Working for change during a silent night

Whether by act of God or geography, cell phones don’t work at the Mary & Joseph Retreat Center. A few of the 40 members of L.A. Metro Strategy who gathered there recently tried to get a signal -- one man left the property to stand on the other side of the road -- and a few others pumped coins into the well-marked pay phone, but most surrendered to the fact that the world was no longer with them. At least not in a buzzing, vibrating sort of way.

Settled on the shoulder of a hill in Rancho Palos Verdes, the 40-year-old interfaith center is a place apart. Through gaps in the borders of cypress and oak, one can glimpse what was left behind -- the faraway tapestry of Torrance and Carson, the spires of San Pedro. But the air is 10 degrees cooler than in downtown L.A., and the silence in the garden surrounding a statue of the Blessed Mother is complete.

In the adjacent conference center, the walls on two sides are windows, and so there are sun and grass pressing against the room along with the slightly burned smell of industrial-strength coffee and a conversation about the meaning of “disinterest.”

The purpose of this retreat is to remind everyone that the work of organizing is as important as the specific issues involved -- fighting secession, lobbying for driver’s licenses for immigrants and getting people to vote. Too often the problems in this city are fought by hastily contrived coalitions that disintegrate as soon as election day is over. The members of L.A. Metro, a year-old group dedicated to supporting community empowerment, hope to create a broad-based organization for lasting change in such areas as school reform.

They are here to examine their role as agents of change, to take the step in the process of activism that many see as most critical: evaluation. Because after meetings are planned and after meetings are held, the real gains are often found in evaluating the process.

And so instead of creating phone banks and drawing up “to do” lists, they are discussing detachment.

Ernie Cortes, a member of the populist Industrial Areas Foundation, a national network of organizations that helps neighborhoods create civic and political gains and which helped launch L.A. Metro, reiterates some of the whys and hows of grass-roots organizing. He has introduced Aristotle and his concept of philia, political friendships based on the “disinterested capacity to be concerned about another’s well-being.”

It is this sort of relationship, he says, that allows organizers -- he hates the word “activist,” prefers “active citizen,” a term to describe one’s involvement with the community, not legality -- to trust one another enough to effect real change.

People in the group immediately want to know how you can help people you don’t even care about. It’s not about not caring, Cortes and others counter; it’s not about being uninterested; it’s about seeing a person in a way that is separate from one’s self, about recognizing someone else’s needs in a detached way.

As the members of L.A. Metro talk, the winter sun lowers and fills the room with the butterscotch light of the Hudson River School. It would be easy to wax sentimental about this moment, this group. A glance around the room prompts the word “diverse.” Here are pastors Catholic, Episcopal and Methodist from Koreatown and Pasadena and South-Central, members of synagogues in the Valley and on the Westside, organizers from Pacoima and East Los Angeles, union representatives and teachers from Glendale, Northridge and Boyle Heights.

But “diverse” limits the observation to skin color and place of residence and in many ways is just wrong. Because each one of these people is here, for 24 hours most of them, cut off from even their voice-mail, trying to figure out ways to unite the divisions that occasionally threaten to destroy this city. So how diverse are they really?

In a culture ruled by talk-show hosts and ad execs, it’s easy to gloss over words like “diverse” and “disinterest,” easy to sentimentalize poverty, racial tensions and those who try to end them. There are so many big-screen images to choose from. And this retreat could well be one of them -- the light is golden, the room looks like an I Love L.A. ad campaign. It would be easy to lean back into this place of silence and philosophical discussion, where the gift shop is stocked not only with Bibles but with yoga mats and focus stones, with 12-step guides to most everything, and think, “how special this is.”

But here “retreat” is not a passive word, and the politics of sentimentality are assailed. “We cannot operate from our fears and anxieties,” Cortes says, and neither can we be ruled by a need for “warm fuzzies.” Change, social or personal, rarely occurs in back-lit epiphany. Change requires a lot of grunt work and do-overs and discipline and conversations about goals.

“We’re tired of winning the battles and losing the war,” one man says. “We’re tired of ‘going down fighting.’ We want to win.”

But there is no Norma Rae moment, no “I have a dream” speech. Instead, there is much good-natured laughter, a fair amount of “organizer-speak,” including repeated use of the word “relational,” and a primer of pulpit-styles.

There is talk about time -- “Too many families are working two and three jobs so there is no time for the children and the marriage,” says Cortes; and space -- “We are trapped in the bubbles of work and play,” says the Rev. Frank Portee of Church of the Redeemer in Compton. “Our paths do not cross unless we force them to.” And there is talk about the meaning of words -- “We think of the professional organizers as the organizers,” says the Rev. Ed Bacon of All Saints Episcopal in Pasadena, “but we are the organizers. All of us.”

For hours, these people speak to one another and listen and shift in their seats, getting up for coffee in Styrofoam cups and handfuls of Goldfish crackers. One or two go outside to see if maybe this time the cell phone will work. The sky turns black, and the only things visible through the glass walls are far-off grids of light, glittering like something spilled.

They are here and they will stay because there is a deep human need to talk about the things we share -- love and family and art and work. And too often we forget to talk about our work, whatever it is, about why we do it and what it means, about who we are and why. When describing the point of an organization like L.A. Metro, Cortes quotes Lyndon Johnson. “If you want me to help with the crash-landing, then I need to be in at the take-off.”

Which could just as easily apply to a marriage, a product launch, a day at the factory or a revolution.