SAN ANTONIO (RNS) — “Back then, when it was going to rain, we knew we were going to lose somebody,” said Linda Davila about her San Antonio, Texas, neighbors a half-century ago. At the time, the South Texas city’s all-white City Council had neglected the streets and sewers in its Hispanic neighborhoods, while their residents’ voting power was diluted through at-large elections.
By the early 1970s, deaths from flooding energized the city’s Latino population to begin organizing, largely through their Catholic parishes. Communities Organized for Public Service, founded in 1974, soon turned out 500 people to attend a City Council meeting. “We were able to get a $40 million bond passed for our area to take care of the flooding,” recalled Davila, then involved as a youth group member at St. Stephen Catholic Church.
Known today as COPS/Metro, after merging with other community-organizing groups formed in the 1980s, the organization has the attention of civic leaders. No longer concerned with flooding alone, it has advocated against spending public funds on stadium projects and for putting money instead into public amenities such as parks, libraries, a new community college, a low-cost diabetes center, workforce training and education funding.
COPS/Metro is “the nagging conscience in the back of the minds of the City Council and mayor,” as the organization fights “for public …