An Interview with Ernesto Cortes, Jr.

Some leaders believe that addressing the problems we face as a culture and country requires more than policy tweaks; they believe it will require changes in the very structures of discourse and power that shape our national life. Community organizer Ernesto Cortes Jr., scholar Theda Skocpol, and former Congressman Tom Perriello are among such transformational leaders. The following interviews explore these figures’ approaches to fostering change in the country they know and the country they’re trying to help create.

Ernesto Cortes Jr.

For nearly forty years, Ernesto Cortes Jr. has been one of America’s most effective community organizers. His first major successes came with Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) in San Antonio, TX, in the mid-1970s, where he helped develop a coalition of community groups from long-ignored low-income neighborhoods. In just a few years, COPS developed significant local leadership and built enough political power to win significant improvements for its members—everything from sidewalks, drainage projects, and parks to millions of dollars in capital improvements. In 1984, Cortes was awarded a MacArthur “genius grant.” Today, he is the West/Southwest Regional Director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, a national network of community organizing groups.

This interview took place via telephone in two parts: on December 17, 2010, and on December 21, 2010.

KSR

As Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF)–affiliate organizations have achieved successes and attained more recognition over the last few years, and as your foes have gotten wiser to IAF’s methods and aims, have you needed to adjust your methods, strategies, and tactics?

Cortes

Oh yeah, there’s constant readjustment and rethinking going on all the time and constant analysis of how power patterns are changing and how the people who have power are changing. Some of them change in ways that are helpful, realizing that they can work with us on some issues.

We don’t look at this as just all adversarial; we also look at it in terms of who in the corporate community might be our allies on workforce development but could be our adversaries on mortgage foreclosure? Who might be our allies on mortgage foreclosure that will be our adversaries on immigration reform? Who would be our allies on immigration reform that might be our adversaries on mortgage foreclosure? You don’t deal with people monolithically or stereotypically.

KSR

Let’s talk about national politics. During the 2008 presidential campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama built what was probably the most effective grassroots organizing operation in political history . . .

Cortes

Well, I would make a distinction between organizing and mobilizing. It was a very effective voter mobilization. It was the most effective voter mobilization drive of its kind.

KSR

That’s an interesting distinction to make, because my next question was going to be about Marshall Ganz. As you probably know, Ganz helped design much of the Obama ground game. But in August 2009, when the push toward health care reform was faltering, Ganz and Peter Dreier criticized the White House in a Washington Post op-ed. They wrote, “The White House and its allies forgot that success requires more than proposing legislation, negotiating with Congress, and polite lobbying. It demands movement-building of the kind that propelled Obama’s long-shot candidacy to an almost landslide victory.” Do you think the thrust of that criticism was accurate at the time? If so, do you think it might apply today?

Cortes

Well, Marshall’s a smart guy. He’s a very seasoned veteran. . . . I like him, and I respect him. Doesn’t mean I don’t have a different take on things.

KSR

Sure.

Cortes

My take is a little different. Obama basically won because the country was in a crisis. And he was at the right place at the right time with the right momentum, and the people wanted change because the country was—my God—the economy was in a free fall.

KSR

So you think that it would be easy to overplay how much of a real movement Obama had built?

Cortes

That is correct. That’s not to say that they didn’t do a very, very effective and extraordinarily heroic effort. But not to look at the reality of events is also a big mistake. Now, does that mean we don’t need to build? No. We need to build organizations solid. We can’t overplay our hand either or not recognize how major events affect what we do.

KSR

Sure. Recently, there has been a lot of dismay on the Left about the White House’s agreement with the Republican leadership on taxes. Many progressives think that Obama got a bad deal, that he didn’t stand up and fight. Do you think that the White House could learn from IAF—or Alinsky-style organizing—in a way that might help them press a progressive agenda forward?

Cortes

Well, Ronald Reagan fought harder than this administration. Go back to Alinsky [laughing]. Just go back and look at Ronald Reagan, my God.

KSR

Say more, if you will.

Cortes

No, what is there to say, you know? Look at what went on after the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress—what Reagan was still able to do.

KSR

Do the lessons you’ve learned in community organizing seem applicable at the federal level, at the level of the White House? Or is it a different kind of game at that point?

Cortes

Life has lessons for all of us. I think we all would be better served by reading Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited and particularly the chapter on deception. When you’re negotiating, you know when you’re deceiving yourself. . . . Call me back and let’s talk about it.

KSR

Okay, I’ll take you up on that.

Cortes

Particularly, read the discussion of Macbeth’s soliloquy after he found out that Lady Macbeth has committed suicide.

[The conversation picked up four days later.]

KSR

I was struck by the passage you recommended regarding Macbeth. At one point, Thurman writes, “The penalty of deception is to become a deception, with all sense of moral discrimination vitiated. A man who lies habitually becomes a lie and it is increasingly impossible for him to know when he is lying and when he is not.”

So, on the one hand, you’re deeply attuned to the dangers of self-deception, both personal and political. On the other hand, you prize compromise. I’m wondering what you think about the difference between a self-deceiving compromise and a compromise that represents the best of what’s available and/or lays the groundwork for future gains?

Cortes

It’s not a question of “Do you compromise?” [It’s asking], “Which ones do you make?” There’s a compromise of half the loaf, which is still bread and life-giving, and then there’s the compromise of Solomon, half a baby—half a baby’s a corpse. So the question really is trying to figure out which compromises sustain you and enable you to fight another day to get something which is real and substantive and effective versus a compromise where you fool yourself or you pretend we really got something when we didn’t.

KSR

How do you discern the difference? Is it always context-specific, or are there principles that you’ve been able to derive in the course of your work?

Cortes

Does the compromise flow out of real deliberation or are you just the only one who decides for yourself? Do you take into consideration other people?

KSR

Thurman also has a chapter on fear. I would imagine that you keep a keen eye out for whether fear is playing a role in these situations. Can you talk about that?

Cortes

Well, it’s just a question of “Are you overcome by fear?” or “Are you able to allow that which you really think is important to your grief and your anger to be able to overcome your fear?” In other words, what are you going through? Are you willing to allow [for] that?

We’re all finite beings, and part of what overcomes fear, for me, is an understanding of death. We’re all going to die. So the question, then, is how many deaths do you undergo—a thousand like a coward, or do you taste it just one time?

KSR

One of the ways Thurman talks about overcoming fear is thinking about your life and your action not in terms of how you’re perceived by your opposition, but by God or by something larger.

Cortes

Another way of looking at it is facing yourself, or the divinity in yourself. There’s a core to your being, and are you being true to that?

KSR

How do you teach that way of seeing yourself in the context of organizing?

Cortes

There’s another theologian named [Herbert] McCabe who talks about Jesus’s agony in the garden. There’s almost a panic which overcomes Jesus. But the question then is, “Is he going to be true to his humanity, to have some integrity about himself? Is he going to maintain his steadiness in terms of what he’s about? Or is he going to panic and run?”

Is he going to be—the way Thurman puts it—is he going to be fully human? Is he going to be accountable to the dimensions of his humanity? That means recognizing that you are there not by yourself but with comrades and colleagues and you’re accountable to them and you have obligations to them. You can’t just run.

KSR

Do you think that same model applies to politicians? If so, does it apply straightforwardly, or does it need some tweaking? Given that politicians operate in such an absurd media and electoral landscape, do you think it’s possible for them to speak with the same kind of forthrightness and honesty and avoid self-deception in ways that . . .

Cortes

If they are really politicians, yes—if they’re not just character-actors. Now, the problem is that most people who run for public office have become character-actors.

KSR

You used the phrase “tinsel personalities” in another interview. Say a little more there, if you will.

Cortes

Well, there’s a kind of self-centeredness and narcissism and you’re living up to some image you created of yourself, which therefore makes you incapable of really growing, developing, and learning from your own experiences.

KSR

In today’s environment, do you think it’s possible for politicians to speak with what Thurman called “complete and devastating sincerity” and still get elected?

Cortes

Well, I think that has to be held in tension, that devastating sincerity. I think there’s a role for cunning in political life. It’s like when you play poker: do you show your hand? No. But the rules of the game allow for that, right? We can keep a “poker face,” if you will. So in politics, you would be stupid and pseudo-innocent, I think, to not be cunning. But that doesn’t mean that you aren’t maintaining some integrity.