You want to start a McDonald? You pay a franchise fee.
You want to spread the ‘food’ of Saul Alinsky, progressive who wrote Rules for Radicals?
You will pay a ‘franchise’ fee to spread the progressive ‘gospel’ of Saul Alinsky via COPA and other similar organizations with different names and same philosophy. The money paid to COPA goes out of state to Chicago, Illinois. Home of community organizer Obama. Mmmm.
Why cough up big bucks to founders of COPA, an out of state organization, for franchise costs? This does not make sense.
Why pay Illinois for how to do community organizing in a California community? Do we really need more of Obama type organizers here in Santa Cruz and Monterey? What say you.
Time for church & other religious organization members to ask why….
Ask why. Time for local church and other religious organizations to ask why their local Santa Cruz & Monterey Bay area religious organization pay up to $10,000 a year in COPA ‘franchise’ costs to out of state Illinois & no buy-in by church members?
If you want the ‘real answers’ why the franchise costs paid to an out of CA community organization ( in Chicago, Illinois) then ask the original founders of COPA.
Wonder who? There were three persons who started COPA: the driving force was a Catholic sister/nun who runs a Watsonville, CA women/ children care facility, an Aptos, CA Lutheran minister who has since died.. and …
1) What COPA did many years ago was to get ‘buy in’ from the local leaders of local churches & other religious organizations.
2) Then COPA said to the general Santa Cruz/ Monterey CA community that all the members of these organization supported COPA views.
3) Now COPA uses those churches to hand out material and tell members how to vote.
COPA is smart. People who go to a local church or other religious organization may not want to ‘argue’ about COPA with those who provide spiritual assistance. More info follows below.
DrCameronJackson@gmail.com
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Political Community Organizing through Places of Worship
By Freedom Advocates
Monday, 02 November 2009
Question: “I have just learned that my Monterey Bay Area church has given large sums of money to a political Interfaith Network organization called COPA. COPA stands for Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action. What is COPA?
Answer: COPA is a member of Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) which was founded by Saul Alinsky in the 1940â€
It is a serious concern that the money Iâ€
Answer: In their own words, Industrial Areas Foundation helps build broad-based, non-partisan organizations of dues-paying member congregations, schools, unions, business associations, and non-profits committed to building power for sustainable social and economic change.
Alinsky in his book writings puts it like this,
You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments. Make the enemy live up to his/her own book of rules. You can kill them with this. They can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.
Believing that the ends justify the means, Alinksy stated that,
In action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with oneâ€
So churches are being used for political purposes rather than for spiritual reasons. COPA affiliated churches use congregational capital to influence local politicians and intensely advocate for so-called “affordable housing†developments built by well paid so-called, “non-profit†developers.
The reality is that our money is funding an undisclosed massive subsidy for building projects benefiting individuals who are very ineffective at cost containment. This should give pause to anyone thinking that COPA and IAF are organizations out to help the downtrodden. Those downtrodden are the means, the pawns, in COPAâ€
Where was I when these political shenanigans were being discussed? Was it part of a sermon or simply handled as a financial transaction behind closed doors? Itâ€
Your church may be doing this too. Go to the IAF Industrial Areas Foundation “affiliates†page. Click on your region on the left side of the page. In our area, COPA was formerly known as CCIS – Central Coast Interfaith Sponsors.
Congregations across the country find themselves attached to COPA-like organizations with names like Washington Interfaith Network (WIN), Communities Helping All Neighbors Gain Empowerment (CHANGE), Tying Nashville Together (TNT) or Southeastern Wisconsin Common Ground.
Most of us never saw this happening. We trust our places of worship and attend in order to honor God and invigorate our spiritual beliefs. Now we discover that an outside political action group is working insidiously to infiltrate our church and undermine our ethical and spiritual structure.
COPA/IAF is clear that their mission is to train parishioners in community organizing tactics in order to achieve a political result through lobbying. Sound familiar? ACORN has been in the news recently for exploiting poor neighborhoods through the use of misleading promises used in community organizing and lobbying. ACORN targets neighborhoods. COPA and IAF target places of worship and unsuspecting parishioners.
COPA/IAF are coming into our churches and synagogues, misleading many of our ministers and other leaders by having them support COPAand IAF politics.
Is your church or temple involved with an interfaith congregation network and IAF? If so, you need to ask:
Is my church a member of a network or organization that supports IAF? What is the organization called?
If yes, why did our church leadership decide to join?
What was the commitment made to the organization?
Has the pastor, minister, rabbi or other spiritual leader been informed about the true nature of Interfaith Networks and Congregation Based Community Organizations?
Has the congregation been informed?
Call to action – Let your church know how you feel about affiliations with political and ideological groups such as IAF and COPA.
Political Community Organizing through Places of Worship by Freedom Advocates
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