Partying despite rain, prevailing despite woes
The theme of this year’s Glide Holiday Jam, undampened by the Wednesday, Nov. 28, night rain that sprinkled, splattered and finally poured over the steps of the Masonic Auditorium, was “Love Prevails.” The party — filled with music, reverence for the past, enthusiasm for the future, expressions of “radical inclusion” and social justice — reflected a lot of love. And at the same time, it also reflected a lot of prevailing. “Different points of view,” said a board member I met at the reception before the main event, “are on pause.”
The church had been in the news in early summer, when the bishop who oversees United Methodist Churches in California and Nevada, criticizing the organization of Glide, removed its two associate pastors. The only clergyman appearing at the Jam was the Rev. Cecil Williams, the spiritual father of the church, who’d built the institution of Glide and directed its high-profile community activism. For supporters of Glide, Williams’ presence and that of co-founder Janice Mirikitani, his wife, was more than enough. At the reception before dinner, Williams and Mirikitani were surrounded by wellwishers posing for pictures with them; during the program, they moved through the audience greeting supporters and accepting expressions of affection. Love prevailed. The emcee of the event was Renel
Brooks-Moon, who, of course, is the beloved announcer for the San Francisco Giants. Glide’s roots in the black community are deep, and in her first few remarks, Brooks-Moon addressed this week’s hot controversy: the threatened boycott of the Giants because of owner Charles Johnson’s support of a Republican candidate deemed racist as well as his donation to a PAC that financed a racist ad. “There’s a little drama going on,” said Brooks-Moon, alluding to the week’s events in her first few remarks, “but tonight we celebrate.” Love prevailed. (By the end of Tuesday, the boycott had been called off. See item below.)
Anyway, the printed program for Monday’s event included congratulatory statements from a hit parade of politicians, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Jerry Brown, Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom, Sen.
Kamala Harris, Mayor London Breed and Supervisor Malia Cohen. The performance program was equally star-studded: The Syncopated Ladies tap/rap troupe was riveting (a description of the sounds of their tapping feet as well as of audience response to them), choir leader Vernon
Bush was swell performing on his own; and singers Lisa Fischer (with JC Maillard) and India. Arie gave majestic performances of dramatic and serious songs.
Until the end, however, they didn’t sing the kind of songs that had people dancing in the aisles. That moment came with “Oh Happy Day,” a grand finale that got everybody rocking while they reached for their umbrellas and scurried out into the deluge and splashed through the puddles.
On the surface, all was well. “Glide has a new plan,” had said Glide president and CEO Karen Hanrahan. And love will prevail.
The gang that celebrated the 110th anniversary of John’s Grill on Thursday, Nov. 29, included Mayor London Breed, who presented a proclamation, State Sen.
Scott Wiener, who presented a more elegantly framed Senate resolution, Lt. Gov.-elect Eleni Kounalakis, grinning from ear to ear, and lawyer John Burris, who was surrounded by people shaking their heads over that Charles Johnson donation.
Burris said he’d decided the day before to call off the threatened Giants boycott because “Johnson said he was giving back the money and that he abhors racism, and because of that, there wasn’t any further need to go forward,” and because Harry
Edwards (an expert on sports and race) had advised him to call it off. Furthermore, “I didn’t want to walk around in front of the ballpark with a sign.”
Several people who were unacquainted with the “beautiful, loving light-filled, cherished wife and mother” whose “Life Tribute” (obituary) was included in a recent Chronicle, pointed it out. The second paragraph: “She walked into the sea at Martin’s Beach, a final end to a harrowing and swiftly deepening depression brought on by bipolar illness that had quite literally consumed her in the last two weeks of her life. Her family is stunned and heartbroken.”
That description leaves even those of us who weren’t her family, who never met her, stunned and heartbroken, too. Her name won’t be mentioned in this item. But we owe the family thanks for sharing her story, a wrenching reminder that personal suffering is shared by those who watch helplessly.