Customer Reviews

Cold Anger: A Story of Faith and Power Politics

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In Cold Anger, Mary Beth Rogers examines how the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), a network of church-based organizations, transforms the faith, religious beliefs, and values of disenfranchised, resigned, and politically powerless people into powerful public action that benefits the entire community. At the same time Rogers also reveals how not only the poor and working class have unwittingly given away their political power, but how white, upper-middle-class citizens have also consented to having power taken away from them in their benign trust of elected public officials.

The "cold anger" of the title is "not one based on sour resentments or a false sense of entitlement," but rather, "an anger that seethes at the injustices of life and transforms itself into a compassion for those hurt by life." Anger for Ernesto Cortes, co-founder of the IAF, and the people he organizes is "an emotion of hope-not of despair."

Rogers tells the story of how Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS), the first IAF-inspired organization of congregations, used that cold anger to move the city of San Antonio to spend more than $500 million for West Side improvements, including storm sewer systems that virtually ended flooding there. Through research actions, COPS members "exploded the myth most of them had accepted for years-that the city in its wisdom would take care of them in good time."

"We weren't looking for any handouts," according to one COPS member. "We're taxpayers and we found out our tax money wasn't working for us."

"The concept we're trying to develop is one of community, communal responsibility," says Cortes. "The work we do is about power and about building power and teaching people how to organize around their own interests, how to be effective. We need power to protect what we value."

Not surprisingly, many church members are initially uncomfortable with the idea of power. IAF organizers, however, seek to replace the traditional understanding of coercive power with one of relational power. According to Cortes, "there are only two ways to build power like this. It takes organized money or organized people. We're obviously not going to have a huge concentration of money, so when we're talking about power as a social concept, we're talking about two or more people coming together with a plan and acting on it." In addition, Cortes says, "we're trying to teach a system of internal accountability so that corruption won't happen." Cortes credits a large part of his understanding of relational power to Paul Tillich's Love, Power and Justice, in which Tillich proposes that love and power must be joined to produce justice.

"Organizing is a fancy word for relationship building," says Cortes. "If I want to organize you, I don't sell you an idea. What I do, if I'm smart, is try to find out what's your interest. What are your dreams? I try to kindle your imagination, stir the possibilities, and then propose some ways in which you can act on those dreams and act on those values and act on your own visions. You've got to be the owner. Otherwise, it's my cause, my organization. You've got nothing!"

Rogers describes the relational style of Sister Christine Stephens, a Catholic nun turned political organizer. "It is selective and sensitive, probing rather than prying. It is like maneuvering a freshly crafted key into a door lock, which, when it fits, seems to open you as well as the other person."

"When you sell, you tend to be arrogant," says Cortes. "You know it all ... You quit listening. You're not attentive."

"In proposing, rather than selling," Rogers writes, "Cortes believes you have to have flexibility, curiosity, patience, and a little vulnerability. And that involves some self-revelation as well as propositioning. The best organizers and leaders learn how to reveal themselves in small doses as part of the process of drawing out others ... The successful one-on-one becomes a give-and-take relationship, not a one-sided interview."

"If we don't go anywhere, it's because these one-on-ones don't develop ... This is where the spiritual action is," according to Cortes. "We teach people that the relationship is more important than the issue ... For you to grow and develop, you have to get out of yourself into the skins of others." According to Cortes, every time we engage another individual on a deep level of human understanding, we also develop ourselves spiritually and politically. "The one-on-one is the most radical thing we teach."

IAF organizers and leaders commit themselves to working with other people on a one-on-one basis "to help them grow beyond themselves and participate as a full citizen in the public life of their community."

The IAF ultimately distinguishes itself from other organizing efforts by attracting people not to issues, but rather, by encouraging church leaders to act on their gospel values, the roots of their public and private beliefs. "This is not merely politics we are engaged in," according to one COPS member, "but correcting injustice, which is God's work and the mission of the church."

Don't let the "Faith" title create preconceived notions. A great book to ignite passion for people, grassroots politics, and new viewpoints.

This would make a great movie -- a textured portrait of the vibrant but politically powerless Hispanic-American culture which has found its champion in Ernesto Cortes. Rogers's book brings his pioneering efforts in Texas to light and life in a way that's truly inspiring.