Moses and Paul: The World's Greatest Organizers

Dallas, 1986

"Anybody remember Moses?" Ernesto Cortes Jr. asks a group of farmers and farm activists from 40 states who have come to Dallas to discuss their problems and hear Cortes speak at a Farm Crisis Workers Conference. A few members of the audience nod and look at each other as if to say, "Who the hell is this and what have we gotten ourselves into?"

Cortes is the coordinator of a dozen or so Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) organizations in Texas, such as San Antonio's COPS and the Rio Grande Valley Interfaith. Because of his 20-year community organizing career in Texas and around the nation, Cortes has become a legend among American political activists and a source on Hispanic politics for journalists from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and a slew of other publications. The prestigious MacArthur Foundation gave him one of its "genius" grants and $204,000 to do with as he saw fit. Esquire identified him as one of the people who represented America "at its best." Texas Business magazine called Cortes one of the most powerful people in Texas—along with Ross Perot and corporate raider extraordinaire T. Boone Pickens. Somehow, with all of this, you don't expect him to be talking about Moses.

"The two greatest organizers historically were Moses and Paul," Cortes begins his remarks to the farmers. "Both men knew how to build networks and build broad-based organizations. Both understood the politics of organization. But Moses had a crisis on his hands when he brought the chosen people out of Egypt and they spent all those years just wandering around in the desert. He's got all these folks coming at him saying, 'You know, things were a lot better in Egypt. We had a lot of good times—what are you offering us here? Nothing but crummy food. We want some chitlins ... we want some tamales ...'"

People in the audience begin to laugh. Obviously, this is to be no ordinary Bible lesson. Cortes also loosens up. With eyes shining like black marbles, he becomes almost impish as he paces in front of the group in his ambling professorial manner. His smile breaks the heavy spell cast by his weighty bulk and bearing; he looks like a freight train about to sprout wings and leave the fast track for more fanciful ventures. He leans into the crowd.

"So what's Moses' reaction to this crisis?" he asks as he peers over his glasses and waits a moment before answering his own question. "Well, old Moses says, 'It's too heavy for me, but it's my burden. It's my problem.'"

Cortes waits for the farmers to work through this thought with him, to participate in the moment. "Why is it his burden and why is it his problem?" he asks.

But the audience is still unsure what Cortes expects of them, and they are silent. So Cortes answers his own question again. "Because he's allowed people to dump all of their problems on him. Everybody comes to Moses and says, 'Okay, now you solve it, Moses. Listen, you're our big leader, you're our big organizer, you're the guy who led us out, you've got the business, you've got all this relationship with Yahweh, so you're the guy who's got to solve this particular problem. You've solved every other problem."

Cortes again tries to entice his audience to respond. "But what else is going on here?"

"They were all lazy," a farmer finally responds.

Someone else shouts, "They were depending on Moses more than they should have done and they should have been depending more on themselves."

Cortes almost leaps at the response, "Yeah! that's right!" With excitement in his voice, he begins to enunciate his words very slowly and deliberately. "You see, there's an Iron Rule in organizing. It is a little different from the Golden Rule. The Iron Rule says: Never, ever, do for people what they can do for themselves. And it's a very difficult rule to follow. Moses had been historically violating the Iron Rule. He was doing for people. He was solving their problems. He was servicing and maintaining them. He was meeting their every need. He was doing all their thinking for them." Cortes pauses and looks around to make sure the farmers are still with him.

"When people have a charismatic leader who does all their thinking, they become dependent," Cortes says. "They become passive. They lack initiative. Their anger turns in on themselves and it's no use to them. So in this situation what did God say to Moses?"

"You haven't got a choice," an audience member shouts.

"Well, he didn't say just that, but you're perceptive anyway. No, the Lord said unto Moses," Cortes reads from a Bible he had placed on the table beside him, "'Gather unto me seventy men who thou knowest to be the elders of the people ... and I will come down and ... take of the spirit which is upon thee and will put it on them; and they shall bear the burden of the people with thee, that thou shall not bear it by thyself alone.'"

"Now what did old Moses say to this?" Cortes asks. "Did he say 'Great idea God, you got it.' Right? No. He resists, like we would do. But this time the Lord gets a little angry. He says, 'Moses, you're a jerk.'"

"Did God say that?" someone shouts amid crowd laughter.

"Well, no. That's just my exegesis of what he said," Cortes laughs with the crowd. "But Moses finally obeys, and the Lord 'took of the spirit and gave it to the seventy.' And they go off and organize a hunting party for quail or something and Moses doesn't have to do all the work. Now, the times were not unique, the people were not unique. They were just like you and me. So what's the point of the story for us today in the United States?"

"We need to organize a hunting party?" an audience member responds.

"Well maybe ... but you farmers have a crisis—I don't have a crisis—you've got a crisis. Go back and read the Bible, read about how Moses felt, with the world on his shoulders, losing his sense of humor, not seeing that this crisis was an opportunity to test out his organizations, to develop leadership. The Chinese symbol for crisis is what? Danger and opportunity. We can see this crisis as an opportunity to do some strategic planning or thinking and ask some fundamental questions about the nature of the real crisis."

Then, Cortes becomes more deliberate. The freight train returns to the fast track of his destination. "For me, the crisis is a misunderstanding of power, a naiveté about power and a total unwillingness...