An email letter written by EPISO’s lead organizer, Kevin Courtney, that accidentally landed in city Rep. Steve Ortega’s electronic mailbox Wednesday could spell trouble for Courtney, EPISO and Project Arriba.

Obviously intended for someone in the El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization’s leadership, the errant email followed Tuesday’s City Council meeting at which a the council defeated a proposal by a 4-3 vote to increase this year’s $250,000 appropriation for the Project Arriba training program by $100,000 for the year starting Sept. 1.

Ortega cast the deciding vote and then offered an alternate motion to give Arriba $25,000 more. It passed unanimously.

Just before 8 a.m. the next morning, Ortega received an email from Courtney that read: “His real reason is in today’s paper: ‘Aren’t I great … I lowered taxes!’ ”

The message, referring to Ortega, went on to say, “We need to have a way to make him promise in front of his voters before the election in May. Then we can squeeze him and/or hurt him.”

The second sentence of the message refers to an EPISO accountability session at which candidates or officeholders are brought before a large crowd of EPISO supporters from various Catholic churches, asked if they will support EPISO’s goals and are told to reply with a yes or no.

Then, in the weeks leading to an election, EPISO supporters go door to door informing potential voters of the organization’s issues and which candidates support or oppose them.

To some politicians, the accountability session is an unpopular and uncomfortable exercise, one that EPISO has used since its formation in the early 1980s.

Ortega, who went through some of the same training given to EPISO leaders while he was in law school, said he supports EPISO and particularly Project Arriba.

“But the email that Kevin Courtney apparently meant to send to Father Ed got to me,” Ortega said, referring to EPISO Co-Chair Ed Roden-Lucero, a Catholic priest. “When you talk about squeezing and hurting people, that’s not very religious.”

Ortega, who furnished that message and two companion letters to Newspaper Tree, cited Courtney’s email in a formal letter of complaint to Project Arriba’s chairman, Eduardo Rodriguez.

In the letter, Ortega said he met with Project Arriba and EPISO representatives in early July and said he would support a 10 percent, or $25,000, increase if the city could reduce its tax rate.

Ortega said kept that promise but found the Courtney’s letter distasteful.

“As you know, the tools of threat, coercion and vindictive revenge are antithetical to established religious principles,” Ortega wrote.

Ortega said he would send copies of Courtney’s letter to various officials and media outlets because “EPISO’s latest tactics need to be recorded and exposed.”

Roden, who is also the vice-chairman of Project Arriba’s board, said he feared the harm that would come to Courtney, EPISO and Arriba as a result.

The letter, he said, “was an internal communication that was misdirected and written in frustration.”

Courtney, a veteran organizer who came from an EPISO sister organization in Arizona, could not be reached for comment.

While Courtney is EPISO’s lead organizer, Roden said, the organization is run and led by its co-chairpersons, not Courtney.

“We had understood that Ortega was going to support the $100,000,” he said. “It was money we were leveraging. We could have sent 18 more people into training.

“Kevin’s remarks show our frustration that 15 people will remain in poverty because we don’t have that extra $75,000.”

Ortega responded, "That's not true. I never once committed to $100,000."

Mayor John Cook, when asked if he was surprised by Courtney’s email, said, “I was surprised that Steve was able to send a civil correspondence” to Rodriguez.

Cook, who supported the $100,000 for Arriba, said he has advised Arriba’s leaders to distance their program from EPISO and its accountability sessions.

“I told them, ‘You’ve got a legitimate organization that is involved in workforce training,’ ” Cook said, adding that U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson has put for $100,000 for them in a larger appropriations bill.

City Rep. Susie Byrd, who voted for the $100,000 for Arriba, said she has told EPISO leaders that the continued use of accountability sessions is a mistake.

“It’s a coercive tactic, and I think they gain a lot more by sitting down with elected officials,” she said.

EPISO, a largely church-based organization started in 1982, brought the Project Arriba concept to El Paso.

Arriba is based on a similar and successful job training and education program started in San Antonio by a sister organization, Communities Organized for Public Service, known there as COPS.

The model for EPISO and COPS, the first organization of its kind, was created by a tough community organizer, Saul Alinsky, who founded the Industrial Areas Foundation in the late 1960s as a training school for professional organizers.

Accountability sessions are a staple tactic of IAF organizations.

“There’s no other way I know that you can hold these people accountable, that you can explain a social problem, define a vision for solving that problem and get them to commit to it publicly,” Roden said. “That’s not an excuse for what has happened here. But there is a fuller story than just a frustrated email gone awry.

“It’s based on what we sometimes feel is a total lack of vision with some of our public leaders on how you reduce a 30 percent poverty rate in a major American city.

“That’s got to be part of the story too.”

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To reach David Crowder, write to dcrowder@epmediagroup.com or call (915) 351-0605.

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