Education · Boston, MA Metro · September 2, 2026
Massachusetts high court blocks police/fire statues of Christian Symbols
What Alinsky tactic is being used
3 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
The plaintiffs did not need a new argument — they used Quincy's own book of rules against it. Their claim rests on Article 3 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, the state's own neutrality guarantee, and the case's political force comes from the process gap: Mayor Koch commissioned the $850,000 statues in 2023 without bringing the plan to a city council that had repeatedly voted on funding for the building, and the public learned of it only when the Patriot Ledger reported it in February 2025. The Superior Court judge's finding that the statues served "no discernable secular purpose" landed on a record the city itself had created.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
Close the gap where you live before someone else finds it: if your parish, department or council wants a memorial with religious imagery on public land, put it on a posted agenda, get a recorded vote, and keep the minutes. Ask your own council this month whether any monument now standing was approved without a public vote — and if one was, say so plainly rather than defending it. A display approved in the open is far harder to enjoin than one discovered by a reporter.
Rule 13
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
The controversy has been frozen onto one man. Coverage consistently identifies Mayor Thomas Koch personally — a "devout Catholic" who quietly contracted an Italian sculptor — rather than the council that funded the building or the police and fire unions that filed briefs supporting the statues. Personalizing it that way lets the dispute be read as one official's piety imposed on a city, instead of a question about civic art that many institutions share.
Counter-Rule 13 · Radical Solidarity
Stand publicly with whoever has been singled out. Isolation is the whole mechanism; refusing it disarms the tactic.
Refuse the isolation: note publicly that the unions representing Quincy police and firefighters, the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Fire Fighters filed amicus briefs on the city's side, so this is not one mayor's private devotion. If your own mayor or chief is singled out over a memorial, speak in support at the meeting and put your name on it. And do not repeat the speculation that this ruling threatens statues of Martin Luther King Jr. — an overclaim costs you the credibility solidarity requires.
Rule 10
“The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.”
The pressure here is cumulative, not decisive. The October 2025 injunction, the appeal, the August 20, 2026 affirmance, and the merits case now back before the Norfolk Superior Court together keep the statues in a Randolph warehouse indefinitely, while the city has already spent $761,378.75 on work it cannot display. Attrition, not a final judgment, is what has actually stopped the installation.
Counter-Rule 10 · The Long Game
Plan in decades against a campaign built on attrition. Succession and endurance beat any single victory.
Plan for years, not headlines. Ask your council to decide in writing, before any dispute arises, who pays for a legal defense of municipal art and how long it will be funded; that single line item is what prevents exhaustion from making the decision later. Follow the Superior Court merits ruling when it comes rather than treating the August injunction as the end, and tell others the case is preliminary.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
Know where you stand
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