Press and Updates

January 22, 2024

November 20, 2023

[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...

November 16, 2023

[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...

November 15, 2023

[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,...

November 13, 2023

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...

October 25, 2023

[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...

October 16, 2023

[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...

October 06, 2023

“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...

September 17, 2023

[Excerpt] When Pope Francis told a group of U.S. community organizers that their work was "atomic," Jorge Montiel said, "I thought, 'Oh, you mean we blow things up?'" But instead, the pope spoke about how the groups associated with the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation...

August 31, 2023

In August, COPS/Metro leaders Lorraine Gonzales, Mark Wittig, and Sr. Pearl Ceasar, as well as lead organizer Josephine Lopez Paul, were invited by Father Jim Schellenberg to a two part discussion on his talk show "Food for Thought". The conversation centered around COPS/Metro's efforts...