GLIDE President and CEO Karen Hanrahan and Center for Social Justice Senior Director Miguel Bustos participated in the “What We’ve Learned” public lecture series at Manny’s Community Space located in San Francisco’s Mission District on September 29, 2021. The notable series invites leaders from all aspects of civic life to examine what we’ve learned so far during the pandemic.
Speaking to a crowd of in-person attendees and scores of others who watched the event via Zoom and on Facebook, their discussion “Keeping the Flame Alive: Finding Light in Dark Times,” addressed finding hope and inspiration after 18 months of the pandemic and how GLIDE has continued throughout the health crisis to serve those in need.
Hello GLIDE Community,
We are delighted to be part of the Latinx community during these 30 days acknowledging and celebrating National Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month and the cultural and historical contributions of those among us whose family heritages include Mexico, the Caribbean, Central, and South America, and Spain.
Every day, we support, lift up and celebrate the people, voices, and issues of the Latinx community through acts of social justice and service. Our Latinx family extends from our innovative staff and bold leaders to our righteous community partners, generous donors, and resilient clients. We act and advocate in solidarity with coalitions that advance equity for Latinx communities throughout the city. We continue to walk in the footsteps of social justice warriors like Delores Huerta and Cesar Chavez. We draw inspiration today from activists such as Sister Norma Pimentel, honored for her unwavering support of migrants, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and the many other Latinx leaders who are pursuing justice for all in our society.
This month, we mark Latinx Heritage as American Heritage, with a legacy of cultural and historical achievements in the sciences, arts, literature, law, technology, economics, and government. There are more than 6,800 elected Latinx officials nationwide, and Congress is now, thankfully, more diverse, with six Latinx Senators in the U.S. Senate and 46 Representatives in the House. The fastest-growing population in the U.S., the Latinx community is also an economic driver. In 2019, the economic output of the Latinx community was $2.7 trillion, a nearly 60 percent increase over 2010. Eighteen percent of America’s middle class is now Latinx, roughly four times higher than in 1980 when it was predominantly white.
While we honor this heritage month, we also recognize the stark inequities facing many in the Latinx community. The criminalization of migrants and the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is abhorrent. This summer, there were nearly 200,000 migrant apprehensions and expulsions — the highest total in more than two decades. Additionally, the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on Latinx health, jobs, and families. Latinx people are diagnosed with COVID-19 at rates nearly twice that of whites, are hospitalized 2.8 times higher, and dying at a rate 2.3 times higher. The economic toll of the health crisis has been severe. The Latinx community accounted for 23 percent of initial pandemic job losses. Latinas continue to bear the brunt of this job loss, experiencing disproportionately high unemployment and dropping out of the workforce at higher rates than any other demographic group.
At GLIDE, we see the impact of systemic inequity on the Latinx community up close: • 20% of our clients are Latinx. • 75% of our Family Youth and Childcare Center families are Latinx — all are low-income. • 93 % of FYCC families surveyed reported income losses due to the pandemic. • 71 % of FYCC women surveyed said GLIDE helped them avoid hunger.
Every day, GLIDE is taking steps to overcome these challenges within our Latinx communities across San Francisco. We prevent homelessness, alleviate hunger, support women in the workforce, and intentionally address the systemic inequities that drive more Latinx people into our service lines. We are doing that through our transformative programs and expanded services across the city. In particular, our investments in Latinx women and families are stabilizing families and advancing the financial independence necessary to combat these economic inequities.
GLIDE is proudly part of the Latinx community. As we celebrate this month-long tribute to the community’s diversity, rich culture, and extraordinary contributions, we do so with gratitude for all the progress that has been realized and hope for all that is still to come.
August included Overdose Awareness Day and GLIDE’s Center for Social Justice and Harm Reduction Services marked the observance with an inspiring panel discussion that clarified what harm reduction is and is not and focused on policies that help or continue to harm. Harm Reduction As Justice was moderated by Director of Harm Reduction Services Juliana DePietro, and included panel members CSJ Policy Manager Wesley Saver, Harm Reduction Services Program Manager John Negrete, and Code Tenderloin Founder and unofficial Mayor of the Tenderloin Del Seymour.
It is a Thursday afternoon in mid-July, and preparations for the Tenderloin Resource Hub’s weekly COVID-19 vaccine site are well underway. Everything happens outside of GLIDE at 330 Ellis Street.
The day starts with a thorough pavement washdown. Canopy tents expand. Tables and chairs are set up. Two-way radios, iPads, mobile hotspots, and laptops are readied for use. Medical supplies are laid out, vaccines pre-drawn, cartons of safety vests, and stationery are unpacked, and shift volunteers are trained depending on their roles.
The COVID vaccine collaborative at GLIDE’s Tenderloin Hub is a true citywide partnership. The collective includes clinical staff from San Francisco’s Department of Public Health (SFDPH), University of California, San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF), and the San Francisco Community Health Center (SFCHC), which serves as the clinical supervisor. Along with non-clinical staff from SFCHC, GLIDE, and community partner Code Tenderloin, teams gather every Thursday to coordinate the many moving parts for the weekly pop-up vaccination site. Their latest strategic effort is the deployment of “Roving Vax” teams.
Roving Vax 2 team members from GLIDE’s TL Hub COVID Vaccine Clinic.
Months earlier, it was recognized that vaccine equity initiatives were needed in low-income and communities of color in San Francisco. The Tenderloin trailed the city’s vaccination rate by seven percent. To address the disparity, GLIDE joined an innovative collaboration between UCSF’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative (BHHI), Life Sciences Cares-Bay Area, SFCHC, and SFDPH.
“GLIDE is tremendously proud of our partnership. Together we are reducing barriers to vaccine access and serving some of the most marginalized people” — GLIDE President & CEO Karen Hanrahan
“There are significant challenges in providing access to COVID vaccinations to the housed and unhoused residents of the Tenderloin,” said GLIDE President and CEO Karen Hanrahan at the launch of the TL vaccination site. “GLIDE is tremendously proud of our partnership. Together, we are reducing barriers to vaccine access and serving some of the most marginalized people. Bringing a weekly neighborhood vaccination clinic to the Tenderloin is an absolute accomplishment.”
Since a successful “proof of concept” pilot in late March, the Tenderloin Hub vaccine site has made a significant impact. As of August 19, the pop-up clinic administered 2,509 vaccine doses. Fifty percent of those jabs were Johnson & Johnson/Janssen single dose COVID-19 vaccines, with first and seconds doses of Moderna vaccines making up 45% and Pfizer injections coming in at 5%. At its operational height, the GLIDE vaccination site stretched halfway down Ellis Street with dedicated areas for line management, registration, and tents for vaccine preparation, administration, and patient observation.
GLIDE’s COVID Vaccine Site at the Tenderloin Hub in June 2021
“At the start of the vaccination site, we saw large numbers of Tenderloin residents and workers eager and ready to receive the vaccine,” said Senior Director of Programs Lillian Mark. “Those who may have been unsure or slightly hesitant were also successfully brought to the finish line through sustained outreach in the community.” Several weeks later, though, the TL Hub began to see vaccine demand diminish. Mark observed that the decline was most likely due to vaccine-hesitant residents who were unlikely to travel to Ellis Street. Around the same time, an effort to prevent open vaccine vials from going to waste yielded an unexpected discovery. “The clinical team at SFCHC decided to venture out on their own. So, after the site closed, they went out onto busy TL street corners and visited family restaurants, with the mission of getting those vaccines into arms. And they were incredibly successful,” said Mark.
The impromptu street outreach led to the establishment of Roving Vax teams. Modeled after the successful mobile outreach efforts of SFCHC’s Street Medicine initiative, two sets of roving teams are outfitted with two-way radios, and backpacks, and rolling carts carrying vaccines, iPads, hotspots, and incentives like $25 gift cards to facilitate on-the-spot vaccinations throughout the Tenderloin.
“What’s also unique about the Roving Vax teams is they’re comprised of medical professionals and outreach staff from GLIDE’s community partners in the TL, “said Mark. The team’s make-up is critical to the success of the effort. “When they encounter someone who has mistrust towards healthcare, the teams can rely on the TL outreach staff to reassure them,” she adds. “If they want to know more and want to speak with a nurse or a doctor, a healthcare professional is readily available in the moment. This range gives any person a range of opportunity to ask about any of the misgivings or doubts they may have about the vaccine.”
The established success of GLIDE’s Harm Reduction Services is an additional asset to the street vaccination effort. In addition to providing Opt-In harm reduction mobile services to unhoused and housed residents, a GLIDE mobile services van is part of a plan to deploy Roving Vax team members to neighborhood locations far from the TL Hub, allowing a team in the area to resupply quickly instead of losing time returning to the Hub.
In an interview with her organization’s communications office, SFCHC Nurse Practitioner Shannon Heuklom, who helped design the roving vax team model, noted the goal was to lower vaccine barriers as far as possible. “We did a substantial amount of vaccines by these roving teams. And I think we vaccinated the hardest to vaccinate folks,” said Heuklom. “People who aren’t going to go elsewhere. People who have a little bit of mistrust built in. I think we showed if we come to people where they’re at and give good education, and connect, so many good things come out of that.”
In the last three weeks of July, the majority of the vaccines provided through GLIDE’s Tenderloin Hub — more than 80 percent — were a result of the efforts of the Roving Vax teams. In addition to street vaccination teams serving the unhoused in the TL, they’ve also vaccinated housed residents, workers, and small business owners who don’t have the flexibility to come to the TL Hub. Along with the expansion of roving teams, GLIDE has also shifted the hours of the vaccination site to 3 to 7 p.m. to accommodate residents who can’t visit the Hub during standard business hours, helping to meet the needs of more people in the community. GLIDE currently offers the only weekday-evening-hours COVID-19 vaccination site in the TL.
“Our shared commitment to achieving vaccine access and equity for the Tenderloin has been at the heart of all that we have done,” said Mark. “Since the start of April, this group has met, planned, executed, evaluated, and pivoted every week to continuously ensure Tenderloin residents and workers are aware of their vaccine options, lower threshold for services, augment outreach and education, and redesign service delivery methods to meet the diverse needs of the community.”
When the vaccination site began in the spring, the neighborhood lagged behind the city’s overall vaccination rate of individuals receiving at least one COVID vaccine dose by 7 percent. Current numbers tell a different story. According to the city’sCOVID-19 Vaccinations By Neighborhood Map, as of August 28, the Tenderloin has an average vaccination rate of 80 percent, while the city average is 78 percent.
With the rise of the COVID-19 Delta variant, the Hub’s Roving Vax teams plan to continue their efforts throughout the summer to support the city’s goal to vaccinate all San Franciscans.
Dear GLIDE Community,
Please join us in honoring the life and legacy of artist, activist, teacher and GLIDE Co-Founder Janice Mirikitani.
What: Celebration of the Life of Janice Mirikitani Including live dance and musical performances, poetry readings and special guest speakers
When: Sunday, August 15, 2021 12:30 – 2:30 p.m.
Due to COVID-19 safety precautions, we ask the GLIDE community to please join us virtually online. There will be very limited space on-site outdoors at GLIDE.
In lieu of flowers, a GLIDE Memorial Fund for Janice Mirikitani has been established to support programs serving women and children. I hope you will join us in celebrating Janice on August 15. In love and solidarity, Karen J. Hanrahan President & CEO, GLIDE Facebook Twitter
Dear GLIDE Community,
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.
