Dean Dorn: It's always a special pleasure to introduce a very old friend who's done well. Ernesto Cortes is an old friend, and he's done very well indeed. I first met Ernie when we were students together on this very campus, more than a few years ago. At the time Ernie was trying to combine graduate study with student activism at U.T. in the very active 1960's. Then and now, Ernesto Cortes was about empowerment, about the process of helping people learn to take control of their lives and of their communities. Ernie organizes groups and he's probably one of the nation's best students of the theoretical underpinnings of community organizing. He's organized more than 40 grassroots organizations in the United States and in the United Kingdom, beginning his work in San Antonio and in South Texas in the 1960's. His work has been featured in the writing of others-in a book by Ray Marshall, for example, and in a PBS documentary by Bill Moyers.

A decade ago Ernesto was recognized with the award of the so-called McArthur Genius Award. It's a special pleasure to introduce Ernesto Cortes.

Mr. Cortes: I want to thank the Dean for reminding all of you how long ago and far away we both first met. That was a different time and a different era, of course. Ed was then a young student. I remember him very well. He didn't have as much gray hair, but he was just as distinguished then as he is now. All of us knew he was going to be a very distinguished person in later life.

I'm here to talk about ethical leadership, ethical leadership from the perspective of an organizer. In order to help me kind of get situated properly for this morning I decided I needed to do some thinking and reading. One of the things that I read for the first time in my life was the entire inauguration speech of the incoming president, which wasn't too hard because our current president is remarkable in his... Well, it was a very short speech. So it won't go down in the history books as one of the longer and boring ones. He did say some interesting things. You know, I'm not known to be an avid supporter of the "shrub"-I mean, our new president-but he did say some interesting things. And I thought given that he did say some interesting things and some things that I kind of agreed with, I'm not sure in the same way that he meant them, but one of my most important mentors has been a fellow by the name of Mario Moreno, otherwise known as Cantinflas, who once did a movie called "El Padre Cito." A very wise scripture scholar once told me that if you really wanted to understand how to interpret scripture, you have to watch this movie very carefully, because there's a point in the movie where El Padre Cito, Mario Moreno "Cantinflas" says, "And Jesus said, and if he didn't, he should have." So I'm going to take a little bit of dramatic or poetic license with our president's talk, and suggest to you that if he didn't mean what I'm about to say, he should have meant what I'm about to say, because he did talk about the importance of civil culture, and civic institutions in the development of a democratic society and culture. He did talk about the importance of the kind of leadership which is concerned about the other. He did talk about the kind of commitment to inclusiveness. And I'm going to again take him at his word and to suggest that what we need to do is to think about how do we create the kind of culture and society which fosters that kind of inclusivity which recognizes the contributions and the role and the dignity of every human being. What I'm going to suggest is that our president was helping us think about what was required in order for us to create what I'd like to call "a just society."

Now, that concept of justness in a society is real important, and in order to help me understand it better, I read a book once by an Israeli scholar. I never can pronounce his name, but I think it's [Morgalite], who wrote a book called The Just Society. Maybe some of you had an occasion to come across that book. Anyhow, in that book he makes a distinction between what he calls a civilized society and a just society. He says that you can have a society of people where people are civilized. That is to say they are nice to each other, kind to one another, sensitive to one another, but in order for a society to be just, it is required or a requisite that the institutions of that society do not humiliate adults, do not treat adults as second-class citizens, do not deprive adults of that which is requisite in order to participate effectively and fully and in a dignified way in the life of that society. Or as [inaudible] quoting Adam Smith would say, "A just society is that society which provides-makes is possible for an ordinary person to appear in public without shame and makes it possible for that person to have that which is necessary, to be able to appear in public without shame. And Adam Smith made the point in his Wealth of Nations, that a linen shirt was a luxury item to a Greek or Roman noble, but to a working man in that period of time when he was writing, the linen shirt was absolutely requisite in order to be able to appear in public without shame. And in order for there to be a just society, it's important that people have the wherewithal to be able to appear in public without shame, whether it means an automobile, running water, health care, etc.

Anyhow, the point that my Israeli scholar was making was that it's also important for the institutions of that society not to humiliate adults, not to treat adults as second-class citizens. And as an example of societies that were civilized, but not just, he used Czechoslovakia under communism where the Czech people were very civilized, very sophisticated, very metropolitan, but notwithstanding their sensitivity, their kindness, etc., the institutions of that society treated adults as second-class citizens. The other example, of course, he used, was South Africa under a partheid. And of course, the other example he used was the United States prior to the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and even today where you have institutions that treat adults as second- class citizens, institutions that humiliate adults. In fact, one of the rationales that Lyndon Johnson always made for the passage of the Civil Rights Act was that no man should ever be humiliated in front of his own children. No man should ever be made to feel humiliated in front of his own children. And of course, our Israeli scholar was also talking about Israel because he felt that unfortunately his society was very civilized and contained people and traditions which were very civilized, but unfortunately were treating the Arab citizens-not the Palestinians, but the Arab citizens of Israel, as second-class citizens.

Now, I would like to say to you that we live in a decent society. But unfortunately, from my vantage point, all too often we see institutions that humiliate adults. Institutions like universities, institutions like the workplace, institutions like public education, even churches and congregations, which humiliate adults. And in order to kind of convey that notion of what's at work here, I'd like to use a story that our organizers, which helps them fully grasp the significance of what I'm talking about, and that story comes from a great book written by-my wife always gets mad at me when I talk about it in this way-written by what I like to say is a great Mexican writer. Unfortunately, he's not Mexican, because his name is Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but he has a Mexican soul. So notwithstanding the fact that he was technically raised in Russia, I still want to claim him, because he understood the Mexican character, our constantly having to deal with the tensions of tragedy and irony, but at the same time maintain a certain capacity to kind of take the punches of life, a certain ability, as someone has put it, laugh on the outside while we're crying on the inside.

Of course, you know Dostoyevsky wrote this book called The Brothers Karamazov, which has a great chapter in it, which I'm sure all of you have read and memorized and digested, called "The Grand Inquisitor." So I don't have to go through that. Everybody here knows that, I'm sure. But just to kind of put us all on the same page, I'll just kind of outline it briefly. The Grand Inquisitor's chapter is, of course, the story told by one of the brothers, Ivan, to his younger brother, whose name I can never pronounce correctly. In front of this audience I'm so intimidated and tongue-tied I won't even try. But his younger brother who's an idealist, and of course, Ivan and his younger brother represent two sides, warring sides of Dostoyevsky's own soul. And Ivan has this recurring nightmare or dream that kind of captures his sense of reality. Of course, in this dream the situation of this nightmare is the Spanish city of [Seville] during the Spanish Inquisition. And it's the day after a great auto da fe. And all of you know what an auto da fe was when they would bring out the heretics and ask them to recant, and if they didn't recant, of course, they burned them at the stake. If they recanted, they burned them at the stake also because they didn't want them to backslide. They figured at that time they were in a state of grace so it would be a mistake not to burn them at the stake because the temptation would be too great. So it was kind of a no win situation for the heretic. But these are great spectacles, and Phillip the Second of Spain-this is the only time, evidently, he had ever come out of [Escordia] was to come to these auto da fes because they were so magnificent and so inspiring, particularly to him. I guess heads of state enjoying capital punishment, I guess, is nothing new.

But anyhow... That's a subtle joke, if you didn't get it. Not so subtle, but anyhow... Look, I've got to be non-partisan here, okay? I'm going to be equally disrespectful to both political parties, but I'm going to pull my punches today because this is a time of healing and of coming together and all that sort of business. So I won't be my usual strident self. I like to say that we have one political party. The Republican Party represents people who make over 350,000 dollars a year. The Democratic Party represents people who make over 150,000 a year, but unfortunately, we have no political party that represents ordinary people. Or as Bob [McCulsky] once told the leaders of one of our organizations, there is really no Democratic party anymore. We have what we call "franchise agreements." At that time Paul ________ and she had the Maryland franchise, and Lloyd Bentsen and Ann Richards at that time had the Texas franchise. But really, you know, there is no political parties anymore because what they really are these franchise agreements and kind of money bundling operations, because essentially, for example, Bill Greider talks about in his book, Who Will Tell the People that when the Democratic party was going to celebrate its 200th anniversary, they tried to find a list of precinct committee people, but unfortunately they couldn't because the only list they could find were the lists of those people who raised money, and most of those people lived in one zip code in Los Angeles. If you know who those people are, they're the people like Ron [Berkel] and those kind of characters, [Eli Broll], etc., who raise all the big bucks for the Democratic Party. And so essentially what we have now in America are these parties which represent people who are well connected. So I just want to be real clear with everybody here that I'm equally disdainful of both of those political parties, but I'm going to try to be reasonably civil this morning because, you know, this is a time of coming together and of unity and of healing and we've all got to recognize that we've got to go beyond our partisanship and go beyond our tension and difficulties with each other, whether we're democrats or republicans.

But anyway, getting back to my story. During this period, this time of this auto da fe, in spite of all this orgy focused around the burning of heretics at the stake, in the middle of all this, Christ comes back to earth, and he's immediately recognized by all the people, and they make a big to do about his being there. Miracles were performed. The blind see, the lame walk, the young girl comes back to life. But in the midst of all the celebration, he's recognized by the Grand Inquisitor, a 90-year-old cynical man who has him arrested, and then he throws him into a dungeon and comes to see him in the dead of night. And in the dead of night he asks Christ, "Why did you come back? For 1400 years we tried it your way. For 1400 years we offered men freedom, we offered them hope, and we offered them opportunity. They don't want to be free. They can't handle it. They can't handle the anxiety and the responsibility. So after 1400 years of trying it your way, we decided that we had to make a deal with the other guy, and so we accepted the temptations that you've rejected. And now in your name, using your words, because you can't change any of it. You had your chance. And now using your words, we serve him. And using your words, we offer men what they really, really want. Not hope, not freedom, not responsibility, but we take care of them. We give them magic, we give them mystery, we give them authority, and we're able there to run an ordered society. So be gone as we crucify you one more time."

Now the reason I tell this story to the organizers, and I tell it to you, is that because in my humble opinion, the Grand Inquisitor's spirit is still alive and well. His spirits is alive and well, unfortunately, in the workplace where workers are at will, have no recourse, no rights, are virtually serfs, and serve at the pleasure of the employer. His spirit is alive and well in our schools, where the definition of a lecture course is one where the notes of the instructor goes from his notebook to that of the student without ever going through the head of either one of them. Where we kind of pass information down kids' heads, where we drill and kill, and focus totally on "these test scores," which are supposed to reflect, somehow or another, the development of their intellectual capacity, when in fact, we all know there's a kind of a secret which evidently now can be told, that the Board of Regents has been kind of keeping quiet under the wraps because they didn't want anybody to know before the election, and that is there's no relationship between increased test scores and the ability to pass SAT. Excuse me-there's no relationship between TAAS scores-increasing TAAS scores, and the ability for kids to do well on SAT scores.

And the only significant increase in any group in the state will be that of 18 to 24-year-old dropouts over the next 30 years, as we begin to see an increasing cohort of young people entering our schools, but unfortunately not doing quite well. So our schools now also have become places where the Grand Inquisitor's spirit is alive and well. And unfortunately, the Grand Inquisitor's spirit is alive and well not only in our workplace, not only in our schools, but also in our universities and our churches, which operate according to models of unilateral power, models of top-down, expert-driven. And the Grand Inquisitor's spirit, of course, is also alive and well in our politics, in our political institutions, which are run today, not by citizens, not by parties, not by interest groups, but rather by the admin and the corporate lobbyists who represent those who are well connected and those who are well heeled.

Now the only anecdote that I know of for the Grand Inquisitor's spirit being alive and well is to reclaim what I consider our birthright; what I consider our inheritance. Now, if we want to understand our inheritance, we've got to go back to a great book written by a fellow by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville, who was, as most of you know, a French aristocrat whose father had been guillotined by Robes Pierre, and who was a consequent no friend of radical democracy, but also was very unhappy, disappointed, frustrated, by what he thought were the excesses of the counter-revolution, because he felt that the French aristocrats learned nothing from what he thought were the negative experience of the French Revolution. So de Tocqueville came to the United States ostensibly to study the monastery institutions and prisons, but really just to figure out whether or not this experiment in democracy might work. And as most of you probably know better than I, he was quite hopeful. He was hopeful because he thought that even though there were excesses; inordinate, overreaching on the part of many, de Tocqueville had talked about what he called this Aristotelian soul, which seemed to be kind of central to the American character. And part of this Aristotelian soul was this inclination to kind of withdraw into our selves, become self-absorbed. But he thought that the anecdote for that Aristotelian soul was the existence of face-to-face politics.

Now, the other part of this Aristotelian soul, besides this inclination to withdrawn into ourselves, was this inclination to make larger claims on life than were appropriate, to be greedy, in a word, to dominate others. But he felt there was an anecdote also to that dimension of the Aristotelian soul, and that was the existence of families and networks of relationships and religion. So even though he saw this kind of tension or this dialectic between this inclination to be self-absorbed and narcissistic, and this inclination to make larger claims on life than were appropriate, he felt that there existed civic institutions of political culture, networks of family and relationships, religion, which would constrain and bound and hopefully focus this Aristotelian soul. So he became quite hopeful about the possibilities of American democracy, notwithstanding the existence of slavery, which he was very concerned about, notwithstanding the existence of the oppression of white working men, and the non-participation of women. Notwithstanding all those concerns, he was very hopeful because of the existence of what he called these intermediate institutions, which he thought were laboratories for the development of leadership. And what made him most hopeful was the connection of these mediating institutions to congregations and to institutions of township that he thought enabled people to learn, to experience and reflect on their experience about the capacities for leadership and rationality.

Well, I think de Tocqueville would be quite concerned about our prospects today because even though we have maintained the forms of democratic culture electoraly, we lack the substance, unfortunately, of those civic institutions, those networks of relationships, those intermediate institutions which created the capacity of ordinary people both to understand and to participate effectively in the kind of civic culture which he was so hopeful about.

To be a little more prosaic about it, when I grew up in San Antonio in the 1950's there were 250 adults organized against me. There were 250 adults who had responsibility for my life, 250 adults who shaped me, 250 adults who helped mentor me and guide me and teach me and enable me to understand my responsibilities, my obligations. I'm not trying in any way, shape or form to lift myself up as any kind of model of responsibility or maturity. But nonetheless, there were in existence the network of relationships, of congregation, of parish, of family, of party. Everybody was Catholic, everybody was Mexican, and everybody was a democrat. Everybody participated in union households. My father almost was shunned by my entire family when he thought about the possibility of voting for Eisenhower in 1952 because he went to work for the Pepsi Cola company and all the executives of Pepsi Cola at that time were republicans and he felt like maybe he ought to kind of go along with the flow. But my mother-I never heard my mother more strident, more angry, more furious with my father for even considering the possibility, and of course, it didn't take long for the rest of my aunts and uncles to kind of bring it into the light and to understand his responsibilities. It's like he once told me, "If you see a Republican, look but don't stare," because they were so rare, particularly in that kind of environment.

But my own experience lifts up, I think, somewhat an example of the existence of even in the 1950's of these thick networks of intermediate institutions of family and congregation, of political party and union. And I compare that experience to the one of going to Los Angeles now and finding, instead of 250 adults organized against one child, rather the opposite, 60 to 70 children organized against every adult, and adults living under house arrest, afraid to go out at night, afraid to participate in any way, shape or form, in parish or congregational work, much less in civic culture.

Because of this reality, the Industrial Areas Foundation, in Texas and in the southwest, has been organizing broad-based organizations, which are laboratories, universities, to develop civic capacity. To develop and teach and mentor and guide the ability of ordinary people to begin to understand their responsibilities, their rights, their obligations, and their possibilities, to begin to act on their own interests, the interests of their families, their communities, their congregations; the interests of their careers. To do so by beginning around issues which are winnable, around issues which are close to home, and through the existence of the broad-based organization, develop a larger vision of the possibilities, so that people start off with a street light, start off with a vacant lot, but begin to move from that street light to that vacant lot to thinking seriously about the capital improvements program of an entire city, about the developmental plans of an entire city, about how cities allocate and pay for issues of water and energy. We start off with concerns about a sidewalk, but then develop into a whole question of how do we develop the infrastructure of the border areas. We start off with concern about the education of their children, to beginning to think about how do we create a context in which really meaningful education can take place. The IAF organizations in Texas have been about this now for 25 years, beginning in San Antonio and in the Rio Grande Valley, but now in Austin and in Houston and Dallas and Fort Worth, so that now almost every single major metropolitan area has an IAF organization, which is teaching ordinary people how to be effective in local politics, how to be effective in the politics of negotiations and compromise. Because [Olensky] used to always teach us that if there's one word that defines democracy it's compromise.

Now, there are two kinds of compromises. There's a compromise of half a loaf, which is still bread and life-giving, and then there's the compromise of Solomon, of half a baby. Half a baby is a corpse. So the question in our organizing is not do you compromise, but which compromises do you make, and that requires judgment, and that requires the development of that capacity to have what [Kant] called an "enlarged understanding of the other person's perspective."

Toward that end, we are developing these broad-based organizations, which again are mini universities, teaching people how to think strategically and effectively, how to develop a deeper understanding of their own interests, but understand that their own interests, properly understood, as de Tocqueville talked about, self-interest properly understood leads to you to be your brothers' and sisters' keeper. But in order for self-interest to be mediating and intentioned with the common good, in order for self-interest to lead to that kind of understanding, it requires, again, an institution. As a friend of mine by the name of Stanley Horowitz said-he was a non- violent-his ideology was a non-violent Christian, but his personality, his nature, was one of being a violent SOB. So in order for him to be able to go from what he was by nature to what he was idealistically in his imagined self, he required an existence of a community. He required the existence of other people to hold him accountable. In a very useful and important book to the organizers, a book by the name of Wickedness, a woman by the name of Mary Midgley talked about the fact that we all have a shadow self. We all have a shadow side. We all have a dimension of ourselves that we can't fully understand, which is negative, and as a result we all need to be held accountable, because no one of us-nobody thinks that they're doing the wrong thing. Most of us think we're operating out of some sort of desire to do good. We need institutions, we need other people, and we need a larger civic culture to hold us accountable.

So toward that end, the IAF organizations are creating collective leadership, which develops people's capacity to act. Now, in order for that leadership to function properly and appropriately, we also have to teach another universal of organizing, which is what we call the "Iron Rule." The Iron Rule is never ever do for anybody what he or she can do for themselves. Now the Iron Rule is not rationalized social Darwinism. It does not mean "root hog or die." What the Iron Rule does is provide the impetus, provide the capacity for the organization to mentor, to guide, to teach. It means that the organizers have the responsibility to teach and mentor and guide, but not to interfere, not to create, what unfortunately most of our institutions create, which is learn helplessness. Not to create dependency, not to reduce people to clients or customers, but rather enable them to become citizens in the fullest sense of the word, so that they understand their responsibilities as citizens.

Now, that is the focus of the IAF organizations, whether it's in education when we build schools, of parents and teachers and principals which teach collaboration and create a community learners. It's our focus when we create human development funds in San Antonio. It's our focus when we organize around colonias. Our focus is the project itself, the program, but beyond the project and program is the development of leadership, leadership which emerges in action and reflection on that action, leadership which begins to develop an understanding of what the Greeks called "proxis," action which is aimed, calculated, and reflected upon. So in order to develop that understanding it requires again this broad-based organization which understands the realities of power and self-interest.

In order to give you a sense of that concept I'd like to tell you one more story before I quit, but I need to know from my chairperson how much time I have left. Okay. And that story is about another great Mexican leader by the name of Moises-Moses to most of you. Because the story of how you develop a broad-based organization is really kind of lifted up in Moses' story. And as all of you know, Moses was raised as a prince in the house of Pharaoh. He was raised by the daughter of Pharaoh. But he was also raised by a Hebrew woman. Now, the concept of Hebrew is an important notion, because it doesn't mean Jewish, it doesn't refer to race. It refers to status, to class. A Hebrew was someone who was outcast. A Hebrew was someone who was despised. The one word which kind of captures our understanding of this word Hebrew is the word "wretched." So Moses was taught also, in spite of the fact that he was raised as an aristocrat, to identify with those who are wretched.

And so we read in the book of Exodus that Moses went out and he saw an Egyptian overseer oppressing a Hebrew, and he looked around and he saw no one, or at least that's what the scripture says, "seeing no one," which I thought meant that there were nobody else around, but then a Rabbi explained to me what that really meant was that there was no one else around to act like a mensch. There was no one else around to act like a human being. And seeing no one else, seeing everyone else cowed, seeing everyone else intimidated, Moses acted, intemperately, to be sure, impetuously, to be sure, but he acted, and he killed the Egyptian and buried him deep in the sand.

The next day he comes across two Hebrews fighting and said, "You should be brothers, you should be working together, you should be organizing. You shouldn't be fighting with each other." They said, "Moses, who made you our leader? When did we have an election to make you our leaders? And besides that Moses, you're in big trouble. Pharaoh's out to get you. You're going to jail; maybe going to be executed, and so why should we follow you?" So Moses realizes his deed is known. And how is his deed known? The only people around were Hebrews. The Egyptian was buried deep in the sand. So he realizes his own people turned him in.

So Moses says, "I don't need this. I'm a smart guy." So he leaves. He splits, he goes to the suburbs, gets a good job, a big home, big swimming pool, marries the boss's daughter. Moses has got it made. But he's got one problem, this Moses. His problem is identity. His problem is those stories that were told to him. His memories of those stories which told him about his responsibilities and his obligations. And his problem is he hears the voice of his people crying out, so Moses is confronted in the burning bush experience by Yahweh's voice, and Yahweh says to Moses, "You've got to go out and you've got to free my people."

Moses says, "Wait a minute. The people have rejected my leadership. They don't want me. Who shall I say sent me?"

Yahweh says, "Moses, don't worry about it. I'm going to organize a sponsoring committee for you, okay? I'm going to put together a sponsoring committee. You tell them that the God of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and Rebecca and Jacob and Leah, that God sent you, okay?"

Moses says, "Wait a minute. I've been away a long time. I've been up at the northeast. I've been away from my people. I don't know their customs; I don't know their language. My Spanish is kind of rusty. How am I going to go out there and organize these people?"

God says, "Moses, you don't understand. They don't need another leader. They've got your brother Aaron. They've got your sister Marian. They've got Joshua. They've got Caleb. They've got lots and lots of leaders. What they need is an organizer. What they need is an agitator. They need somebody who recognizes that you don't organize San Antonio, you don't organize the Valley, you don't organize Los Angeles. What you do is you go out and you identify the leadership that's going to do it, and you teach them, and you guide them, and you pull together an institution and you get them to reorganize and rethink-because they've been worrying so much about task and project and program that they don't have a larger vision of what the possibilities are."

So Moses does what he's told, and you know the story. He frees his people from Pharaoh and gets them into the desert and he gives them manna from heaven. But the Hebrews are like a lot of us. After being in the desert for a while and eating manna, they come to Moses. "Moses, Moses. Back in Egypt we used to have it real good. Back in Egypt we used to have garlic and leeks and cucumber and fish everyday for free. And now we've got nothing to eat but this manna that tastes terrible and it's boring. Because as Michael Walzer points out in his book, Exodus and Revolution, you can take the Hebrews out of Egypt, but what's really hard is to take Egypt out of the Hebrews.

"We want meat," and getting louder, "We want meat," and the din becomes so loud that Yahweh himself is disturbed by it. So Moses says to Yahweh, "Look, I've been doing everything you've told me to do. I've been serving you, but now I've got 500,000 people and I've got to feed them like a wet nurse with them at my breast. Where am I going to get meat for all these people? Evidently I've not found favor in your sight, so why don't you just kill me right now and get it over with?"

So God says to Moses, "Moses, you've totally forgotten everything. Your father-in-law Jethro explained it to you..." Because at one time, you know, Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, came to Moses, because Moses had stuck his kids-can you imagine this? Moses stuck his kids with Jethro and asked Jethro to take care of his wife and his kids. And Jethro says, "Wait a minute now, Moses. The reason why you can't take care of your family is because you're doing this all wrong. You've got to find other leaders to mentor and guide and put responsibility on." So Yahweh says to Moses, "You forgot everything that Jethro told you. So if you want meat for these people I'll tell you how to do it. You gather your 70 best leaders, people you've tested out, people you've done relational meetings with, people you've done local actions with, people you've checked out, and you bring those leaders to the tent of the meeting and put the burden that's on you on them, and they'll have meat, not for one day or two or ten or 20, but for a whole month until it becomes loathsome to them and they vomit it out of their nostrils."

So finally Moses does what he's supposed to do. He brings his leaders together and he says to them, "You want meat to eat? I'll show you how to do it. There's some quail out there. I'll mentor you, I'll guide you, I'll teach you, but I'm not going to do it for you, because my job is not to create dependency. My job is not to be needed. My job is not to create a following. My job is to develop in you the leadership which can act on its own interests, leadership which can do for itself.

That's the role of a broad-based organization, to mentor, to guide, to teach, to teach people to act on their own interests. That's the work that COPS is involved in, that's the work that Valley Interfaith is involved in, that's the work that all the IAF organizations are involved in.

Now, having said that, let me be real clear. This does not rationalize putting the burden on poor people, of justice. This does not rationalize taking away from all of us the obligations to be reciprocal, of all of us to recognize that we need a public sector. But what it does say is that the only thing that's going to make the public sector accountable and effective is the existence of a vibrant civic culture. The only thing that's going to make the public sector meaningful in its ability to deliver a just society is the existence of active citizenship and the existence of intermediate institutions which make that public sector effective, responsible, and accountable, and toward that end, that is why we organize and create these broad-based organizations which are about the business of developing leadership.

Thank you very much for your time and your patience.

Dean Dorn: We've got about five minutes if there are questions for Ernie Cortes or comments. Don't everybody speak at once.

Audience Member: When you talk about accountability, I was wondering as a leader, what accountability you have? Who are you accountable to?

That's a very, very good question. Let me introduce Sister Christine Stephens, who is the lead organizer of the IAF organizations in Texas, and she allows me every once in a while to come to Texas, because I'm spending most of my time in California. I'm accountable to a network of leaders and organizers. Each IAF organization has a contract with the Industrial Areas Foundation, and that contract provides leadership training which has to be renewed every year. My salary is totally paid for by those contracts. So if COPS, for example, decided, or Valley Interfaith decided, or TMO in Houston decided, or Austin Interfaith decided they want out of this, there is no money to pay for my salary, so I'm out of business, personally, which my wife, who holds me accountable, would have a real problem with. So therefore, it's real important for me to be accountable to those organizations and those institutions. Now, I'm not an elected official, so also I'm accountable to myself and my understanding of my citizenship, but as I was trying to explain, we all think we're doing the right thing. We all think we're operating on the basis of our ethics and our principles and our values. Very few of us get up in the morning trying to figure out how we can do bad. Most of us get up in the morning-even dictators-get up in the morning and think that they're doing good. They may rationalize what they're doing, and we all have this inordinate capacity to rationalize. So we all need the equivalent of somebody to say to us, "Wait a minute, now." We need somebody who's going to challenge us all the time. I hope I'm responsive to your question. Yes sir?

Audience Member: [inaudible]

We try to teach people a lot about power. We all know Lord Acton's famous dictum about power. What did he say? This is a quiz. No, he said, "Power tends to corrupt." He probably said, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." But we forget the context in which he was talking about it. He was talking about popes and kings. He was talking about power which is unaccountable, power which is in inaccessible, a power which tends to shroud itself in magic and mystery. He was talking about the kind of power that the Grand Inquisitor represented.

What we try to teach people is there's a different kind of power. There's the kind of power that Lord Acton talked about, which is unilateral, domineering, but then there's also what we call relational power. Relational power is not just acting on somebody, but is allowing someone to act on you. But a relational power requires calculated vulnerability.

Now, in that context of understanding that these two kinds of power, we have a paradigm which we call "the world as it is and the world as it should be." In the world as it is what makes the world go around is power. In the world as it should be is love. Power and love are seen as opposites. We teach they are conjugal; they go together. They are both ways of expressing our relatedness. But the only way in which they come together is that there's some institution which makes it possible for power and love to be conjugal. I think it was ____ who said that power without love tends to be brutal, but love without power tends to be sentimental.

And so what we try to teach people is to love without power leads to sentimentality. So that's part of what we try to teach. We also try to teach a lot about how to understand the levels of power, how it works, and how decisions are made. We also try to teach people that they operate most effectively when they operate in and around their interests. But again, interests have to be tempered by a concern for others. That requires also institutions. Then we talk about how do you create these kinds of institutions. But don't take my word for it. Try it out. We have a 10- day training three times a year and I invite you to look at it. Do I have another question? Yes, over here.

Audience member: [inaudible]

Both. Part of our paradigm is we tend to organize those who are have-nots. One of our most useful type of training sessions is what we call the Melian Dialogue, which comes from a book written by Thucydides, about the Peloponnesian Wars, which is a dialogue and a conversation between the Athenian negotiators and some people from the Island of Meles. It's sometimes used in international relationships course, but nobody ever really understands the point of the dialogue, unfortunately. We try to teach that the dialogue is really about understanding power and understanding your interests. And so we try to teach people who have an inclination because they are have-nots, to be Melians, and by Melians we mean victims, ideologues, people who don't really have the understanding of the flexibility, who aren't willing to negotiate. We try to teach them how to think like Athenians, because if you read carefully in the dialogue, the Athenians understand power. They're very skillful negotiators, they understand their interests, they understand the interests of the Melians, they've done a very careful power analysis. They know how the Spartans think; they know how everybody else thinks, because they've taken Pericles' vision to heart, and that is that the power has to be restrained and disciplined, etc. Now, in the end they lose it, and in the end they operate very unilaterally and they operate very, very brutally. But up until the end, the Athenians are very skillful and very appropriate and very, very cautious and restrained. And so we try to teach people that if you're going to have power you've got to understand Athenian thinking, and you've got to be able and not be so inclined to kind of yield to our inclinations to being Melians. Which unfortunately, those of us who are have-nots tend to be, whether we're Mexicans, whether we're African-Americans, whether we're Native Americans, whether we're female, gays, whatever. We tend to see ourselves as Melians, as victims of circumstances, as victims in situations.

And I'm not trying to say that there aren't powerful, ugly forces out there. I'm not trying to say that there aren't people we've got to negotiate and deal with, but we're not going to get anywhere by being victims of our situation, and so therefore, to kind of indulge ourselves in that kind of fantasy of victimhood, is not very useful. It's important for people who don't have any power to learn that they can get power by organizing, to get power by beginning to negotiate, to get power by developing broad-based institutions. Yes, one more.

Audience Member: [inaudible]

I think about compassionate conservatism the way Gandhi talked about Western civilization. It would be a great idea if we ever did it, if we ever tried it out. The proof of the pudding will be- the jury's out-but I think if there were such a thing, I'd like to see it. It tends to get oxymoronic. I haven't seen a whole lot of it. Now, I have seen-don't misunderstand me. I consider myself a conservative. My daughter, at least, says I'm a conservative. I identify with Daniel Bell. I'm culturally conservative. I think families are important. I think religion is important. I believe in tradition, the living ideas of the dead, versus traditionalism, the dead ideas of the living. I believe education is important. I think [Hanna Arin] is absolutely right when she says that the purpose of education is to open up the world of children, but also the purpose of education is to protect children from the world, because we need to give kids... But it's also to protect the world from children, because I would not like to live in a world which is run by my 18-year-old son. So I think therefore it requires adults coming together and exercising authority, which is another very conservative kind of idea. So I think we ought to be-I believe in that kind of conservatism which believes in tradition, authority, requires the test of time and experience, and etc. At the same time I also believe that there has to be a society which is just, and so therefore-Henry Gonzales used to say, when people asked him what his ideology was, that he was a "consiberal." And I guess I'm sort of a "consiberal." I'm a conservative about family and tradition, but I'm also hopefully liberal about justice. I think that the idea that people can't appear in public without shame, I think in this country, with all of our prosperities, is disgraceful. And so the idea that we have to fight for "living wages," when we really are talking about the real value of the minimum wage being what it is now, to what it was in the 1960's, it was $1.25, and having to have "living wage" campaigns in order to get the real value of the minimum wage to what it was then is a disgrace. And so I think the problems with inequality are things which make me concerned about the justice of our society.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but I'll be ruled out of order by my chairperson. So my point here is that I think we have to begin to figure out how do we take those traditions of American politics, our birthright, and make them viable in a society where we have very serious problems of inequality and lack of fairness.

Audience Member: [inaudible]

Yeah. We move organizers regularly. In fact, when I first got into organizing, it was two years and out. But any kind of rule like that becomes, I think, dangerous, because they become rigid and inflexible, number one. Number two is that after a while there are things that the organizers have to have, like families and private lives, etc., and so it's hard to ask somebody, and even religious communities don't do that anymore to people. So therefore we try to figure out what is a reasonable length of time for an organizer to work in a particular community. And more than time is do we see evidence of leadership emerging? Do we see evidence of development of institutions? Do we see evidence of a financial base? We think it's real important that these organizations understand that he who pays the piper calls the tune. And so therefore the money for these organizations has got to come from local institutions. So all of our organizations have dues structures. And right now in Los Angeles I'm trying to build a dues structure of about 100 institutions which will pay, on the average, hopefully, 500,000 dollars a year. Right now we're up to 50 and we're generating about 250,000 dollars a year in local dollars, unions and churches and schools and other institutions, but it's real important that you create organizations where there is a real ownership on the part of the organization. So rather than a fixed length of time, the question is, is ownership developing among parishes and congregations and unions and schools? Is there are a collective leadership emerging which could hold the organizer accountable? And the best organizers won't want to be in a situation where they find that they become more and more irrelevant because the things that they could teach people before they could do themselves after a while. So after a while you're no longer needed at meetings, you're no longer needed at training sessions, because the leaders can do it themselves, and so why would you want to stay around because you become superfluous and you're kind of restless. You want to go somewhere else-at least I do, and that's one of my problems. I can't see staying in Los Angeles more than two more years doing what I'm doing, because after a while you see other people doing what you're doing, and what is your value added, what contributions? And so therefore, in order to make a role for yourself, you have to kind of suppress people, and so that's where we begin to see a problem. Okay, I'm out of time. Thank you again very much.

Dean Dorn: We have about 20 minutes for break and then we'll come back to this room at 10:30 for a panel presentation projecting future trends and its implications for leadership. Thanks very much. Ernie, thank you again.