Cecil Williams to Launch Chico’s Building Bridges Effort
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 22, 2000
Joe Wills
530-898-4143
Cecil Williams to Launch Chico’s Building Bridges Effort
The Reverend Cecil Williams, pastor of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco and nationally known advocate for the poor, will be the featured speaker for the kick-off event of Building Bridges, CSU, Chico’s year-long series of events designed to increase tolerance and respect on campus and within the Chico community.
The kick-off event, sponsored by the Associated Students’ A.S. Presents, will be Wednesday, Aug. 30, at 5:30 p.m. in Harlen Adams Theatre. The event is free and open to everyone.
The event will also feature the presentation of a bust of the late Harlen Adams, the well-known CSU, Chico administrator, professor and community leader who helped found PFLAG, Parents and Families of Lesbians and Gays. The bronze sculpture will be permanently installed in the theatre named in honor of Adams. The Adams family will be present, and College of Humanities and Fine Arts dean Don Heinz will deliver remarks in tribute to Adams.
The sculptor, the late Chico artist and writer Gerald Lugenbeel Jr., greatly admired Adams and the way he supported people who were discriminated against in society. Lugenbeel was an accomplished sculptor despite being severely disabled in an accident while in the Air Force. The bust was donated to the university by Chico residents Barbara Gates and the late Peg Taylor.
Reverend Williams has been head pastor at Glide Church since 1963, transforming the church into San Francisco’s most comprehensive nonprofit provider of human services. The Glide Foundation has 40 social service programs assisting people throughout the Bay Area, including 3,000 free hot meals served daily to those in need. Among Glide’s programs are AIDS testing, crisis intervention, domestic violence programs and job training.
The Glide Church congregation, which has a membership of more than 9,000, includes people from all ethnic backgrounds, cultures, classes, ages, religious backgrounds and sexual orientations. The Glide Sunday celebration, during which people join together with the 140-voice Glide Ensemble and the 50-member Children’s Choir, is legendary in San Francisco.
Along with his duties at Glide Memorial, Reverend Williams is an author, lecturer and one of California’s best known community leaders and spokespersons on tolerance. In 1998, President Clinton appointed Williams to the Presidential Commission on Holocaust Assets. Clinton spoke at Glide Memorial during his 1992 campaign, and Hillary Clinton has attended several services at the church. Williams’ wife, Janice Mirikitani, is president of the Glide Foundation.
In 1997, Life magazine profiled Glide Church and Reverend Williams in a nine-page cover story. His own books are titled “No Hiding Place,” a blueprint for urban renewal through spirituality, and “I’m Alive,” an autobiography.
Born in San Angelo, Tex., Reverend Williams was one of five students to break the race barrier at Southern Methodist University in the 1950s. He joined Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the historic 1963 civil rights march, and serves on the board of the Atlanta-based King Center for Non-Violent Change.
Rev. Williams’ address is being sponsored by A.S. Presents with assistance from CSU, Chico, the College of Humanities and Fine Arts and the Building Bridges program.
Building Bridges’ goal is to bring together our campus, as well as reach out to other colleges and universities, K-12 schools, the interfaith community, government, and business and social leaders to build bridges of support to reject intolerance, promote mutual respect and celebrate our growing diversity. Other Building Bridges speakers include naturalist and poet Diane Ackerman on Sept. 19 and Southern Poverty Law Center founder Morris Dees on March 13.
Building Bridges grew out of a CSU, Chico campus group that has been meeting since August 1999 to discuss increasing tolerance and decreasing violence on campus and in the community. The impetus for the group included hate crimes affecting the community and alumni, the CSU, Chico Academic Senate’s spring 1999 resolution supporting tolerance and respect, and campuswide meetings in spring 1999 on student safety and community health.
Last February, the tolerance group recommended a series of events and programs for academic year 2000-2001 be united around the theme Building Bridges. President Esteban announced Building Bridges to students, faculty and staff in a memo Feb. 29. “These activities — events such as art exhibits, public forums or addresses by guest speakers — are designed to stretch our sensibilities and create common ground between people so that we are better able to appreciate individual differences and confront acts of hate,” Esteban said.
For more information on the Aug. 30 event and Building Bridges, call 898-4143.
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