Grantee Partner Profile
The Esperanza: Deep Roots for Justice
| View short film and meet the people behind the Esperanza's work. |
The Esperanza Peace and Justice Center appears to be as old as the city of San Antonio—so grounded in community and deeply involved with people of so many generations. This is a remarkable feat for a 20-year-old organization run by queer women of color in a conservative city, home to media conglomerate Clear Channel, five military bases and five conservative religious missions. In this environment, the Esperanza has created a vital haven for progressive activism. Their 10,000 square-foot cultural center, a former machinery shop bought and paid for completely through community support in just six years, serves as the launchpad for their citywide work. It is a force to contend with, mobilizing for civil rights and economic justice for LGBTI people, low income families, women, and people of color.
The Esperanza seems to be behind nearly every progressive campaign in the city. When the International Women's Day March lost momentum and participation, the group assembled a multi-organizational planning committee of 50 and rallied more than 1,000 women to march. When the city council curtailed public gathering and protest by passing a law requiring organizers to pay large fees to stage marches and rallies, there was the Esperzana, a leading founder of the new San Antonio Free Speech Coalition. The Coalition’s lawsuit and growing campaign have united thousands to challenge the law's constitutionality. When developers began tearing down historic buildings in the Westside, a poor and working class Latino neighborhood, the Esperanza halted its gentrification. They purchased doomed buildings and revitalized them, preserving culture and community in the Rinconcito de Esperanza (“Little Corner of Esperanza”).
Open slideshowRemarkably, it is not even so much what it does but how it does it that marks its success. Executive Director Graciella Sanchez says, "You can't ask people to do something for their next-door neighbor if they don't love themselves. So we ground them first, then they're able to look across the street and take care of their neighbors, look across the city, and then are able to go across the borders... We make those connections."
To the Esperanza, their philosophy of Actos de Corazon (“Acts of the Heart”) means falling in love with people and challenging each other to create change. At meetings for the International Women's Day March, one conservative mother was so transformed by the ideas and people she met there that she came to embrace her lesbian daughter and her daughter's partner. A grandmother came to grips with the racism she had experienced in her youth with the help of the Esperanza's oral history project and her granddaughter. Through their comprehensive work, the Esperanza gains new allies and nurtures family bonds. As people of different ages, backgrounds, sexualities and religions come together to reach common goals, the Esperanza brings hidden connections to light and infuses a radical acceptance of LGBTI people throughout the community.
