A World of Ideas; 238; Ernie Cortes Part 1 of 2

You We're trying to teach people about public life about politics. But more importantly, we're trying to get people who tend to get left out in. In this half hour, a visit with organizer, Ernie Cortez, I'm Bill Moyers, a world of ideas with Bill Moyers. Funding for this program is provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a

catalyst for change. Crawford Underwriting is provided by General Motors and a Chevrolet Pontiac Olesmobile, Buick, Cadillac, GMC Truck Divisions, and GMAC. General Motors, committed to excellence. Ernie Cortez doesn't own any oil wells, banks, or shopping malls. And he hasn't been elected to public office. But a Texas Business magazine named him one of the five most powerful Texans, along with people like H. Ross Perot. Another Texas publication awarded Cortez its 1990 Social Justice Award. For Ernie Cortez, though, the Rio Rewards come from people like these. He's taught them how to organize at the grassroots all over the state of Texas, and by organizing to challenge the status quo. Senator Antonio is completely different because of the efforts of Ernie Cortez. He shared his vision with the silenced, silenced majority. And as a result, we changed the political

culture of Senator Antonio. And his influence reaches beyond Texas. The Los Angeles Times call Cortez the most effective Latino grassroots organizer in the country today, after he set up an organization called UNO in East LA. Now he's organizing in Tucson and Phoenix. You're really beginning to build, I think, a really vibrant community. Officially Cortez works for the Industrial Areas Foundation, started in Chicago in the 1940s by the noted organizer Saul Olinsky. Olinsky wanted to teach the have-nots about political power. In that tradition, Cortez nurtures leaders from within communities, housewives and firefighters, secretaries, and school teachers. Part of his training is to motivate you and to agitate you. And it's in that challenge that makes us grow. That is, in South, the teaching part of organizing. Many of these organizers come out of religious communities, congregation and clergy.

The Texas Interfaith Network is the umbrella group for organizations throughout the state. They represent some 350 churches and half a million families. Ernie Cortez grew up in San Antonio, joined ROTC in high school and studied economics at the University of Texas. In the 60s, he dropped out of graduate school to work with the United Farm Workers in the Rio Grande Valley. In 1974, he began to build an organization in San Antonio called COPS, communities organized for public services. Who pays and who benefits, because we will not be ripped off, will we? It can be our COPS! By the end of COPS first decade, representatives of sister organizations from all over Texas came to celebrate their victories. Victories that had brought paved roads and drainage ditches, housing and economic development funds, a college campus and libraries to Mexican American neighborhoods. In Austin, they worked on getting rid of abandoned housing.

In the Rio Grande Valley, they brought paved roads and sewers to their communities. In South Phoenix, they're working on safety for their neighborhoods. But Ernie Cortez would be the first to say that these organizations are not just about issues. They're about ideas. We caught up with Cortez at a motor hotel in New Jersey, where he was training future organizers from around the country and the world. Three times a year, our organization, the Industrial Aerospace Foundation, does national training. We bring people from all over the country to 10 days of training, deal with issues like power, self-interest, politics, the difference between public and private relationships, etc. to teach people about public discourse, public life. What's the key to organizing? A love of politics in the Greek sense. In the Greek sense. Not in the electoral sense.

Aristotelian sense. Family, property, education, decisions which affect those institutions that the public debate, the discussion, understanding that we are social beings, that our development only takes pace to the extent that we engage in public life and public discourse. There is a joy of, how an arts phrase, the joy of public happiness is, I think, as appropriate here. You used the word discourse. There's not much discourse, though, in politics. And they is there? There's not much discourse. And what I call the quadrennual electronic club aside that we have every four years in this country, which has very little to do with politics. It has to do with marketing strategies, marketing segments, direct mailing polling, but that is not politics. That's not what the talk about, what she thought was the really important positive of this whole American experience, that people's willingness and love of public discourse and debate and dealing with local issues connected and doing it from an institutional base, working through these mediating institutions. He was just really enormously impressed by the potential that this offered. Of course, he's also saw some really serious potential problems

like slavery and, you know, et cetera, but the fact that people were left out. And one of the things I guess we're interested in is making sure that the people who are normally considered, you know, have nots or normally considered the disconnected, don't get left out to well. I guess what I want to do, what I like to do is to organize people who are not part of that decision making in any, in most communities. To do what? To be part of the decision making process, to be involved in politics. For them to see that there is a way in which they can qualitatively improve their lives. Not just to turn out in vote. No, no, no, although they didn't. Well, voting is important, but I think Robert Dawg once said that very similar book, politics economics are well for, that voting, maybe it's quoting Dewey, that voting is the least important aspect of any democratic decision making. It's the affirmation of the decision, which is, which is being made through a process of discussion and debate. They have voting in totalitarian countries. Okay. Pinochet used to have plebashats in Chile, and I would

not consider that a very democratic society under Pinochet. There was no discussion, there was no debate, there was no repress, there was no opportunity for people to engage. There's a guy named Ash who talks about central Europe, the internal immigration that takes place where people kind of withdraw into their own cocoons. It takes place when there's no public space, where there's no opportunity for debate. And I see some of that occurring in the United States, not because of some totalitarian dictatorship, but because of the role that media plays in politics. The fact that people feel disconnected from it, they feel alienated from it, because of the money that's involved in it. It's required. Somebody said that it takes about four million dollars to run an average senatorial campaign, which means that the average US senator had to spend, has to get to raise $15,000 a day, which means doesn't have a whole lot of time to do much else besides raise money. How does that relate to what you're trying to do with these people? You want them to have a love of politics, you said, but for what purpose? I want them to, I think that they, that we can't rely on people by themselves okay, to be good. They have to be, they have to participate through institutions. There

have to be institutions that kind of hold, has to be institutions in culture, which holds people accountable, okay, or which teaches them certain values. And I think that there has to be some framework to making, for people to make judgments that you can't just, I mean, we're bombarded way, all kinds of information, we're over stimulated in one sense, okay. So there's no, but there's no framework for analyzing the public policies of different people. So what do we, so what do we base our decisions on? Well, they're quotes, they're, their character, personality, their character. How well they, you know, appear on a people magazine, et cetera. I guess what I'm trying to say to you is that the institutions that used to teach people, that used to enable people to make, whether they were political parties, whether they were belabor unions, whether they'd be churches, whether they'd be voluntary associations, those institutions don't exist anymore. Or they'd been rendered incompetent. We, you know, the schools don't function in that way, the churches don't function in that way, maybe the synagogues do, but the churches don't, okay. And so we need to recreate

some institutions so that people can participate through some sort of institutional framework. And that's what we're trying to build through a cops, or through a valley, or faith, or through East Brooklyn churches. It's trying to build some sort of institutional framework which will enable people to acquire the requisite skills, information, and so they can make political judgment. So they don't just operate on the basis of their opinions. What kind of skills? Understanding power, understanding how it operates, understanding who wields it, understanding that you have to know not only what a politician says, but who gives him money, how those people influence his decisions, have to know his record, have to understand, you know, the history of certain issues, and where they, you know, you have to understand how to negotiate with people, have to know how to present your issue carefully, have to understand how to do the research behind a particular issue. But more importantly, you have to know how to build a relationship. This is a meeting. This is a relational meeting. And it's really an action. It's a public drama. It's a one-act play that you're doing with a person.

Okay, have you done, have you done one? Why don't you come up? The organizations that we build are not going to work unless people, ordinary people, can they build a relationship with people? They don't know very well. What's your work? I'm a Catholic pastor, small neighborhood corporation, poor Arthur. Traditionally Cajun, but going Hispanic, black and Vietnamese all the same time. All the same time, huh? Yeah, and I don't know if I know how to handle it. You said that you're feeling uncomfortable with the situation, how you've been in ministry, how many years? 33. What keeps you in it? Sounds like you got a good challenge right now. Well, okay, and I'm glad you surfaced that idea, because I'm sort of caught between, you know, I would like for the new neighbors to identify with St. Joseph Church. A large percentage of the blacks go back to their other church. You know,

they don't stop going to church. A large number of the Vietnamese go to their cultural church. So I don't, is my role to steal them from the other church? Or do I build a community and the ones I getting frustrated with their own church on a church level? Then on a civic level, I don't, I don't think we're getting the community services that we should be doing. That's what brings me up here. Let me freeze for a second. This is interesting, isn't it? But it could have been a lot more interesting if you'd let him answer the question that you asked him, which I thought was a really great question. And I wanted to give you a star for that question. But then I was bad because you didn't let him answer it when he started to answer it. That fair? I'm not sure which question you're referring to. Yeah, why are you still in it? Why are you still in a priest? Yeah, he started. No, he started. He did good. You did good. You did great. You were good. For

found. Maybe I could have gone. Or let him, or let him, not even ask, just let him continue because he was doing pretty good by himself with your own role. He could never, never do for someone. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. Okay, watch, boy. Well, how do you begin to get people to come together? Well, you can't do it around some sort of charismatic personality because that's that's really not very inimical to their development. Okay. You create, you mean, you have to depend upon that charismatic personality. And I'm not that charismatic anyway. So I don't want to think of it. But that is a problem with say a Jesse Jackson who's very charismatic leaves no organization by and accept the political organization every four years that comes to it. And it's organized around him. Okay. And there's so there's no, there is no indigenous. There is no self-sustaining mechanism for building a collective leadership or maintaining a collective leadership. As there is, I think, developing in in cops or in Valley, Interfaith or in some of the other, we know and et cetera,

some of the other. So you're trying to make yourself obsolescent. Well, I don't think I'll ever be obsolete. You know, the world's greatest organizers, Moses and Paul always seem to have work to do. Moses? Oh, sure. Moses took a divided people, a people who are mixed multitude or is cowed, people who are from Sinai and people from Egypt and people from all kinds of different traditions and taught them how to come together under, you know, the one faith. Okay. Took him 40 years to get him out of the wilderness. Well, you know, you got to be patient in this business and they wanted to go back. Of course they do. They always, the fleshpots are always, it's always the greatest, every organizer, every political leader should read Dostoevsky's, the brothers Karmazov, the chapter on the grand inquisitor, which talks about, you know, Christ coming back to earth during an autodefe and being confronted, you know, immediately spotted by the grand inquisitor who immediately hasn't thrown in the dungeon. Okay. And he comes in the dead of night and said, why did you come back? We tried it your way. It didn't work. You know what? We tried freedom.

It doesn't people don't want to be free. They want bread. They want to be dependent. I don't believe the grand inquisitor was right. But I think every war, we have to deal with that challenge. There is that part of us, which does, which wants to be led. We left Moses back there in the wilderness. We left him back there in the wilderness. We got to get out of there. What was it that made him such a unique organizer in your pantheon? He certainly had some good help from upstairs. Well, yes. To me, the most, to me, the most important story in the story of Moses is the burning bush with that met. It is a wonderful moment, which is a key insight for me in your own work, where Moses walks to take all the bird. He said, I can't handle this bird. I just can't do it. But God says to him, remember? Oh, the ten of the presents. That's a great story. We use this in training the bill organization. One of our organizations has developed this paper called the Ten of

the presents. The ten of the presents. Because the story of Moses is confronted by the people. They want meat to eat. They're tired of all this mana. They said, wish that we were back in Egypt, where we had garlic and leeks and cucumbers and Moses in an anguish confronts God and says, why do you treat me so badly? Where am I going to get meat for all these people? Okay. My wet nurse that I, you know, I've got to carry them on my breast and God says to Moses, Moses, I've taught you how to do it. Gather together all the leaders of the people, the seventy elders, the people that you know and emphasize the word, no, the people that you've tested out that you've checked out. Bring them together and take the burden that's on you. Don't be a charismatic leader. Don't think that you're going to solve all their problems. Put it on them. Agitate them. You want meat to eat? Go out and organize. There's some quail over there. Organize honey parties. Go get it. And Moses still doesn't, he still doesn't buy it. Where am I going to get meat? Now, what's great

about the story, most people don't see at least, and maybe it's just my own peculiar way of looking at the world, is the humor. Because how do we know about this story? We know about it because Moses is telling the story about himself. And because he's got this great perspective on himself, this great sense of humor, this distance. He's not thin skinned like unfortunately some of our, even our best politicians, okay. They can't take, they can't learn from their mistakes. They can't be critiqued. They've got to always look good. They become tensile personalities. And that's one of the things we need to teach people is how to, not only to critique, but also to be critiqued. To be critiqued. How to be vulnerable a little bit. What's your biggest success in the last 15 years? Have you won a big one? Yeah, we won three big ones. I guess the one that I'm the proudest of, because everybody said it was impossible, couldn't be done, was to get the state legislature

in Texas to vote $100 million worth of general obligation bonds to provide water and sewer services to what they call Colonies. Unincorporated areas outside of cities along the border. The most important thing here is that our children have water. Our children can eat, they can go to school, and what is most important is that they already have their income, they're at the start, there's no more microbial. As it was a real self-help deal, I mean the colonial residents were going to pay, we're going to have to, we're going to pay through their utility bills for these capital improvements. So was that a giveaway from their point of view? Although there was some statement, it had to be appropriated, it's very interesting, because there are no more cases here. Well, it's the environment.

But now those same people are looking at public school finance in state of Texas, they're looking at what kind of tax system we're going to have in Texas, whether or not we go to a state income tax, corporate and personal, whether or not we finance educational expenditures with that kind of tax. Exactly what are you trying to do when you teach these people from housewives to reverence, to preachers and pastors and nuns? Why so many, why are the churches? Because the church is an important mediating institution, it's an institution which enables people to develop meaning and values, and almost every church has a powerful statement about the role it has to play in public life, and of course in our own history, churches have always been central to the major changes from the great awakening, its relationship to the American Revolution, the abolitionist movement, the women's movement, the civil rights movement, almost all any significant social change in the United States has always been centered in, or at least the beginnings of it. The development of the idea is the incubus for it has been in churches and people who have values and who have visions.

But the Glichet is a separation church in state. Yes, it says that the church, there shall be no dominant church, there shall be no established church, but it doesn't say that churches can't be involved in public life, or church leaders can't be involved in public life. It says there should be no established church, the Congress shall make no law establishing a dominant church. At least that's my understanding of the Constitution, maybe you're in church. What's peculiar, or particular, about the people you were training here and the church? What is it they know, or what is it they won't know that makes them so youthful in organizing? Well, one of the most important aspects are distinctiveness about them. They care deeply about the cities. They care deeply about cities as a place where people come together and enter into relationships and where people, families are raised and children are mentored and old people are cared for. And they see cities all over the country in some places in other countries as well as having very great difficulties and times of great troubles,

economies of cities, or in great disrepair, the infrastructure of cities. There's urban violence, there's drugs, there's gang violence. None of these things are conducive to families developing and growing and nurturing, and they're concerned about families as well. And they see that there's all kinds of pressures on families, economic pressures, cultural pressures, and that somehow there has to be some strategy. Some of your critics say that you're actually too conservative, that instead of trying to change these institutions, which for so long have been dominating the lives of the people you're trying to help organize, you're bringing people into existing institutions, more people into existing institutions that are ossified and out of date. Well, very sort of been privileged to be called too conservative, but I guess- Uses the right, we- We just need to be in the right way to radical, but I guess this in some ways, you know, we are about culturally a conservative strategy. We think that it's important for people to

be connected to institutions, and I do think that there needs to be a revitalization of churches and families, and I don't- if you say I'm conservative because I think the family is important, I say I plead guilty. If you say I'm conservative because I think the church is important, I plead guilty. If you say I'm conservative because I think communities are important, I plead guilty. If you say I'm conservative because I think educational system could be- the public school could be developed, could be made to work into a function, and I plead guilty. And if you say I'm conservative because I believe America can work, then I plead guilty as well. You believe America can work? Yes, I do. I don't see much evidence over the last 15 years that the poor are a lot better off than they were when you begin organizing. I don't think there's any question that we've got some serious problems in my own city in San Antonio. There's been some ample studies demonstrating that over the last 10 years, people are getting poor. We're having- we're dealing with some very powerful, global, economic forces, okay? We're dealing with some very powerful and somewhat mean-spirited political forces in this country. And- and Texas is in a serious difficulty crossroads. We are almost like a third-world economy. We've- we've depended upon, you

know, extractive industries, oil, gas, cotton, livestock, etc., defense, real estate, financial institutions, all those are in serious difficulty. We've had a depression virtually or recession since 83. We need to revitalize our public schools. We need to become- we need to- to reorganize our economy so that- so that we can deal with, you know, the global economy, connect it to a global economy, to think about exports to the rest of the world rather than depend on things like tourism and etc. I travel the country 20 years ago and wrote a book in- in one chapter I said having been down in South Texas the decade of the Chicano has arrived. Now I was either wrong or very premature. That was 1970. Yeah, I wrote- I- I was interviewed by the L.A. Times and I said that in less Hispanics Latinos learn about power and about politics. The decade of the Chicano is going to be so many beer commercials. And you're right with a little premature, I think. I think it's

going to come. But it's going to come when Hispanics, Chicanos, the Chicanos, Latinos however you want to- one of the problem I have is I'm- I told somebody gave- asked me to give a talk on the Hispanic perspective and I said I have difficulty in that because I've only been one for five years. Well, my life I was an Mexican. But anyway, it's going to come when we understand that it can't be an individual thing. Okay? It's not going to depend upon whether or not we have great leaders, whether it's a Henry Cisneros or a Cesar Chavez or who all really Velasquez, all of whom are extraordinary people. It's going to come when we develop a civic culture, when we develop institutions, when we develop a reservoir of talent. And it's going to come when we recognize that we not only have

to- well, that we're part owners, you know, what takes place. That we can't just expect things. We have to- we also have to offer ideas and solutions and strategies. But we also have to recognize that we can't just depend upon the public sector or that's not a really good term, but we can't depend upon the government for solutions. We have to also have some sort of, you know, we need institutions, society, we need families, we need communities. I guess getting back to the original question, I am conservative in that respect. I think we have to rebuild those mediating institutions. This has been the first part of a conversation with Ernie Cortez. I'm Bill Moyers. Funding for this program was provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation,

a catalyst for change. Corporate underwriting was provided by General Motors and its almost 800,000 employees in 38 countries. General Motors is committed to excellence in quality products and television programming. A second companion volume to this series has been published by Double Day. A world of ideas too, along with the best-selling first volume, is available in bookstores. This is PBS. Video cassettes of a world of ideas are available under the PBS Home Video Label. Send 1495 plus 350 shipping and handling to Post Office Box 4043 Beverly Hills, California 90213 or call 1-800-488-4-PBS. you

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