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Janice Mirikitani, co-founder of San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church and Foundation and the city’s former poet laureate, died suddenly Thursday. She was 80 years old.
Glide confirmed Mirikitani’s death in a message to supporters scheduled to attend a virtual justice event Thursday night, calling it “sad and sudden.”
Mirikitani, the San Francisco poet laureate from 2000 to 2002, used her poetry “to advance the fight for equality and to call for a more just and peaceful world,” London Mayor Breed said Thursday in a statement. communicated.
In her work at Glide with her husband, the Reverend Cecil Williams, Breed said Mirikitani has served “San Francisco’s most vulnerable residents for decades and provided a place of refuge and love for all.”
“She was limitless in her energy and dedication to this city and her fellow San Franciscans,” said Breed. “My heart goes out to her friends and family, especially Cecil. She was loved and will never be forgotten.
As a third-generation Japanese American, she survived the internment camps of World War II, grew up in Petaluma and Los Angeles, and co-founded Glide, an organization that has worked for decades to combat systemic inequalities and creating pathways for people experiencing poverty. When she was a baby in 1941, her family was forced from their Stockton farm and sent to an internment camp in rural Arkansas. She was 3 years old when her family was released.
She was known for her warm and infectious laughter and energy while working in the community. Mirikitani wrote poetry books and conducted poetry classes for survivors of incest, of which she was also a survivor.
Dori Caminong, communications manager for the city’s Department of Children, Youth and Their Families, worked at Glide for 11 years from 2005, first as an assistant to Mirikitani, then in communications and Fund raising.
“Janice always said, ‘Love dangerously’,” she said. “All the different values Glide is known for – unconditional love, radical acceptance, beloved community – all of those words started to take on different meanings to me and felt more alive. Being so close to a legend has been an incredible experience.
San Francisco supervisor Matt Haney in a tweet described her as “someone who loved people, all people, and had endless compassion, grace and vision.”
“I mourn the Glide community and the countless people whose lives it touched,” Haney said.
Del Seymour, the founder of Code Tenderloin, said he had been friends with Mirikitani for 28 years and considered her a sister. He called her “the first lady of the net”.
Mirikitani has run programs at Glide for women survivors of abuse, Seymour said, as well as recovery programs for people with drug addiction in the Tenderloin.
“She has stood up for these women in the community on a large scale,” he said. “She was a strong woman. You couldn’t play with her. If you needed help, you were going to get help. She has guided so many people to recovery, it’s amazing.
Lydia Bransten, director of the Gubbio project, which provides church space for homeless people to sleep in during the day, said Mirikitani has influenced the entire nonprofit community.
“She was a compass for how to love without judgment,” Bransten said. “His teachings have been like a wave in the community that has taught and inspired us all. “
BART Board Member Lateefah Simon first met Mirikitani in the mid-1990s at a meeting of the Supervisory Board on Young Mothers. Simon was a young single mother herself and ran the Center for the Development of Young Women in the Net. She remembers Mirikitani approaching her after the meeting and asking her, “Are you going to church? She didn’t, but started attending Glide after that meeting – and even gives a sermon there once a year now.
Glide later helped Simon’s father, who was homeless and struggling with addiction, find housing and recovery. He passed away five years ago, said Simon, “at this hotel with dignity in its own beautiful space.”
“I have been crying for two hours – my heart is broken,” Simon said. “You just think Cecil and Janice are going to live forever. They are like the parents of consciousness in our city – of grace and clarity – and they’ve raised so many of us in this movement. has a paradise, there is an express elevator.
Simon added, “Glide is the pole star for my people. … We just lost one of our giants.
Paul Harkin worked as Glide’s harm reduction manager for 10 years from 2010 and took over the HIV program founded by Mirikitani.
“His sense of humor was wicked,” he said. “She had a certain unpredictability. She didn’t feel like she had to play the waif poet in the presence of Cecil Williams’ lightning rod. She wasn’t hiding in the shadows. She had her own platform, and there was incredible chemistry between the two of them. The two together were bigger than each individually.
State Senator Scott Wiener of San Francisco said Thursday that Mirikitani was “one of the most exceptional human beings I have ever met, combining strength and love like no one else.”
“My condolences to the love of his life – Reverend Cecil Williams – to the entire Glide community and to all of San Francisco,” said Wiener. “It’s a huge loss for our community. “
Lauren Hernández and Heather Knight are the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected], [email protected] Twitter: @ByLHernandez, @hknightsf
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