ATM-(P = 0.022; P = 0.008) and TP53-mutated patients (P<0.001). Both mutated genes were also associated with lymph node invasion and distant metastasis (P <= 0.005). Furthermore, PIK3CA-mutated patients with high-grade tumours showed a reduced overall survival (P = 0.040) and the mutation frequency of APC and ATM in high-grade neuroendocrine lung cancer patients was associated with progression-free survival (PFS) (P = 0.020). Conclusions: The implementation of high-throughput sequencing for the analysis of the neuroendocrine lung tumours has revealed that, even if these tumours encompass several subtypes with varying clinical aggressiveness, they share a number of molecular features. An improved understanding of the biology of neuroendocrine tumours will offer the opportunity for novel approaches in clinical management, resulting in a better prognosis and prediction of therapeutic response