THE CAST
Cecil Williams
As Co-Founder and Minister of Liberation of GLIDE, Reverend Cecil Williams has expanded the limits of spirituality, compassion and diversity for more than fifty years. An inexhaustible minister, author, social activist, lecturer, community leader and spokesperson for the poor and underserved, Reverend Williams is recognized as a national leader at the forefront of the struggle for civil and human rights. His rousing ministry underscores his roots in liberation theology. His vision for the 21st-century church can be seen in GLIDE’s unique and powerful blend of spirituality, principled compassion and advocacy, and cutting-edge programs for those most in need. People of all races, ethnic backgrounds, cultures, social classes, ages, faiths and sexual orientations join together at every Sunday Celebration to experience the energy of spiritual liberation coupled with the fusion of jazz, blues and gospel performed by the renowned GLIDE Ensemble and The Change band. Rev. Williams is the author of I’m Alive: An Autobiography and No Hiding Place: Empowerment and Recovery for Our Troubled Communities, and co-author with spouse and GLIDE Co-Founder Janice Mirikitani of Beyond the Possible: 50 Years of Creating Radical Change in a Community Called GLIDE.
Janice Mirikitani
Janice Mirikitani is a poet, visionary, editor, administrator, community activist and Co-Founder of GLIDE, where in partnership with her husband, Reverend Cecil Williams, she has achieved worldwide recognition for groundbreaking programs that empower San Francisco’s poor and marginalized communities. A Sansei (third generation) Japanese American, Mirikitani and her family were confined in the Rohwer, Arkansas concentration camp during this country’s mass internment of Japanese Americans. She has sustained a decades-long passion to create programs for women and families struggling with issues of substance use, rape, incest, domestic violence, AIDS, single parenting, childcare, health and wellness, education and job development. In 2000, Mirikitani became San Francisco’s second Poet Laureate. She is the author of five books of poetry – Awake in the River; Shedding Silence; We, The Dangerous; Love Works; and Out of the Dust: New and Selected Poems – and editor of nine landmark anthologies providing platforms for writers of color, women, youth and children. Mirikitani is co-author with Rev. Cecil Williams of Beyond the Possible: 50 Years of Creating Radical Change in a Community Called GLIDE.
GLIDE
More than a church or a foundation, GLIDE is a movement, with an unparalleled ability to bring people together and change the way they interact with each other. GLIDE’s reach spans San Francisco’s diverse communities and constituencies and extends to people from around the region, country and world. At GLIDE, people are opportunities, not problems. The problems we face are structural: lack of housing, education, jobs, opportunities, understanding and inclusion. GLIDE’s force as a movement lies in its capacity to change the narrative under which these problems persist, to shape a new narrative in which all people are counted and activated. In its decades of service to the most in-need, GLIDE has already changed the way we see social services by humanizing poverty and marginalization and by living the values of radical inclusivity. The challenge now lies in continuing to change the narrative to one in which love and justice are two sides of the same coin.