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Improving Digital Literacy in the Asian-American Community at GLIDE

CTN participant and Tenderloin resident Su Cui Li receives a Lenovo laptop

How do I connect to Wifi? Where do I access email? What is Google search?  Questions that sound so rudimentary to us but to seniors who’ve been left out of the digital revolution seem remote and complicated.

For older adults, 65+, the importance of being able to use technology to help remain mentally fit  and  support self-sufficiency can’t be stressed enough. But also in times of social isolation,  being able to hop on the Internet and find helpful online resources can be of tremendous value.

GLIDE is currently partnering with the Community Tech Network (CTN), a San Francisco-based non-profit organization that supports computer centers and technology training programs for the undeserved in our community enabling participants to learn how to connect to basic services, including lost-cost Internet and laptop access.

Instructor Melissa Ao was busy teaching to a group of Asian-American seniors in Freedom Hall eager to make use of a Lenovo laptop in their training. Once they complete the five one hour weekly training lessons, the laptop is theirs to keep. “The seniors here have never used a computer before so they are most interested in learning, ” says Melissa. “But today was particularly challenging, as I was teaching in both Mandarin and Cantonese.”

During the pandemic, many low-income seniors were stuck at home and without any access to the Internet. “What I love teaching most is when I see their reactions. I see that “Aha” moment on their faces. What’s a simple task for us becomes a new sense of discovery for them. I see their smiling faces as soon as they learn how to email a photo to one of their friends.”

CTN instructor Melissa Ao teaching Asian-American seniors how to use their computers

CTN provides two separate services to GLIDE, including Home Connect, funded by the Department of Disability & Aging Services (DAS), which offers tablets, Internet & ACP (Affordable Connectivity Program) application connectivity assistance, remote device training and tech support to older adults and persons with disabilities aged 60+ in English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian, and Tagalog languages. In addition to Digital Equity, a service funded by the Mayor’s Office of Housing & Community Development (MOHCD), which provides laptop devices, device training, internet & ACP application connectivity assistance, and device tech support to those aged 18+ to Cantonese, English, and Spanish-speaking language groups.

“It’s always an honor for CTN to partner with GLIDE in bringing inclusive digital literacy skills training to Tenderloin residents,” said Stephen Minor, Sr. Digital Equity Program Manager, CTN.

“CTN’s Digital Equity program exemplifies the mission of GLIDE by providing radically inclusive services to marginalized communities by getting them tools, training, and support to get online and connected to life changing essential resources,” Stephen added. 

Watch Tenderloin resident and Cantonese CTN participant Su Cui Li express her joy at learning about computers in the video below. CTN coordinator Josh Tran interprets for us.

We Love Our Volunteers!

April is National Volunteer Month and where would GLIDE be without its treasure-trove of volunteers?  These are the team players who passionately seek to make a difference in the lives of others.

Our volunteers serve us in so many ways, from preparing food trays for distribution to welcoming guests to serving individuals in the dining areas, and all with the express purpose of improving the quality of life for those who may have fallen on hard times.

“It’s been awesome to learn about GLIDE’s history and the services they provide. I’m thankful to help this community out,” said David Lee, who came with a group of volunteers from Zendesk and helped prepare lunches. “It’s easy, fun, super relaxed and I encourage anyone to get involved and volunteer.”

Volunteering at GLIDE is a meaningful way to develop empathy for the less fortunate. For those who lack access to the most basic of necessities, volunteers are able to provide services that inspire a more hopeful present and future, sharing their lives and giving them a helping hand.

WE WOULD NOT BE GLIDE WITHOUT OUR VOLUNTEERS

When you volunteer, you’re building connections with others as Querida Wright explains having now been a volunteer at GLIDE for nearly a year now.

“Volunteering at GLIDE is a very organized experience, where you’re given lots of direction, and all you need to do is show up. I love that you get to meet new people with every shift you volunteer for,” says Wright. “People from different backgrounds with different stories. You feel very welcomed here and like your part of the team. Each time I come to GLIDE, I feel I’m doing something important. It’s not just preparing meals but you’re conversing with people, you’re giving people warmth and service. I like that.”

GLIDE is beyond grateful for our volunteers who generously donate their time to help us serve and build connections with the community.

It’s never too late to volunteer at GLIDE. Sign up for the next available shift. Watch our video!

April 27, 2023
6:00 pm
Register for free for this virtual event.

Ali Winston and Darwin BondGraham illuminate American police culture and the struggle for reform by using Oakland as a case study. Through the lens of the city’s police department, the authors trace Oakland’s history from its inception through the Palmer Raids, McCarthyism, the Civil Rights movement, the Black Panthers, and the crack era to its current revival. It tells the story of a single city and its police force, but it also tells the story of American policing and its future. Over 21 years of fearless reporting have culminated in The Riders Come Out at Night – Brutality, Corruption, and Cover – up in Oakland

Host: Dr. Holly Joshi, Director for GLIDE’s Center for Social Justice

Our panelists include:

Ali Winston
Ali an independent reporter covering criminal justice, privacy, and extremism. A former reporter for The New York Times, he has also been a fellow at Type Investigations and reported documentaries for BBC Panorama and PBS Frontline. His reporting on police corruption, right-wing extremism, and surveillance have earned him several honors, including a George Polk Award for local reporting, an Alfred I. duPont Award, and a News & Documentary Emmy.

 

Darwin BondGraham
Darwin is the news editor for The Oaklandside. Before joining The Oaklandside, he worked with The Appeal and The Guardian covering policing and gun violence. He was a staff writer for the East Bay Express from 2015 to 2018. He holds a doctorate in sociology from UC Santa Barbara and was the co-recipient of the George Polk Award for local reporting in 2017. You can follow him on Twitter @DarwinBondGraha.
​​​​​
Eleana Binder
Eleana is the Policy Associate for GLIDE’s Center for Social Justice. Before joining GLIDE in 2021, she worked in eviction prevention at the Homeless Advocacy Project, as well as in nonprofit and local government settings in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Sacramento. Eleana also was in the Emerging Leaders Program at GLIDE when she was in college. In her work, she advocates for changes to oppressive and discriminatory institutional structures and laws to benefit GLIDE’s clients and marginalized people in San Francisco and across the state.

(Landon To holding lunches to be distributed outside of GLIDE)

What do you say about a 14-year-old GLIDE volunteer who applied for a grant JUST to help our organization feed the hungry? SIMPLY AMAZING! And that’s exactly what San Francisco native and GLIDE volunteer Landon To accomplished (with a little help from mom, Dina). 

Dina To originally came to San Francisco to attend law school and always oriented herself towards the bridging of community partnerships. She passed on the values of helping those who are less fortunate to her children.

Her family began volunteering at GLIDE to serve lunches back in October 2017. Landon was a mere 8 years of age at the time and quickly became aware of the disparities affecting our community.

 

(Landon distributing lunches)

“Talking to people abroad about San Francisco was a shocker to me,” reflects Landon. “I’d get these responses, like “Wow, you’re from San Francisco? The place with all that crime and homelessness?” I wanted to change the perception of how people viewed my city.”

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Diana’s children, who attend school in San Rafael, made lunches for St. Vincent de Paul Society of Marin. Some students, including Landon’s younger brother, were inspired to do more and formed a club called The Lunchmakers.

“I just went along with what my younger brother and what his friends did for the first year of The Lunchmakers. I was not too involved until last year, when the group appointed me as “The Lunchmakers Development Director,” said Landon. “Some jobs I do include packaging lunches, recruiting people, acquiring funding, and spreading influence on social media,” he added.

The club contacted other families that were interested, and expanded into multiple clubs, with additional schools taking part, beginning with Brandeis Marin in San Rafael.

In March 2022, San Francisco Day School launched their own The Lunchmakers’ chapter, providing monthly lunch bag donations to GLIDE.

Since then, three additional The Lunchmakers chapters have donated to Glide, as well as some drop-offs to St. Agnes, LinkedIn, and a toddler crew from a neighborhood in the Presidio.

In Landon’s freshman year at San Francisco Urban High School, he helped establish a Lunchmakers chapter and began recruiting other students. To date, The Lunchmakers have distributed over 4,300 lunches to GLIDE. The group makes two regular visits to GLIDE (the first and third Saturdays of every month) distributing approximately 300 lunches per month.

It was in late 2023 when Landon broached the topic with Dina about researching ways of applying for money to help cover the cost of making and delivering lunches. And sure enough, Dina did some googling and discovered Youth Services America (YSA). Landon filled out the questions himself and submitted the grant in November 2023.

Landon received word that YSA approved his $500 grant application on February 24. “Filling out the grant was an arduous process, but it was worth it. It taught me how to allocate a budget and to maximize effectiveness.”

For Landon, The Lunchmakers is merely a reflection of his humanitarian values instilled by his mother. “My mother inspires me. She sits on many boards, including work at a nonprofit benefiting amputees.”

What’s next for Landon? This time, he has his eyes set on a $3,000 grant which will fund a full year of lunches to be delivered to Glide by a Lunchmakers chapter (the equivalent of 150 lunches per month). Landon never quits dreaming about what else is possible.

GLIDE is rooting for you, Landon!

During this Women’s History Month, we lift up and affirm the importance of gender justice in our work and celebrate the powerful impact of women leaders at GLIDE working to create a world where everyone thrives.

We know that fighting for women’s economic empowerment, reproductive rights and equality is fundamental to achieving our mission: to create a radically inclusive, just and loving community, mobilized to alleviate suffering and break the cycles of poverty and marginalization.  

The past few years have provided dramatic examples of the systemic barriers to women’s liberty, equality and well-being. Women faced much steeper job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic and slower job recovery—on top of persistently lower earnings compared to men.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, a shadow pandemic of violence against women and girls—including domestic violence and commercial sexual exploitation—has raged around the world.

In the United States, women’s rights to make decisions about their own bodies have been severely eroded by last year’s Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and by legislation in several states to criminalize critical reproductive health services, including contraception and abortion.

Meanwhile, women in the United States suffer the highest maternal mortality rates In the developed world and Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women.  

Women lead the fight against these injustices and inequities—but misogyny and discrimination harm all of us, regardless of our gender. And the women of GLIDE’s past, present and future have and will lead us all towards liberation and freedom.  

GLIDE’s history began in 1929 with the philanthropist Lizzie Glide, who constructed Glide Memorial Church on land she purchased at the corner of Ellis and Taylor Streets in San Francisco. Recognizing the needs of women in the city, Mrs. Glide also built a residential hotel that offered young working women a safe, affordable place to live.  

In the 1970s, Janice Mirikitani co-founded GLIDE Foundation in partnership with Rev. Cecil Williams, pastor at Glide Memorial Church. She ensured that empathy and advocacy for marginalized and traumatized women would be at the core of our social justice focus.

Among many other achievements, Janice established programs for women in recovery and survivors of domestic abuse—programs that continue at GLIDE today.  

In recent years, the leadership of GLIDE and Glide Memorial Church has included women CEOs, pastors and board officers—including our chair, Kaye Foster, and vice chair, Mary Glide, great-great-granddaughter of Lizzie Glide. Under these leaders, GLIDE has prioritized long-term stability for women and families of color as a key objective of its strategic plan.

Recognizing that poverty disproportionately impacts women, especially women of color, we create pathways to economic independence through education programs, job training and skills-based support for women.  

To drive systemic change, our Center for Social Justice advocates for laws and policies that support women and families of color. It also seeks to lead conversations around gender justice and its interdependence with other movements for social equity.

For Women’s History Month, on Thursday, March 30, the center will highlight the documentary film Still I Rise, which explores the relationship between sex trafficking and racism, followed by a discussion with the film’s director, Sheri Shuster.  

We know that change is possible, that barriers can be broken. At GLIDE, we believe in the power of a healing community because we’ve seen it in action. In our Men In Progress program, we’ve seen how men who’ve committed violence can heal and unlearn toxic concepts of masculinity.

Just as we need men to be engaged in breaking intergenerational cycles of violence, we also need men to advocate for equal pay for women, reproductive rights, subsidized childcare, and other policies and practices that build more just and loving communities.  

We urge everyone who stands for social justice to join us and support us in creating a world that nurtures, celebrates and invests in women.   

Let the hands of women 
birth the future with arms fully open, 
choose to fulfill families with care, 
and foretell a new day. 
Let this language of hands, the work that they do, 
shout more loudly than guns, or greed or religiousity. 
Let the power of women lead, harmoniously,  
Because a woman 
will do that. 
 
—From “A Woman Will Do That” by Janice Mirikitani   

A personal journey through collective history, toward a racial justice practice

by Chris Dowd  

Immediately after I returned from this year’s GLIDE-led justice pilgrimage to Alabama, social distancing was in full effect. Suddenly, despite the powerful memories I carried, my period of guided reflection about race in America felt overshadowed by our global health emergency. Soon, the data around testing, infection rates, and deaths came to highlight the inequity of service and care. Then, the whole world witnessed Amy Cooper leverage her power against a Black man bird watching in Central Park. Days later came the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd—at the hands of those entrusted to protect and serve. I started to feel a greater urgency to share the lessons from my experience in Alabama.

I believe we are more than the stories we tell ourselves. One of the stories I tell myself is that I grew up in San Francisco, white, the youngest of three siblings and the son of two highly educated parents. I was afforded the privileges of private education and strong role models in my community. This is part of my story, just as most of what we know of our friends and colleagues is only part of their story. It takes time and a shared context to see a more complete story. This is true not only at the individual level, with friends and family, but also at the level of our collective consciousness and history as a country. GLIDE Church has always been a place for this in San Francisco and the Tenderloin, at critical moments in modern history, to reflect and to question.

I grew up in San Francisco, but left for high school, college, and my first job. Returning in 2017, I was immediately drawn to GLIDE by the gravity of its courageous history, and its purpose: unconditional love. It quickly became the center of gravity for my new chapter in my old city.

I started volunteering on the Harm Reduction team, handing out clean needle kits and leading Narcan trainings for the treatment of narcotic overdoses. This experience on the front lines of San Francisco’s fight against the opioid crisis could not have been more different from my day job just a few blocks away at Google. I quickly saw the disconnect: that almost no one in my professional network had an understanding or connection to this life-changing work.

To bridge these communities,  I joined the Legacy Committee, GLIDE’s young professionals group, which works to engage young leaders from San Francisco’s evolving workforce and youth culture in GLIDE’s mission. In doing so, the Legacy Committee supports their learning around the nuances of systems that govern our streets as well as GLIDE’s historic role at the center of San Francisco’s progressive movements.

As the 2020 Co-Chair of the Legacy Committee, I was invited to join Rabbi Michael Lezak and Isoke Femi, of GLIDE’s Center for Social Justice, on GLIDE’s annual Social Justice Pilgrimage to Montgomery, Alabama. Over 100 intergenerational leaders from GLIDE, SFPD, UCSF, The Kitchen, and local government participated.

Musical director Vernon Bush at Alabama
Musical director Vernon Bush leads Alabama group in song in meeting room of Dexter Baptist Church.

Nearly two months before leaving for Alabama, our group met in Freedom Hall on Thursday nights, below the GLIDE Sanctuary. The physical space is characterized by white linoleum floors, stacks of foldable chairs, and the regular sound of overhead MUNI bus wires sparking as the buses climb up Nob Hill. For me, Freedom Hall is also a divine space of unlearning. In 2018, for example, it hosted a full-scale mock-up of an overdose prevention / safe consumption site, a temporary construction made to display the public health benefits of this proven health intervention, still largely unknown in the U.S., to regulators, community leaders, and journalists. This space was our classroom, where we would start the process of reconciling the incomplete individual and collective stories about race in America that many of us have learned, and continue to internalize within our families and communities.

Our practice and study were multisensory. Before every meeting, we were led in song by Vernon Bush, the musical director of the GLIDE Ensemble. Our reading list was robust. I was taken by the words of Ta-Nehisi Coates on reparations, then by Michelle Alexander’s account of the state of criminal injustice, and later by a 60 Minutes interview from the 1980s with Bryan Stevenson describing the work that became the Equal Justice Initiative. I will never forget the feeling of taking deep breaths before multiple pages of Anthony Ray Hinton’s story, a man wrongly kept on death row for three decades, whom we would later meet on our trip to Alabama. These works were offered as the minimum expectation for participation in our group dialogue. Everyone did their homework.

Language is the cornerstone of any shared history. At the start of each meeting, Rabbi Lezak introduced Hebrew phrases: Kavvanah, meaning intentionality or direction of the heart; Chag, a place you must visit in order to understand a history; Kriah, the experience of tearing your garment after someone dies in an effort to mend in grief. He was teaching us the ways in which Hebrew has evolved to more accurately express the trauma and triumph that is core to their history. I came to recognize, and be motivated by the vacancies in my own language as I tried to understand these unfamiliar feelings and experiences.

Just before we left for Alabama, I met with Minister Marvin K. White, GLIDE’s fearless faith leader, to see if he had any advice on preparing for the journey. We spoke about the importance of active listening, and the reality that, so often, our public discourse does not allow for spirituality or religion to take center stage. He encouraged me to listen deeply, have side conversations, and let the walls talk.

rabbi michael alabama
On the ground in Montgomery, Alabama with Rabbi Michael.

 A few days later, I was on a Greyhound from Birmingham to Montgomery passing Waffle Houses and billboard psalms. I read through past notes from our gatherings in Freedom Hall, reaching to synthesize and remember what exactly my purpose was, my why, for joining this trip. I scribbled down some scattered thoughts about bearing witness, being an ally, and having a more complete vision of my country’s past, knowing full well that nothing written on that page would equip me for, shield me from, or even enable me to name what I was going to experience in the coming days. I was ashamed at my eagerness to intellectualize and jump ahead to imagine how this experience might “fit” into my life, recognizing, even at the time, the privilege that enables such an instinct. So, I drew myself against the window and tried to just be present, as I would try to do countless times in the coming days.

Just before sundown I stepped off the Greyhound onto Maxwell Boulevard, one of the first streets along the Alabama River. That evening, we gathered in the hotel lobby occupying our in-between time with light banter about the slower pace of life best captured through the 90-second timer at a nearby crosswalk. 

That night, we walked to the basement of the Dexter Baptist Church, which would come to be our local Freedom Hall, the place where a young 25-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. got his start as a minister, and where the organizers of the Montgomery Bus Boycott would hold late night gatherings. Just across the street is the Southern Poverty Law Center, demonstrating the power of proximity, and the rich history of collaboration between judicial activists and spiritual leaders.

Montgomery is the birthplace of modern civil rights activism in America, so casual encounters with residents led to powerful stories and important context. Through a side conversation with a tour guide from a local nonprofit, our group was able to meet the guide’s father, Chap. Chap was born and raised in Alabama in the 1950s, before migrating to New York City as a result of Alabama State University’s segregation policies.

Chap remembers how then-Governor George Wallace stood on the steps of the state university pronouncing his favorite catch phrase, “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Around that same time, the murder of the four girls at Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church turned Chap’s frustration into rage, motivating his decision to head north.  

History books often describe George Wallace as a young man desperate for power. He began his career as a progressive judge until it proved politically stale, at which point he turned to channeling fear and white supremacy, later becoming a seminal character in our historical through-line from slavery to the modern era. You can imagine the complexity Chap faced when, decades later, George Wallace offered him a job, appointing him to lead ministerial services for inmates on death row. Chap would accept, returning to Alabama to deliver last rites for over two decades.

Now, in his early 80s, Chap addressed our group, in the basement of Dexter Baptist Church, with a simple message: It is more difficult to forgive than it is to hate. I could not begin to imagine what it takes for a man like Chap, who has seen true evil, to arrive at that lesson. The next day would continue to expose more challenging truths.

Chap addresses the group in the meeting room at Dexter Baptist Church

The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) and its Legacy Museum are housed in repurposed slave barracks. Just 200 yards east is where the slave market once was, and 50 yards west lies the train station, its tracks laid by slaves for their inevitable transit and sale throughout the American South. I wrote in my journal that morning about the elusive fact that our public spaces reflect and contain our history, values, and collective memory. It reminded me of the violence in Charlottesville in 2016, following attempts to remove confederate statues and iconography associated with the same painful and oppressive history. The statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville sparked a series of events that allowed the world, for a moment, to peek behind the curtain at a painful American history and culture. In the case of EJI, they chose to reclaim spaces that you might walk by a thousand times before considering their original use, and to build new monuments there.

In Montgomery, a city whose very cobblestones and roundabouts evoke similar traumas, there is no single monument you can point to, no one thing you can get rid of—everything about the city breathes its past. Just as the history of slavery cannot be removed from the fabric of Montgomery, it also has not vanished from our institutions. EJI and its powerful Legacy Museum exist to bring about a more complete American narrative, one that makes clear that slavery, far from ending in 1865, has only evolved. There is a clear chronology through American history from slavery to mass incarceration and the type of policing that grips and terrorizes Black communities across this country. EJI is trying to help America heal and move forward by addressing old, suppressed truths.

For example, Bryan Stevenson and EJI make it possible for stories and voices like Anthony Ray Hinton’s to reach a national audience. Anthony Ray Hinton was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death row in 1985. A simple ballistics review would have swiftly undermined the decades-old verdict, but the state DA rejected his appeal in the early 2000s, condemning him to another 15 years before Bryan Stevenson and EJI took on his case. Finally freed from death row, Hinton expressed his tremendous resilience in the face of such persecution in these words, “They took my thirties, they took my forties, they took my fifties, but they can’t take my joy.”

Yet, it was impossible to hear his story and not feel rage towards the extrajudicial measures that robbed Anthony Ray Hinton of his freedom. To date, he has never received an apology from the state for the wrongful conviction. As he saw it, this was no mistake. “No one with power will ever apologize to someone with no power,” he told us.

At the end of our first night in Montgomery, Nathaniel Woods, a young Black man who sat on death row for over 15 years, was killed in an electric chair just a few hours’ drive from us. I feel disoriented and horrified when I think about the thousands of wrongly accused men and women of color who are unjustly pulled from their communities in silence, whose suffering is too diffuse and systemic to warrant a thumbnail on your mobile feed. I am certain I would not have heard of Nathaniel Woods had I not been in Montgomery at that time, and that is part of EJI’s mission, to raise awareness around these less-publicized acts of injustice.

anthony ray hinton alabamba
Anthony Ray Hinton addresses the group at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.

I was in a constant state of unlearning. Walking to our next group gathering, I stumbled on a painted iron plaque memorializing the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I knew about Rosa Parks, but not much else. I was surprised to learn that Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old girl, was actually the first to sit in the whites-only section of the bus. The violent response from police and city officials inspired Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others to create a plan to advance their cause. Mobilizing an alternative transit system sponsored by a Black-owned funeral service fleet for rural communities, and understanding that their movement could drain and strain the city’s budget largely by slashing bus fare revenues, the bus boycott forced the city’s hand: its pocket book or segregation.

The most powerful tool in the EJI-led movement is the Legacy Museum, which takes visitors from slavery to our modern-day criminal justice system and policing. No one forgets what it’s like to walk into the Legacy Museum for the first time. On the left hand of the ticket booth is a large map of the city of Montgomery in the 1860s. Just as the domestic slave trade was exploding, this sleepy Alabama town was becoming its headquarters. The map highlighted the businesses, transportation hubs, and organizations that propped up this economy. At the center was the slave market, efficient and inhumane to its core. As my finger tracked across the map, I recognized a name: Lehman Brothers—a bank which up until the 2008 financial crisis represented the pinnacle of America’s financial sector, “the smartest guys on The Street.”

I suspect their origins as the banker and lender for a growing slave industry in America were rarely mentioned at their first-year analyst orientation. And if they were still around today, I suspect that would still be the case. I mention this not exclusively to shame Lehman Brothers, or any other organization which may have had their origins in circumstances that we would rightly find morally abhorrent, but instead to recognize that it is the responsibility of citizens to ask the question, and then to ask the follow-up question, to try to understand the truth behind our institutions. Because there is no reason to suppose that injustice doesn’t still have offices on Main Street.

alabama
Inside the Equal Justice Initiative's National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery.

I share these stories because they represent small moments in my personal journey of understanding, and in my development of a Justice Practice that I can rely on. Travel, reading, and difficult conversations are useful ingredients in understanding a more complete American story and informing sustainable, direct, and indirect action. I believe my personal decisions and journey have an impact on my friends and family, and will meaningfully contribute to the collective growth and transformation that our children will come to expect and rightfully demand of us.

Inscribed on the side of the Legacy Museum is a quote by Maya Angelou: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” There has never a better time  than  right now to dedicate ourselves to learning, practice and action.

Outside the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

If you are a Bay Area–based young professional interested in learning more about the GLIDE Legacy Committee, please feel free to reach out to youngprofessionals@glide.org or go to our website. I would also encourage you to learn more about the mission and programs of EJI, Southern Poverty Law Center, GLIDE Ministry, and the GLIDE Center for Social Justice. Now is the time to support the experts, the local leaders and those with lived experience in the struggle against racism and injustice.

Chris Dowd is former Co-Chair of the GLIDE Legacy Committee.

Many of us know the names: Sandra Bland, Daunte Wright, Philando Castile, Walter Scott, Sam DuBose. They are just a few of the hundreds of Americans across the country who have been killed by police during a traffic stop. In many of these cases, police had stopped the victim using a practice called “pretext stops” — pulling someone over for a minor traffic or equipment violation and then using that stop to conduct an unrelated speculative criminal investigation, not for the purpose of enforcing the traffic code.

According to 2022 national police violence data, police in the U.S. have killed nearly 600 people in traffic stops since 2017. Despite Black people accounting for 13% of the population, Black drivers accounted for 28% of those killed in traffic stops.

While it may be tempting to read these stories from other parts of the country and think San Francisco is the exception, the truth is, we’re not. When it comes to pretext stops, our city’s police do not enforce traffic laws equally either.

According to a recently published SPUR analysis of 2019 traffic stop data, Black drivers in San Francisco were disproportionately stopped by police. The data showed that despite accounting for just 5% of the city’s population, Black drivers were stopped 19% of the time. Moreover, the analysis found that 30% of all Black drivers subjected to a traffic stop in the city were stopped for equipment reasons — like not displaying their license plate correctly, for example — compared to white drivers who were far more likely to be stopped for a moving violation. Add to this the fact that, unlike any other racial group, Black drivers are less likely to end up receiving a citation after the stop and it begs the question: Are Black people really being stopped to protect other people on the road?

None of the findings in the SPUR analysis are new. For too many people of color, the generational trauma of these statistics has made the possibility of being killed during a traffic stop expected and normalized. People of color receive “pretext stop” training from a young age. They’re told that it’s more important to get home alive than protest the stop.

No one should have to grow up this way.

Despite their facade, pretext stops do not make our streets any safer for people who bike, walk or drive. Since 2014, San Francisco has made a commitment to Focus on the Five — a campaign to focus the San Francisco Police Department on enforcing the five violations that are most frequently cited in vehicle collisions with people walking: speeding, failing to yield to pedestrians, running red lights, running stop signs and failing to yield while turning. According to the department’s November 2022 traffic violations report, the most recently available, Focus on the Five violations account for 61.5% of traffic violations issued by the department.

On Wednesday, the San Francisco Police Commission will vote on a new draft policy that would ban the police from making nine specific types of stops in an attempt to minimize the racial disparities in traffic stops. None of the nine types fall under the Focus on the Five violations.

If the policy is adopted, it will be the most comprehensive in the country to address the harms caused by pretext stops to communities of color. It will also free police officers to attend to real traffic safety issues and allow the department to use more of its resources to prioritize the Focus on the Five campaign. The proposed ban has already been endorsed by over 100 local organizations dedicated to ending the department’s practice of detaining motorists, cyclists and pedestrians for low-level, nonthreatening traffic stops.

By adopting the proposed policy, the Police Commission can send a message to Black San Franciscans that it is committed to improving the treatment of Black people in our city and is committed to ensuring their safety, too.

As all of us settle into the start of a new year, those of us in the Black church are reminded of the New Year’s Eve tradition of Watch Night — where many Black people wait for the stroke of midnight at the end of the year to commemorate the moment when the Emancipation Proclamation came into effect.

Every San Franciscan should have the right to free movement — to feel safe to move about the city without fear of being targeted and stopped by police and potentially killed. Ending pretext stops is a long overdue step in solidifying that basic right.

Marvin K. White is the minister of celebration at Glide Memorial Church. Claire Amable is the movement building manager at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

This editorial was originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

   

Twice a month, on Monday mornings, the staff of GLIDE’s Walk-in Center (WIC) set up a housing readiness workshop inside GLIDE’s Freedom Hall. Curious folk drop-in to learn from GLIDE staff about the intricacies of renting and rental assistance in the City of San Francisco.

GLIDE’s Eligibility Specialist Danielle Cato kicks off the workshop by reviewing some of the more critical components that go into submitting a successful rental application, including making sure you deliver a solid first impression. WIC staff take turns throughout the workshop covering a breadth of topics related to the often daunting and arduous process of securing housing – From navigating rental applications, to learning how to take care of an accommodation to maintain good standing as a tenant.

“We think of it as homing in on life skills,” said Danielle. “A lot of our clients have issues like keeping their homes clean, dealing with noise ordinances, falling behind on their bills, etc… We cover these things in our workshop,” she added.

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WIC Eligibility Specialist Danielle Cato prepares for an upcoming housing readiness workshop


The bi-weekly workshop is a pilot of GLIDE’s larger rental assistance program, and it began in March of 2022 to provide direct rental assistance to those who have been hit hardest by rising costs of living in San Francisco, coupled with the ongoing pandemic. Nearly 24,000 San Francisco households requested more than $332 million in rent and utility assistance from both state and local COVID-19 rent relief programs in the first half of 2022 alone. But when the state’s COVID-19 Rent Relief program expired this past March, many were still left in the lurch. 

During the readiness workshops, GLIDE clients receive support and advice on navigating the intricacies of the housing system in San Francisco

The workshop grew out of GLIDE’s partnership with Catholic Charities and San Francisco Chronicle’s Season of Sharing Fund back in 2019. Walk-In-Center staff would help connect GLIDE clients with rental assistance provided by these organizations, but this assistance alone was not enough to meet rising demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. So, when initial funding came through, the Walk-in Center staff decided to take matters into their own hands and become a direct source of rental support. 

“We designed the pilot program to be ‘low barrier’ so anyone who might not be able to secure assistance from other organizations could come to GLIDE,” said WIC Manager Eunice Feathers. From March through July of this year, GLIDE’s rental assistance program has already provided $105,000 to participants. Attending the workshop is a requirement to receive any funding. 

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GLIDE Housing Case Manager, Demarco McCall, reviews clients’ rental application paperwork during the housing readiness workshop

For San Francisco native Ivan Graddy, the housing readiness workshop and rental assistance was pivotal in getting back on his feet after being unemployed. “Thanks to the folks at the Walk-in Center, I was able to secure the $2,160 I needed for back rent as I transitioned between jobs,” said Graddy. “GLIDE helps people who want to work. I cannot thank the Walk-in Center enough.”

Pride month is an extraordinary time, and the related festivities this June mark the first time in two years that we can all come together to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. For decades, GLIDE has stood up for, sat in for, marched in the streets for – and opened its arms and doors widely – for the LGBTQ+ community. I am honored to be part of an organization with such a remarkable legacy of LGBTQ+ commitment and advocacy.  

During this month of Pride, I am feeling hopeful and engaged – not because we have achieved full equal rights and universal acceptance of our diverse community, but because despite the challenges we recognize in our nation, I believe we are on a positive trajectory towards those ends. We are on a trajectory that more people have joined, and new generations continue to fuel. Although the fight is far from over, we see more people understanding what we have known for decades – that equality is not a zero-sum game.  

There is a hostility in our nation that is born out of anger and unfounded fear. It is an extremist view that incorrectly perceives any legal recognition, rights, and enfranchisement gained by a historically marginalized group in this great society, that somehow another group of people — their people and their nation — will lose. The devastating circumscription of women’s rights as a result of the repugnant Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision reflects the realities and dangers of such zero-sum perspectives.

A concurring high court opinion supporting the erosion of other rights, including same-sex marriage, indicates that if unchecked, these extremist perceptions and policies will further marginalize more people and individual rights in our country. LGBTQ+ rights are the targets of growing campaigns of antagonism across the nation. For some, the right to marry whoever you love or living out a true gender identity is an infringement on their way of life and beliefs. A wave of such animosity has resulted in 28 states introducing anti-LGBTQ bills; 8 states have signed those bills into law.  

As we celebrate Pride and the intersectionality in the LGBTQ+ community, we must take this moment to recognize the intersectionality of all of our rights. The year’s San Francisco’s Pride Parade — which GLIDE will proudly once again participate in — offers us all the opportunity to enthusiastically celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and unite in solidarity for our interconnected human rights. We must never be deterred from pursuing equality for all, which is the foundational underpinning of coming together at Pride. To march, to be visible, to be heard, to not live in fear but to be free, and to come together to strategize against the threats to our collective freedoms and celebrate our capacity to overcome them. Our intersected rights to privacy, access, and identities cannot and must not be threatened. 

Radical inclusion is a GLIDE core value and key to our ongoing social justice organizing and advocacy efforts at the city, state, and federal levels. The ways we seek to overcome systemic homophobia, racism, sexism, and all other inequities will change the future for our children. We strive to make the rest of society more like what we recognize is possible here at GLIDE, a place that forever stands with and for the LGBTQ+ community, for justice, and always for all the people.  

With unconditional love and solidarity,  

Karen Hanrahan
​​​​​​President & CEO, GLIDE
@KarenJHanrahan

 

Dear GLIDE Community,

Today, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion and a woman’s liberty to make personal decisions about her health and body. This ruling is a devastating blow to the progress of women and their families within our democracy.

In 1973, as women were gaining ground to exist autonomously in the workplace and the home, the Supreme Court validated that a woman’s liberty over her body was protected by the U.S. Constitution. By recognizing and affirming a woman’s right to make personal decisions concerning her body, Roe v. Wade served as a landmark ruling that would help pave a path for social, racial and gender progress. Now, nearly fifty years later, six Supreme Court justices have voted to overturn Roe, asserting that a woman’s personal liberty is a rescindable luxury.

As 26 states prepare to strip reproductive rights on the heels of today’s ruling, we face pandemic levels of maternal mortality, and have yet to establish universal parental leave and universal subsidized childcare. Many women will be forced into destitute motherhood. Low-income and Black women stand to feel a disproportionate impact from banning abortion, the latter being three to four times more likely to die in pregnancy and birthing than their white counterparts. To rescind access to legal abortion as critical healthcare while denying women a social service safety net hurts all of us. It perpetuates poverty, drives family and economic instability, and clearly rolls back the great wheels of justice in service of the few, not the many.

As we process and mourn the overturning of Roe, we must remember that reproductive rights are not a “women’s issue.” It is everyone’s fight and there is a lot at stake.

Roe v. Wade was predicated on a constitutional right that empowered and protected women while they made intimate decisions about their health and family without government restrictions. The decision to overturn Roe goes beyond abortion rights. The reasoning used by the six conservative Supreme Court justices in overturning Roe has upended constitutional and judicial precedent. This decision threatens to turn back the clock, not only on abortion, but on contraceptive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and the right to interracial marriage, among others.

It is time to act.

It is time for each of us to stand up, speak out and protest against the erosion of our civil rights. As the rights of women are eliminated, we risk the elimination of rights for all.

It is time for a critical mass of men to advocate. As we navigate an era where men are free of laws regulating their bodies, they have the opportunity to leverage their privilege and close the contraception gap.

It is time for corporations to use their power and influence to support policies and funding that enables dignified travel by their employees and their families in states with oppressive reproductive rights statutes to where they can receive the health care they require.

And it is time for all of us to use our voices for advocacy and at the ballot, and for lawmakers and leaders to pass comprehensive reproductive rights legislation to make a legal right to abortion free and accessible to all.

Now more than ever, we need to build a radically inclusive, just, and loving community mobilized to take action and foster real and lasting change for women in our nation.

True democracy cannot exist without gender equality. GLIDE stands for reproductive rights. While today’s Supreme Court ruling marks a step backward for this country, GLIDE will always continue to move forward with a steadfast commitment to fight for the rights and freedom for all people and to bring about a more just and loving world.

In Solidarity,
GLIDE