COPS/Metro is a community-leader driven coalition of congregations, schools, non-profits, and unions working together to improve the conditions of families in San Antonio since 1974.

By learning to work together for the public good, COPS/Metro leaders have been able to to work with the business, community, elected leaders to make San Antonio a better place for families. Some of our major accomplishments over the last 48 years include:

  • Leveraged over $2.5 billion for infrastructure in underserved neighborhoods over the last 50 years
  • Founded Project QUEST
  • Spearheaded the Alliance Schools Strategy
  • Developed the idea for SA: Ready to Work and mobilized over 50,000 voters to vote for the initiative
  • Founded Palo Alto Community College

Updates

COPS/Metro Challenges San Antonio's Service Satisfaction: City's Neglected Infrastructure Still a Concern

Photo Credit: Linda Taylor, San Antonio Current

[Excerpt]

Miller points to the formation 50 years ago of Communities Organized for Public Service, now COPS/Metro, as a turning point in the city's willful neglect of low-income, non-Anglo neighborhoods. The grassroots group organized residents to demand drainage, sidewalks, curbs, libraries and other basic services which wealthy parts of town appeared to have an easier time accessing.

While COPS/Metro's organizing power forced the city to correct course, there's still work to do, Miller said. Complicating matters, San Antonio's flooding problems are only likely to worsen due to the climate crisis.

COPS/Metro

Written by
April 03, 2024

  • COPS/Metro Challenges San Antonio's Service Satisfaction: City's Neglected Infrastructure Still a Concern

    Photo Credit: Linda Taylor, San Antonio Current

    [Excerpt]

    Miller points to the formation 50 years ago of Communities Organized for Public Service, now COPS/Metro, as a turning point in the city's willful neglect of low-income, non-Anglo neighborhoods. The grassroots group organized residents to demand drainage, sidewalks, curbs, libraries and other basic services which wealthy parts of town appeared to have an easier time accessing.

    While COPS/Metro's organizing power forced the city to correct course, there's still work to do, Miller said. Complicating matters, San Antonio's flooding problems are only likely to worsen due to the climate crisis.

    COPS/Metro

    Written by
    April 03, 2024

  • Vatican official Dr. Emilce Cuda tours West Side with COPS/Metro

    Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller and Dr. Emilce Cuda take a song break during a COPS/Metro dinner last week.

    On Feb. 19 and Feb. 20, COPS/Metro leaders welcomed the Vatican's Emilce Cuda, Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, for a tour of San Antonio's West Side, followed by a two-day conversation about faith, organizing, and the role of the Catholic Church in confronting the crises facing its communities. Cuda began the visit by touring neighborhoods transformed by the parishes and congregations of COPS/Metro over the last 50 years. On the agenda were the Alazan Creek drainage project, parks, dozens of miles of sidewalks and streets, housing developments for senior citizens, the Texas Diabetes Center, and Project QUEST. It would be impossible to show everything COPS leaders and parishes have done in one day or even a week, but leaders told a few stories to help paint the picture of how ordinary people have accomplished extraordinary things. Quoted in Crux Magazine, Cuda said, “[Francis] said the way to arrive to a better life is better politics, and the better politics to him is a social dialogue, and my work is how to help to his agenda.”
    Read the full article in Crux Magazine here.

     

    Written by
    February 27, 2024

  • COPS/Metro Responds to Deadly Shooting with St. Philip of Jesus Catholic Church

    COPS/Metro

    Written by
    January 22, 2024

  • As Ready to Work Graduates Enter Job Market, COPS/Metro Pressures City to Ensure High Quality Jobs Await Them

    [Photo Credit: Ronald Cortes, San Antonio Express News]


    [Excerpt]

    "...not enough San Antonians are landing jobs through the city sales-tax funded program, say leaders with the interfaith grassroots advocacy group. The city has failed to meet its goal that 80% of Ready to Work participants will find employment paying at least $15 an hour within six months of finishing their training.

    “That’s unacceptable,” said Sister Jane Ann Slater, a COPS/Metro leader. “If they would use the process we know works, they can say, ‘We have these jobs on the table,’ and they would be hired immediately.”

    COPS/Metro

    Written by
    November 20, 2023

  • COPS/Metro Holds Memorial to The Lost Featuring "Stunning" Installation to Spur Change

    [Photo Credit: Reform Austin]

    [Excerpt]

    "More than a hundred people marched from St. Michael's Catholic Church to the Alamodome on Saturday to hang around 2000 t-shirts in front of the parking lot. 

    Each shirt represented a life lost to gun violence in Bexar County. Most shirts had a name, age, and date of death but there were also shirts that simply said "another life stolen." Those represented suicide victims.

    COPS/Metro

    Written by
    November 16, 2023

  • COPS/Metro Action and Memorial to the Lost Combine to Send City Powerful Message

    [Photo Credit: Today's Catholic Newspaper]
    [Excerpt]

    "Along with Texas Impact and Mission Presbytery, COPS/Metro drew almost 500 working-class people from 61 groups all over the city to St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church on the city’s Southeast Side.

    In a prelude to events, or what they called an action, at the Alamodome [that] weekend, they invited public officials and business leaders and probed their commitment to solving neighborhood problems, especially those involving public safety."

    COPS/Metro

    Written by
    November 15, 2023

  • City Gun Buyback Program Follows Day After COPS/Metro Memorial to the Lost

    On November 19th, the city of San Antonio ran a voluntary gun buy back program that allowed residents to safely dispose of firearms in an effort to reduce the number of gun related deaths in the city by reducing the concentration of firearms.

    The effort was spearheaded by District 9 Councilman John Courage who spotlighted the Memorial to the Lost that was organized by COPS/Metro the day prior.

    Trade in Firearms for HEB Gift Cards with New Buyback Program in San Antonio, Spectrum News 1 [pdf]

    COPS/Metro

    Written by
    November 13, 2023

  • KSAT Marks COPS/Metro History in Westwood Square

    [Excerpt]

    [A] new coalition of neighborhoods, churches and others formed Communities Organized for Public Service, or COPS, in 1974....

    “That was the perfect storm that planted the seed that allowed COPS to flourish,” said Father Mike DeGerolami, also a leader for COPS/Metro Alliance.

    ...Garza said needed projects and improvements only proceeded after the community demanded that a piece of the city budget be spent on the West Side.

    Struggle, Determination Mark History of Westwood Square, KSAT [pdf]

    COPS/Metro

    Written by
    October 25, 2023

  • COPS/Metro Calls for Participation in 'Memorial to the Lost'

    [Excerpt]

    COPS/Metro Alliance is calling for people to participate in the Memorial to the Lost, which aims to recognize all the lives lost to gun violence in Bexar County over the last five years....

    Organizers hope to line the streets surrounding the Alamodome with the T-shirts ahead of and during the gun buyback, Pastor Robert Mueller of Divine Redeemer Presbyterian Church told the San Antonio Report last week. They also hope it will spread to other major Texas cities, and they plan to take the shirts to the state capitol to advocate for gun control legislation.

    “Almost three-quarters of voters of every persuasion support about three to four common gun safety laws that are not about taking guns away from anybody,” said Mueller, who is a member of COPS/Metro Alliance.

    “It’s about elevating the responsibility of gun ownership.”

    [Photo Credit: Mark Felix, AFP via Getty Images]

    Faith Groups Step Up to Work on San Antonio's Gun Violence Problem, San Antonio Report [pdf]

    Guns for Groceries: San Antonio Aims to Take Weapons Off the Street in Exchange for Gift Cards, San Antonio Express News

    COPS/Metro

    Written by
    October 16, 2023

  • Great News: COPS/Metro and the WSW IAF Reunite with Pope Francis

    “Creating a culture of solidarity” is how Pope Francis described our work of organizing when he met with our COPS/Metro delegation together with our sister organizations in the West/Southwest IAF on Thursday, September 14.

    Traducción en español abajo

    COPS/Metro leaders Sonia Rodriguez, Fr. David Garcia, and Lead Organizer Josephine Lopez Paul met with the pontiff for an hour at his Santa Marta residence in the Vatican and discussed the development of immigrant leaders through our Recognizing the Stranger training and our upcoming 50th year anniversary. It was a moving encounter with substantive conversation, filled with insight and humor.

    Our delegation also met with Sr. Nathalie Becquart, the Vatican’s General Secretariat of the Synod and Emilce Cuda, co-secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
    COPS/Metro

    Written by
    October 06, 2023