Counter-power in San Antonio:

...A major factor is COPS's insistence with its leadership that in the pursuit of a greater common good there are no permanent allies and no permanent enemies...

...A major shift began to occur in the early 1970s when Ernesto Cortez, a skilled community organizer, came to San Antonio...

...When officials make promises, COPS works to see that promises are kept...

...That could not have happened thirteen years ago...

...COPS members are well schooled in the details of their issues and as a consequence bring a strong negotiating position to the dialogue...

...This article is adapted from an address to diocesan directors of the Campaign for Human Development last year in Washington, D.C...

...Catholic bishops' pastoral letter Economic Justice for All - that one way to overcome poverty is to empower the poor to participate more fully in decisions that affect their lives...

...The sharp differences in the income levels of the technological literates and those who are illiterate will be a further driving force in the trend toward polarization...

...It was a major voice in the campaign to force the utility system to establish a more equitable rate structure for poor and low-income families...

...As people are trained to experience empowerment and coached in the exercise of power, they enjoy a liberating growth in their own sense of self-esteem...

...COPS is about people, not things...

...This country has never gone wrong when it has invested in its people...

...By then San Antonio was so poor that Peace Corp volunteers were trained in its barrios to simulate the conditions they would face in Latin America...

...You cannot service somebody to freedom and liberty...

...COUNTER-POWER IN SAN ANTONIO POVERTY, POLITICS, & THE PASTORAL HENRY CISNEROS About fifty years ago San Antonio fell asleep...

...Innovative political restructuring, programs that empower the poor, and ways to improve the quality of political dialogue must become part of our national experience over the next several decades...

...Things changed in 1977 when the U.S...

...In this regard, the value of organizations modeled after COPS can be seen...

...We have not begun to prepare these young people in the three C's demanded by technology: how to calculate, compute, and communicate in the language of computers...

...All of this,'' she says, "before COPS did something about it...

...In 1961, for example, San Antonio elected the first Hispanic to serve in the U.S...

...investing in human capital...

...The 1960s saw some awakening in the form of emerging Hispanic leaders...

...As a result, seven times as much money was spent on a child in the richest school district in Dallas as compared to a child in the poorest district in Texas...

...I do not want to leave the impression that COPS is a "thing...

...Mayors of some major cities are black or Hispanic...

...At the heart of COPS is the belief that individuals are more important than programs, power, or politics...

...Congress...

...A system of balances between economic interests and people interests must be a part of that process...

...The election also resulted in seating six Hispanic members on an eleven-member council...

...Because of COPS's success, its leaders have been under constant scrutiny by certain sectors in the city...

...For example, I can not claim that COPS is an ally of the mayor's office...

...by the year 2000 it is projected that there will be no definable majority among whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians...

...things, poor neighborhoods won't change...

...Another new dynamic that places severe stress on the nation's political structures is the changing demographic patterns...

...In 1985 the Texas legislature passed a $70 million indigent health care package, the first in Texas history...

...COPS did that...

...COPS intervened in securing improved police and fire protection in San Antonio's poor barrios...

...Instead of utilizing the conventional source, i.e., popular, political types, he looked for indigenous leaders within the poor communities: coaches of little league teams, women active in the Altar Society, the men who worked the booths at parish bazaars, the women who cooked the parish dinners...

...For example, 1984 marked the conclusion of a state-wide campaign by this network and others to secure the passage of legislation that changed the method of financing public schools...

...This forces the other actors in the dialogue to sharpen the quality of their arguments, and the quality of resulting agreement is enhanced...

...After gaining the support of the late Archbishop Francis J. Furey of San Antonio, he began to build the membership organization through Catholic parishes...

...While these men developed loyal constituencies, no mass movement evolved to enable poor people to emerge from entrenched poverty...

...The committee successfully promoted a bond issue in 1985 - with the support of 66 percent of the voters - favoring a 14 percent increase in property taxes...

...Ayala remembers as a child walking to school through flooded, unpaved streets and years later sending her own children through similar muddy roadways...

...The millions of industrial-sector jobs lost overseas had workers who were earning well over $ 10 per hour...

...Catholic churches in the poor barrios are better attended today than ever...

...A city that once had a single power center-the Chamber of Commerce - today has a counter balance...

...Today minorities not only live in central cities, they govern many of them...

...I can say, unequivocally, COPS has fundamentally altered the moral tone and the political and physical face of San Antonio...

...It has also confirmed the judgment of the U.S...

...That characteristic is as important, even more so, than all the gains that have been achieved...

...The first of these involves economics...

...The change also affected San Antonio physically...

...The nation's Hispanic population has grown significantly, as has the number of Asians...

...Cortez, a sophisticated heir of the Saul Alinsky tradition of community organizing, operated from the premise that the unequal distribution of privilege in the city resulted from institutional arrangements, rather than from differences in talent, desire, or individual ability among the various ethnic and racial communities...

...They feared that industry might generate competition for workers, drive up wages, and encourage the formation of unions...

...COPS's investment in the development of people is reflected in its dedication to the policy of the empowerment of people...

...Who would have thought it was possible in San Antonio that the president of COPS, Helen Ayala, would co-chair with the chairman of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, a committee to promote passage of a city-wide, $100 million bond issue...

...Before 1977, the nine-member city council was elected at large...

...49 percent opposed...

...The leaders are thoroughly trained in their commitment to the betterment of the lives of families in the community, rather than harboring ambitions of private gain or public acclaim...

...Another strain on the nation's political economy will be reflected in education...

...The challenges posed by these projections are enormous...

...families were driven from their homes...

...The city dropped from being the most important city in Texas in the 1930s to being one of the poorest by the 1960s...

...What are the implications of this San Antonio experience for the nation at large...

...The COPS network was a major influence in the passage of the bill...

...People must be active agents, not passive recipients, in any true development process...

...However, certain basic needs of poor and low-income families, such as public education and indigent health care, cannot be met solely from the private or public resources within a city...

...Another effect has been an increase in voting percentages in minority districts...

...The council that I served on from 1975-77 had two Hispanics in a city that was almost 55 percent minority...

...COPS instills in its members belief in the notion that average human beings can be trusted to know what is good for themselves and for the greater community...

...The ultimate objective was to rearrange the city's institutional patterns by empowering the people to make the changes...

...In the shadow of downtown San Antonio lurked a stateside third-world "country...

...Justice Department called for an election that offered voters a choice about the structure of the council...

...We have had major disagreements over policies, and undoubtedly we will again as other issues arise...

...children walked to school through mud sloughs...

...I believe that a nation with a large sector of poor and powerless people is an unhealthy society...

...The school system is scarcely able to teach the three R's to children in poor neighborhoods in central cities and many rural areas...

...At the same time large sums of money from the War on Poverty flowed into the city...

...The result, for me, as a public official, is that there is a better equilibrium in the decision-making process than would be possible otherwise...

...Finally, a comment on the value of...

...All of this might crack the city's delicate, ethnic-racial tension...

...The movement has had a revitalizing effect on the Hispanic church...

...I can safely say that because of the quality of the leaders, there has never been a hint of corruption or scandal associated with COPS...

...We must be as innovative...

...COPS did this...

...The church - through the parishes and in turn, the parishioners who are members of COPS - has created a new peaceful force for change in San Antonio...

...There is now a strong voice representing poor and low-income families that holds political officials accountable, because a key word in COPS's vocabulary is "accountability...

...We know that the educational opportunities are unequally distributed to children of poor and low-income families as compared to children of higher-income families...

...The dominant factors that will place severe stress on the nation's social and political structures for the rest of this century will be economic...

...Parishioners now see a church that is relevant to their needs...

...The second example touches upon the level of the institutional church...

...COPS has been able to stay on that high ground, and because its members have maintained that level, they sustain their credibility and have changed the quality of political dialogue in San Antonio...

...They were acting on faith in the people...

...We are already seeing a dramatic shift in the nation's economic base...

...I believe that to empower the poor is consistent with our democratic traditions, is central to our biblical heritage, and is in our nation's best long-term self-interest...

...Over the years COPS has been active in extending an equitable distribution of public services...

...During those fifty years a conscious effort was made by the city fathers and the few families who controlled the city to keep out industry...

...The margin of victory came from the COPS districts where the vote was 96 percent in favor of the change...

...Let me offer several exam-ples...

...Out of these efforts,.and with financial support from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and from Protestant agencies, evolved an organization called Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS...

...From my experience, the quality of political dialogue, as well as the decision-making process, has improved in San Antonio because of the influence of COPS...

...As the class gap widens, are we going to allow ourselves to become a society in which those who"have'' govern absolutely, and those who "don't have" are relegated to peon-status, poor and powerless...

...One further word before I conclude this section...

...He looked for, and found, people who were deeply committed to their communities, their children, their school, and their church...

...In our society these come from income or power, and unless something happens to change the quantum of these two HENRY CISNEROS is the mayor of San Antonio, Texas...

...I have said that a policy of empowerment of the poor is good for poor people...

...Eventually the influence of this network of organizations was brought to bear on the Texas state government...

...The barrios had no sidewalks or paved streets, no drainage system or flood control...

...Streets, sidewalks, and flood control developments exist now where there were none...

...I have frequently referred to COPS as a organizaton...

...In COPS, that is what happens...

...The growing diversity in the racial and ethnic makeup of our population must be seen not as a threat but as a resource in the further development of our political economy...

...His objective was to change those institutional arrangements, or to paraphrase McKnight, "change the quantums...

...If there are no processes by which the victims of this widening social gap are empowered to participate in the decisions that affect their lives, I fear that America in the next century will be radically different from the one we love so much today...

...The city cansustain heavy rainfalls, like the record storm in 1986...

...One example: The darkest moment in the country's history was the Civil War...

...And this at a time when the national sentiment was opposed to increases in taxes and in favor of cuts in public expenditures...

...As a base for the people's organization, he found that the fundamental building block for unity and strength among Hispanics was the Catholic church...

...Education funds had been distributed to schools based on the property value of homeowners in the respective school districts...

...While some poverty conditions were ameliorated, Northwestern University professor John L. McKnight's assessment is correct:"To the degree that the War on Poverty attempted to provide services in lieu of power or income it failed...

...They merit attention...

...Thousands of Hispanics and black families lived in colonias, with common-wall, shot-gun houses built around public sanitation facilities with outdoor toilets...

...in our nation's best long-term self-interest...

...The pinch resulting from this phenomenon will be felt by the middle-class sector, and, in my judgment, polarization among classes will increasingly set in...

...wages in the new service jobs pay less than half that amount...

...In effect, the Congress said that while there was uncertainty about the outcome of the war, one thing was clear: the country would need engineers to build the roads and dams, teachers to help people become literate, experts to develop farms and build market systems...

...The organization needed leadership...

...the country was tearing itself apart...

...The new legislation applies an equalizing factor that significantly reduces the disparity...

...Rather than organizing a constituency to support aspiring politicians, Cortez sought to build a membership organization of poor and low-income families around an agenda based on the defined needs of members themselves...

...Let me now offer some observations to support my conviction that empowerment of the poor enriches the whole community...

...The experience of voting and electing candidates has been empowering for the residents...

...The vote fundamentally altered the politics of the city...

...Earlier I referred to the moral impact this empowerment process has had on San Antonio...

...In negotiating with officials in the private or public sectors this strategy has several benefits...

...I have seen members of COPS talk to some of their staunch-est opponents on one issue, and convert them into collaborators on another issue...

...COPS maintains its political independence...

...In the next several decades, I believe, some of the phenomena that San Antonio experienced in microcosm will be felt nationwide...

...The vote was 51 percent in favor of a district system for electing council members...

...Based on my own personal experience, I am convinced that the empowerment of the poor is not a threat to the strength of our society...

...The organizing efforts had to overcome apathy and fear in the poor communities, resistance from conservative Catholics, and outright opposition from the established leadership of the city...

...A notable example: the state of California in 1940 was 80 percent white...

...Again heavily funded by the Campaign for Human Development, these organizations have formed in Austin, Brownsville, El Paso, Forth Worth, and Houston...

...What matters for COPS members is the issue...

...The political dialogue in such a society is dramatically different than when a single ethnic or racial group is the dominant majority...

...Our once strong industrial base is shrinking and is being replaced by service-oriented businesses...

...And yet in 1862 the Congress passed a remarkable, innovative piece of legislation that set up the land-grant college system...

...State-wide resources must be brought into play...

...COPS embodies a strong theme in Catholic social teaching recently reaffirmed by Pope John Paul II:"People must be the focus of all that is done to improve the conditions of life...

...several other Hispanics became members of the state legislature...

...COPS was the force most responsible for the present structure of government in San Antonio...

...No lives were lost, no families were forced out of their homes...

...Every spring brought flooding...