Cold Anger: A Story of Faith and Power Politics

Prologue

Prologue Cold Anger is a story about a new kind of intervention in politics by working poor people who incorporate their religious values into a struggle for power and visibility. It is about women and men-like Ernesto Cortes, Jr.-who promote public and private hope, political and personal responsibility, community and individual transformation. Even joy. As such, it is a rare story in American politics these days. Almost unnoticed, growing numbers of working poor people -Hispanics, blacks, whites, Protestants and Catholics, ministers , priests and nuns, shopkeepers, truck drivers, clerks and housewives-are entering politics at the community level in dozens of major cities in Texas and across the nation. They are unusual because they view politics as a long-term process to build relationships, new institutions, and humane communities. They are sparked by people like Ernesto Cortes, Jr., community organizer extraordinaire. Cortes is a man of both ideas and action who seeks long-term political change-not just a quick fix. He is engaged in the empowerment of people at a neighborhood and parish level that allows them to exert both personal and political control over their lives. Cortes and his groups have become successful enough to transform the politics of the ninth largest city in the nation and to determine the 2 / Prolor;ue fate of specific issues in a dozen others, as well as in the entire state of Texas. Because of these successes and the way these groups operate, Ernesto Cortes and the people who participate in the million-member Industrial Areas Foundation network of community organizations in Texas and elsewhere in the nation have the potential to shape a new American grass-roots politics for the 1990s-one that is nurturing to its participants and enriching for our political, religious, and soc~l institutions. More importantly, the local Industrial Area~ Foundation groups are virtually the only organizations in America that are enticing working poor people to participate in politics. When I began to see what was happening, I wanted to know why and how, who and what, when and where. So I pursued the story. Then something unexpected happened. Without realizing it initially, I discovered that I had also embarked on a personal voyage that led to the discovery of new emotions and a new view of politics myself. I guess it was only natural, because coinciding with this pursuit were several currents in my own life, much like strong undertows, that pulled me deeper into the stories of these men and women who rejected specialinterest and celebrity-based politics in favor of values they considered enduring and eternal. When I began interviewing Ernesto Cortes, I had already started to reassess my lifetime in politics, which had been my passion since my father sneaked me and my younger sister past security guards into a Democratic party state convention in Dallas in the late 1950s so that we could watch the Democrats tear each other apart-both a participatory and spectator sport in those days of one-party Southern politics. But I loved what I saw at the convention: the fiery speeches, the furious armwaving , the hot hall, the noise and intrigue, the confrontation between "good and evil." It was a spectacle, a contest, and an adventure. I was intrigued. I wanted more. Politics began to draw me like a magnet, and I was caught in its force field from then on. As a teenager I stuffed envelopes for candidates and collected "Dollars for Democrats" in dusty parking lots on the State Fair grounds. As a young wife and mother, I forfeited fresh vegetables, plucked eyebrows, and living potted plants to put up campaign signs, plan precinct meetings, or sell the Prologue / 3 cheap tickets to political fundraisers. I pulled my children away from Saturday morning cartoons to sit in on "big talk" strategy meetings with aspiring candidates or officeholders. I kept card files and voter lists on my dining room table, hosted political receptions in my backyard, registered voters in meat-packing plants, and stayed awake all night every election night until the last votes were counted. I cared passionately about political ideas and issues and believed that what I was doing would have an impact on people's lives. Politics for me was both a compulsion and ajoy. It was a necessity! But by the 1980s, there were disturbances in the magnetic field of politics. I was growing weary. And I was...