Early Thursday morning, July 29, 2021, our beloved Co-Founder Janice Mirikitani passed away with family and friends by her side. Our hearts are full with both grief and the tremendous love that she embodied. Janice brought fierce courage and spirit to everything she did. She spoke her truth and inspired others to accept and celebrate themselves, each other, and all our differences.
Janice co-created so much of the early vision and the roots of GLIDE’s impact. Her work touched many areas, both in the Church and on the street in the Tenderloin and in San Francisco. She took deep pride in serving the most marginalized communities, including support for women and children, education, recovery, primary and mental health care, job training, and housing.
A memorial is being arranged. Updates regarding times and locations will be shared with you soon. Keeping with Janice’s wishes, a Memorial Fund has been established to support Women and Children’s programs at GLIDE.
Please know that our Co-Founder Rev. Cecil Williams is being held with love and support in this sensitive and difficult time. He and their family remain in our hearts.
While words cannot adequately express our sadness, we will honor Janice’s memory and her legacy by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work she loved so much. We will get through this together.
In love and solidarity, Karen J. Hanrahan President & CEO, GLIDE
As we emerge from an ongoing pandemic and continue to deal with rising inflation, GLIDE fights on, helping those in need, innovating services, and expanding our reach and impact to meet rising demand throughout San Francisco. This holiday season, we celebrate the resiliency of GLIDE and our community by serving meals, groceries, toys, and welcoming all with unconditional love. Read about GLIDE’s holiday celebrations in the news:
Christmas Eve & Christmas
East Bay Times: Photos: San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church celebrates Christmas with free community meals and music
SF Standard: This SF Charity Worked Through the Holiday Weekend to Feed Those in Need
KRON4, GLIDE gets ready to help during the holiday season
For the past four years, a small group of dedicated volunteers have met inside GLIDE’s kitchen facility at approximately 8:30 am on Fridays where they braid, egg wash, and cook up to 80 one-foot-long loaves of Challah bread and hand-deliver them to the GLIDE staff. It’s an activity inspired by GLIDE’s Rabbi Michael Lezak, who in his work at his older congregation, met up with a congregant named Jeff Kirschbaum. “We knew him as Chef Jeff and he would bake 80 challahs a week for our congregants, in particular for families who had new babies, were in mourning, or had new joys to celebrate in their life,” says Rabbi Lezak. “Chef Jeff, his wife, and I dreamed up this vision of baking and serving hot challah, and I wanted to share this tasty Jewish Sabbath tradition when I came to GLIDE.”
Pouring flour into the mixer and removing the dough once it’s finished rising.
Braiding challah
The group of bakers consist primarily of members of The Kitchen (a religious community Rabbi Lezak and his wife, Noa, founded ten years ago). Several members come to GLIDE every two weeks to prepare giant batches of challah dough. The dough consists of yeast/flour and water slurry, and once it’s finished rising, goes into a freezer and comes out as needed for Friday challah making. Volunteers remove a portion of it early in the morning so it will be ready by 8:30 am.
One of the breakfast volunteers Valerie Miller has been helping to bake the Challah since the beginning and shows no signs of stopping. “We get to share the Jewish tradition of putting effort into creating beauty with our rituals. The beauty is important because it’s an expression of love. With the handcrafted beauty of the braided bread, we get to convey a little beauty and caring to each person’s day. Plus, I just love the energy at GLIDE, and being able to make the staff smile in a small way is a wonderful expression of our heartfelt appreciation for all they do.”
Applying egg wash
On a recent Friday morning, members of The Kitchen donned their aprons, and rolled up their sleeves to take part in an act of Chesed forGLIDE. It begins with flour dusting across wooden butcher blocks. Batches of Challah dough are distributed. Small lumps in the dough are removed and each piece is flattened out, eliminating any unwanted bubbles. To braid a challah correctly takes a little practice, but in short order the folding comes together with three interwoven strands. Egg wash glistens the tops and Kosher salt is sprinkled over the loaves. After about 20 minutes in the oven, the challahs are cooled for a few minutes before each is placed inside a signature small brown bag.
Before challah distribution, the group of volunteers gather for an end of the week/pre-Shabbat ritual, reciting the Hamotzi, a Hebrew prayer for bread and taking inventory of the past week. All participants are invited to sample a piece of the hot challah, smothered in salted (or unsalted) butter and basking in the motto, “more butter than you think you deserve.” “We give this bread to help sustain the work performed by those at GLIDE,” says Debby Hamolsky, who’s been making challah for the past two years. “And we’re putting into practice this idea of us all being “one city” and GLIDE is an organization that really supports taking care of this part of San Francisco. Plus, I don’t want my justice juices to get rusty. And it’s fun on top of everything else!”
Salting the challahs and individually sorting them
Reciting a prayer for the bread
On this morning, the Challah group celebrated the 67th birthday of Marilyn Heiss. Marilyn has worked tirelessly for the past four years making Challah. Feeding people is a mainstay of Marilyn’s sense of Jewish identity. “If you want to learn about unconditional love, GLIDE is the place to do it, “said Marilyn.
“When I serve GLIDE clients, I ask myself. What were they like as children? How did they get to this point? We all started some place. This experience has been transformational. It’s taught me more about compassion than I will ever know. Radical inclusivity. That is what GLIDE is about. I’m part of the GLIDE family and it’s an honor.”
GLIDE staff celebrating Marilyn Heiss’s 67th birthday
Dear Friends,
June is always a special time at GLIDE. It’s Pride Month, and GLIDE is Pride. For decades, we have been leading with love and driving progress in the LGBTQ+ community – our community. We began by opening our doors when other doors were closed. We welcomed all into our safe, unconditionally accepting space to feel love and to learn what it means to love ourselves. We stood on the front lines of the movement for LGBTQ+ rights, demanding equality and acceptance, and showing what true diversity and inclusion looks like. Embracing those rejected by their families. Fighting for those harassed by law enforcement. Officiating same-sex unions. And providing comfort and solace during harrowing times of loss, particularly during the AIDS crisis.
Today Rainbow and Progress flags fly high, and in more places than ever. We have won long-fought battles towards marriage equality, transgender rights, access to healthcare and representation. We now have a president who knows that trans rights are human rights – a president who has appointed Dr. Rachel Levine to a key role in his administration. White House executive orders recognize sexuality and gender identity in sex discrimination statutes, protect queer and trans people from workplace bias, and strike down a previous presidential ban on transgender people serving in the military. And most recently, the Biden administration designated the site of the Pulse nightclub in Orlando as a national memorial.
Yet, alongside these advances, strong forces are at work to undermine progress. More than twenty anti-LGBTQ+ measures have become law across states like Arkansas, Mississippi, Montana, West Virginia, and Tennessee. These bills ban transgender girls from playing sports, prevent hormone therapy for transgender youth, and prohibit transgender people from correcting their birth certificate gender. The scope of these new laws is growing, with more insidious techniques to limit the full expression and participation of the LGBTQ+ community. We have learned from the reproductive rights and voting rights movements the power of state laws to chip away at fundamental freedoms. These anti-LGBTQ+ measures are born out of continued bias and divisiveness in our nation and underscore the reality that the fight for equality for all must continue, unwavering.
June is a month to celebrate, not just our victories, but all we have been through together in the fight. At GLIDE, we know that change can be revolutionary when it is born out of unconditional love and inclusion that influences hearts and minds and builds empathy capable of transforming perspectives and actions. Until we see this kind of transformative change take root across this country and the world, we will continue to wage this battle for equality.
In love and solidarity,
Karen J. Hanrahan President & CEO, GLIDE
Dear GLIDE Community,
Celebration is a cornerstone of our values at GLIDE. Seeing our national leaders align to make Juneteenth a federal holiday is a joyful moment. This historic step forward represents progress towards a new vision of American inclusivity. It reflects a new ownership of our collective history. It is an important step forward towards our nation’s growing awareness, acceptance, and honoring of our diversity. It also recognizes our collective history of the enslavement of people of African descent.
Juneteenth isn’t just part of African American history; it’s American history. It’s a day for inspiration and recognition of the foundations of our society. What we celebrate as a country – and what we choose not to celebrate – reflects our national values, our worldview, and our cultural priorities. Juneteenth is a day to recognize the lived experiences of African Americans, a journey through oppression marked by the Middle Passage, chattel slavery, Jim Crow laws, and mass incarceration. It is a day to honor and celebrate the triumph of Black genius, courage, resilience, family, faith, love, and artistry, along with the profound impact Black people have in shaping this nation.
For those of us who have been working on systems change for decades, it is encouraging to see forward progress, unprecedented investments, and efforts to remedy longstanding racial inequities across sectors. Every step towards justice and equity counts.
Still, much more must be done. At GLIDE, we are focused on the critical work necessary to address a legacy of systemic racism. We continue to build on our history of fighting for the people and advocating for policies and investments that address the consequences of racial injustice, including homelessness and intergenerational poverty. Our racial justice and reconciliation programs deepen understandings of systemic racism and build empathy in private and public corridors of power to transform lives as well as institutions and to drive systemic change.
As we commemorate Juneteenth in America, together, we also look forward to a future when the Federal holidays of this nation truly reflect the diverse nature, values, and people of this country. This is an important step; taking the moment to celebrate gives us strength to keep going. Every day at GLIDE, we work to advance this vision. This is what we do. At every level. We embody the spirit, the vision, and the purpose of Juneteenth.
In love and solidarity,
Karen J. Hanrahan President & CEO, GLIDE
GLIDE’s Violence Intervention Programs (VIP), Community Safety Team, and Daily Free Meals Program joined forces for Men Matter, a wellness and self-care event for men in the GLIDE community. The day-long event on June 18th took place on the car-free 300 block of Ellis Street as a special feature of the Tenderloin Resource Hub in front of GLIDE. The gathering provided an opportunity for men to have fun, socialize with one another and obtain valuable community resources in a safe space free of violence.
The festive event included a free clothing bank where participants could pick out pre-loved, gently worn clothes, shoes, and accessories, free haircuts provided by YWAM, and an acupuncture clinic. Nutritious meal options included garlic-chicken fried rice, shish kabobs provided by Tae’s Tasty Treats, a Black-owned catering service. Also on the menu were grilled hotdogs and cupcakes provided by the Daily Free Meals Program.
Many of GLIDE’s programs participated in the Men Matter event, providing a host of tailored integrated services and outreach to support, inform and affirm. The Center for Social Justice handed out “Know Your Rights” cards while the Community Safety Team created a game zone with dominoes, chess, cornhole, and a pool tournament that featured two $50 gift cards, also from YWAM. GLIDE’s Violence Intervention Program and Walk-In Center teamed up to share wellness bags with new socks, San Francisco Giant shirts, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and the Women’s Center on hand with women’s resources as well.
“One of the things we do well here at GLIDE is that we collaborate to help reach people in need and make a difference in their lives,” said Saundra Haggerty, GLIDE’s Violence Intervention Programs (VIP) Manager, who coordinated the gathering. The Men Matter event is one of several initiatives in VIP, which, among other things, conducts court-ordered domestic violence intervention workshops for men and provides peer support to prevent repeat offenses. “We meet them where they are and want them to know we can help,” said Haggerty.
In addition to the many featured services, GLIDE’s Family Resource Center also provided parenting resources and information for fathers. And in keeping with GLIDE’s values of Loving and Hopeful and For the People, the event also featured an open-mic forum to allow participants the chance to be seen and heard.
Being recognized is important observed GLIDE Clinical Director Roderick Penalosa, who said the event provided a welcoming space for men in a marginalized community who may feel invisible. “The Men Matter event brings awareness that men, particularly men of color, can be misrepresented and characterized in ways that don’t often reflect the true essence and value of their humanity.”
“As an organization that advocates for inclusivity and radical compassion, GLIDE aims to raise the visibility of positive and healthy expressions of masculinity,” added Penalosa. “Men need to take accountability and responsibility for their behavior, but it is also critical for them to know that they are significant, accepted, and capable of being loved.”
Haggerty agreed and added that GLIDE looks forward to making community-focused gatherings like Men Matter annual events. “We want to come together to let the men in the community, and those we serve, know that we are here for them. We support them, and we want to help them in their healing process.”
Dear Friends,
I am writing to you today, feeling acutely the burden of the collective heart. Across this country, there is an increase in alarming reports of antisemitic hate crimes, assaults, and harassment. Of course, GLIDE condemns these actions that are born out of deep-seated bigotry, intolerance, and blame. There is never a justification for hate crimes. And there is also something deeper to address.
Scapegoating of many shades has long been a precursor to violence and harassment in our nation, all proliferating from the common roots of fear and shame. Roots that are hard to bear. When we examine the collective history of our nation, we find narratives brimming with antisemitic hate crimes committed by individuals, groups, and government officials. We recognize the patterns and cannot be silent witnesses to a new wave of religious scapegoating and violence that targets a community that has suffered from centuries of oppression. History and our values demand more of us.
GLIDE’s role has always been to bear resounding witness to this collective trauma, to shine a light on those bare roots, and to bring people together in shared humanity to forge solutions. We are both heartbroken and angry at the increasing scale and depth, and magnitude of scapegoating. Let me touch again on the burden of the collective heart – isn’t this ache a call to awaken to the larger task ahead of us?
We know, at GLIDE, that America is at its best when we come together to support each other. This is our vision of what this country might be. May is Jewish American Heritage Month. Our nation is made stronger by the resilience, history, and cultural contributions of American Jews. Let us join together in recognition and celebration of this truth.
We are mindful that the meaning of the Hebrew word Shalom means both peace and also wholeness. We work every day on the ground here at GLIDE to help and support everyone to feel safe and whole. We want to affirm, as always, that American Jews, like all of us, deserve to feel safe and secure in who they are, and deserve to feel Shalom wherever they might be.
As a nearly 60-year-old social justice organization rooted in radical inclusion and unconditional love, GLIDE has always stood firmly with the Jewish community. We all are in this together. GLIDE is for the people. Always.
L’ shalom,
Karen J. Hanrahan President & CEO, GLIDE
GLIDE Voices is highlighting Asian American & Native Hawaiian / Pacific Islander Month. We asked After School Program Manager Selina Ng what GLIDE values resonate with you this month and why?
“The GLIDE value that resonates the most with me is being radically inclusive. GLIDE’s Family Youth and Childcare Center after-school program is a brilliant example of how both staff and clients coexist amongst each other despite coming from different backgrounds. As the after-school manager, one of the most important aspects of my job is to ensure that our clients are able to grow and learn in an environment that is respectful, loving, and safe. Having that as a GLIDE value, we are empowering our clients to celebrate diversity, acknowledge differences, be aware of social injustices and learn to coexist.
I am a first-generation Chinese American who grew up with immigrant parents, and I am incredibly fortunate to bilingual in Cantonese. To this day, I still help my parents translate into English. Many of our clients are first-generation as well, with a few who are actually immigrants, and they are bilingual and, like me, must translate for their parents. I see my parents in the families of the clients I serve, the hopes and dreams they have for their children—much like mine had for me.
Being radically inclusive also means that we must understand that being inclusive goes beyond gender, sexual orientation, and race; it also means we accept and help others despite their status and as a product of immigrant parents and see their struggles with a language, system, and culture that is so different from ours. It is my obligation to support and be a resource to the very clients and families they serve because I know my parents and countless others like my parents would have wanted a similar support system.”
Selina Ng, FYCC After School Program Manager
GLIDE Voices is highlighting Asian American & Native Hawaiian / Pacific Islander Month. We asked Clinical Director Roderick Penalosa what GLIDE values resonate with you this month and why?
My family and I migrated from the Philippines to the United States in search of equitable opportunities. The benchmark of success for many immigrants like myself is to thrive in America unscathed and to earn the privilege of American citizenship. The journey towards achieving the American dream comes with social, environmental, and political values that can stifle and oppress our voices and visibility in this country
My race has always been the most prominent marker of my identity, and for an Asian-American who came here as an adolescent, I was incessantly entrenched in the model minority myth – stereotypes that perpetuate the characterization of all Asians as the ideal persons of color to emulate because of our perceived natural capacity to comply, obey, excel, and succeed. This mythical belief is detrimental to our mental health and wellbeing because it takes away our right to be included, counted, and supported, particularly in times of crisis, due to the assumption that we are not susceptible to socio-economic and psychological stress. Many of us in the AAPI community suffer in silence because of the social stigma and shame that comes with help-seeking behaviors.
As an Asian-American, I resonate deeply with the GLIDE values of truth-telling and unconditional compassion. I’m a strong proponent of social justice advocacy that starts with self-responsibility. The courage to show up every day in our most authentic selves, in all circumstances, is a healing form of conveying our truth and an unconditional expression of self-compassion.
Revealing my true nature, even in my helplessness and most vulnerable moments, is an affirmation of my identity as a proud gay Filipino American immigrant man who belongs and deserves to be heard, seen, and recognized in America. Owning my authenticity and capacity to love myself and others is the truth that I share deeply with GLIDE and with humanity. In my role as GLIDE’s Clinical Director, I aspire to redefine the meaning and value of trauma-informed service that is healing-centered and culturally compassionate.”
Roderick Penalosa, PhD, LMFT GLIDE Clinical Director
GLIDE’s Women’s Center, in conjunction with community partners The Healing Well, La Cocina, YWAM San Francisco, and Simply the Basics, hosted a Womxn’s Wellness Fair on Friday, May 7–the start of Mother’s Day Weekend. The free, day-long event was meant to celebrate and serve all unhoused, and housed women-identified residents in the Tenderloin and took place in the Tenderloin Community Resource Hub at Ellis Street and Taylor in front of GLIDE.
Womxn’s Wellness Fair activities included fellowship, fun, food, art, resources, music, carnival games, bingo, and even free yoga, tai chi, and acupuncture. Women could access resources like hygiene products, mental health support services, harm reduction kits, free snack bags, and $5 vouchers for the newly opened La Cocina Marketplace. The fair is part of ongoing outreach efforts by GLIDE’s Women’s Center to support women who are living on the street, in an unstable housing situation, or need social support.
“Our event was a tremendous success!” said Shannon Wise, manager of GLIDE’s Women’s Center. “Thank you to our 24 participating agencies and all the women in the community who came out. We served about 300 people that day. It was great for agencies to network with each other on-site, and in-person providing up-to-date information and community resources.”
“I am so happy that they have a Woman’s Fair, said attendee Hoamy “Linda” Ung. “I have been waiting and praying for it.”
https://youtu.be/WtC5o78pkdc
“I really believe in women empowering women and women having a platform just to better themselves, just to be happy to be who they are, said participant and organizer Juthaporn Chaloeicheep. “We should praise women for the good jobs they do.”
When women get together, we’ve been able to do amazing things.” “I just wanted to come out because I’ve been locked up so much,” said Marquita Stroud, who lives in a nearby hotel. “My favorite part has been playing all the carnival games.”
Wise is hopeful that the Wellness Fair will make more women aware of the services available through the Center. “We’re here and we can help,” she said. “We just want people in the community to know that we are a resource for them.”
GLIDE’s Women’s Center provides a safe haven for women on the road to recovery from trauma, violence, and isolation. Through its essential support services, the Center helps women, and their families stabilize their lives and thrive. To find out more about the Women’s Center, please visit glide.org/program/womens-center.
