Dear AmericanTowns.com,

We are just over a week into Women's History Month and today marks International Women's Day. Historians trace the origins of International Women’s Day to a mass demonstration on February 28th, 1908, of mostly immigrant women who worked in New York City’s garment factories and had joined the burgeoning labor movement en masse to fight for better working conditions and the right to vote.

A year later, in the wake of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that killed 146 garment workers, women activists within the labor movements of the United States and Europe began celebrating annual, organized Women’s Days in anniversary of the landmark demonstration.

Eventually, International Women’s Day was moved to March 8th and was officially recognized by the United Nations in 1977. In the United States, International Women’s Day was expanded to Women’s History Week, and again to Women’s History Month. Today, 115 years after the garment workers of New York rose up for their rights, we celebrate the contributions of women in all aspects of society.

However, there’s still a long way to go until we achieve full gender equality. Women continue to be paid less than men for the same work, they face harassment and higher rates of interpersonal violence, and they are underrepresented in positions of power across all industries. In the fields of healthcare and cancer treatment, women—and particularly women of color—continue to be under-represented in research and clinical trials, which leads to worse side effects from medications and poorer treatment outcomes for female patients and patients of color.

For centuries, the experiences of women have been treated as inconsequential, their voices ignored and their stories erased. But still, we have examples as early as 1495 of women recording the truth of unequal societies, the harm that discrimination sows, and how a future can be reshaped for the better. At Women’s Cancer Resource Center, we’re proud to be in community with so many brave women and gender-expansive individuals who have encountered gender-based obstacles in their cancer care and share their stories so that others can have better, more equitable care. 

Warm regards,

Anne Browne

Development Associate

It's the 28th Annual...

Artist Reception: March 10

In the JanRae Community Art Gallery

Art of the African Diaspora

February 2 - March 31, 2023

Opening Reception :: March 10, 2023

5:30 to 7:30 pm

2908 Ellsworth Street

Berkeley, CA 94705

Register Today!

Artists: Donna Mekeda, Fredrick Franklin, Irene Bee Kain, Jazmyne, Jimi Evans, Kelvin Curry, Saida Adias, Stephanie Johnson, Kevin Myrick, and Yolanda Patton

WCRC is proud to serve as a satellite location for The Art of the African Diaspora, the longest-running event of its kind in the Bay Area. It originated from a salon for African American artists known as Colors of Black that was organized in 1989 by artist and professor Marie Johnson Calloway.

In 1996 artists Jan Hart-Schuyers and Rae Louise Hayward, after whom WCRC's art gallery was named, established the exhibition The Art of Living Black at Richmond Art Center (RAC). Many of the artists from Colors of Black participated in the inaugural exhibition, which presented the work of emerging and established African American artists. The artists gained introduction to new audiences, and access to build a creative community of artists and art lovers.

Over the next twenty-five years, the exhibition ensured the increased visibility for African American artists in the Bay Area that Hart-Schuyers and Hayward conceptualized. After the loss of both founders, their organizing efforts were carried on for many years by artists, family members, and RAC. In 2019, the Committee became aware of the necessity to incorporate a broader vision of the African Diaspora and consequently renamed the organization Art of the African Diaspora.

Refreshments will be provided. Mask and proof of COVID vaccine required for entry.

Register for this event HERE.

Ms. Kokoye's Got Poetry

When I grow old...I shall read and enjoy poetry. A lot! That's an apt description of where I now find myself. It seems I've always kinda sorta liked poetry. But as I grow older poetry becomes a favorite genre. I mean, what's not to like? Most poems aren't very long and the longer ones can be skimmed until something really grabs my attention. So there's a great deal of freedom in reading poetry. You can try many poets without having to make any kind of long-term commitment. And you can borrow almost any but the newest books of poetry from the public library – a favorite place of mine. As I noted in my comments on poetry previously, I highly recommend African American Poetry, 250 Years of Struggle and Song, Kevin Young, Editor, to all who'd like an overview of our poetry. I'm sure you'll discover a favorite new poem or a dozen or more favorites of the past.

I decided to revisit some of my old favorites and began with Alice Walker's Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth. I skip around a lot when I begin reading a book of poems. I almost always read the very first poem in the book first as a way of paying homage to the writer's decision to place it at the beginning. Just in case she's pointing out to me that it's her best work. That then earns me the right to flip pages until something catches my eye or to glance through the table of contents until a provocative title makes me want to read it immediately. “I Can Worship You” is the first poem in this book; and it stopped me cold.

Alice writes: “I can worship You / But I cannot give You everything..."

As a young woman it seemed to me that we were expected to give our loved one "everything." And here was a Black woman stating on the first page in the opening line of her poem that no, she could not do that. In the next three stanzas she qualified that statement a bit. Well, I was hooked; this was a book of poems worth reading. Or in this case re-reading. I know I haven't opened this book in years so none of the poems seemed familiar to me.

“Until I was Nearly Fifty” begins: “Until I was / Nearly fifty / I rarely thought / Of age.”

And while Alice goes on to talk about her growing awareness of her responsibility to support and guide our youth as she grows into elderhood, I'm struck by the fact that I hadn't really thought that much about being an elder at fifty. I was still fully engaged in living my life and elderhood and its responsibilities became a concern maybe at the beginning of my sixties. Probably when I first read this poem it did not speak to me the way it does today. Which is another good reason to re-read poetry and other genres from time to time. Each time you give yourself an opportunity to notice something you may have missed.

“You Can Talk” reads in part:

You can talk about

The balm in Gilead

But what about

The balm

Right

Here

This poem is about healing and forgiveness. And it caught my ear because there's an old spiritual we sang when I was a child about the balm in Gilead. As soon as I read the above stanza, I was transported right back to church where maybe an elder would "raise" that hymn. It was always sung softly as though to offer comfort, support, and hope. I felt comforted just reading those words and I remembered folks I hadn't thought of in years.

May I invite you to take another look at a book of poetry or two that you may own. Or head over to the library and ask the librarian where the Black books of poetry are. If you remember a favorite poet ask for their work specifically. Sounds like a great way to celebrate Black History; maybe read a poem or two every day. And when you find something especially appealing to you, share it with someone.

- Kokoye Sande

WCRC Welcomes New Colleague, Cara Keller

Please join us in welcoming Cara Keller as our new Office Coordinator! Cara is a passionate and experienced assistant for mission-driven organizations in the Bay Area, and is thrilled to lend her expertise to WCRC, providing on-site facilities and administrative support. With almost eight years of local experience, she knows that operational efficiency is key to unlocking nonprofits’ full potential to promote their vision. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies and Education Studies, and in her free time can be found either watching movies, reading about movies, or in her backyard trying to “cultivate” her green thumb.

Connecting Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) to our History and Mission

During the next several months, WCRC will be working with Riana Shaw Robinson, an experienced DEIB consultant, who will be facilitating conversations and progress towards diversifying our Board of Directors and supporting us in establishing ongoing commitments to reinforce DEIB principles and practices throughout our organization. We look forward to sharing progress with you. For more information, please contact Amy Alanes at [email protected].

Riana Shaw Robinson is passionate about speaking the truth in love, inviting people to recognize their inherent value, and providing opportunities to engage in life-long work necessary to build an antiracist society. Riana is a skilled changemaker and facilitator committed to community and capacity building, social justice, and systems change. Riana recently served as the Associate Pastor of Formation at Oakland City Church where she spearheaded efforts to help the community live more deeply into its antiracist values through conferences, curriculum development, strategic planning, and training.

She has experience working with a variety of community stakeholders including non-profits, local government, faith institutions, and private sector businesses. Her facilitation style is grounded in a commitment to relationship building. She believes that growth happens when people can bring the fullness of their skills and life experiences while learning in a community with others.

Riana has offered full-day and multi-week antiracist trainings, including ethnic storytelling, affinity groups, conflict resolution, creating shared language and group agreements, and embodying organizational commitments to DEIB. In her antiracist work, she encourages humility, vulnerability, curiosity, and action. Her extensive work with faith-based institutions informs a relational, values-based approach to individual, communal, and organizational responses to white supremacy and other forms of oppression.

Riana holds a Master of Divinity from Pacific School of Religion and a BA in Ethnic Studies from Mills College. Before stepping into vocational ministry, Riana worked at various non-profits focused on racial, social, and environmental justice. She is currently consulting with different churches and nonprofits to support values-based and antiracist leadership and decision-making. 

Next Steps for the WCRC Board of Directors

When I joined WCRC’s board of directors nearly five years ago, I was motivated by the potential to help improve equitable access to healthcare. My interests were pure but, as a person of relative privilege, my understanding of the real issues faced by WCRC’s client base were surface-level. What I have learned through my work with WCRC is that doing real equity work requires more than just a social conscience. Thanks to a joint investment in diversity, equity and inclusion work by the WCRC board and staff over the past year, I have had an opportunity to expand my definition of racism, to better understand the institutional and social constructs that have contributed to racial oppression and to realize how I as an individual and WCRC as an organization can work in new ways to counteract it.

I remember the board’s first session with our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) consultant Sandhya felt like part history lesson, part news flash as we explored the ways that centuries of legal, political and industrial decisions have led us quite directly to some of the racial-cultural flashpoints of the past year. In subsequent sessions which culminated in a one-day board + staff retreat, the work turned very practical, as we had an opportunity to learn and hone the tools that anti-racists can use to unearth, acknowledge and challenge our own implicit biases. This part resonated with me and really made me think. As a white person living in the Bay Area, it’s relatively “easy” to reject and disavow overt racism and to identify as an ally, but it’s harder and rarer to have a chance to ask yourself where you personally have room to grow, to think and act differently in situations where your own biases can be confronted and countered.

Of course, the work does not end with a day-long workshop – in fact, the real work has only just begun. We have several areas of DEI opportunity that the board aims to address as we continue to learn and to hold one another accountable in partnership with WCRC staff. Importantly, the board is currently seeking to expand our membership to achieve more holistic representation of the communities we serve and to incorporate more lived experiences that align with those of our clients. In doing this, we aim not only to bring a more diverse group of voices into the boardroom but also to make sure that those voices are heard and that they can speak unencumbered. As a board member and together with our staff, I am proud to embark on this ongoing journey which I know will further strengthen and deepen WCRC’s ability to deliver on its life-changing and life-saving health equity mission.

- Susan Bobulsky, WCRC Board of Directors

Celebrating Centenarian and Longtime WCRC Supporter, Bea Rudney!

Bea (pictured here with her late husband, Stan) grew up on the East Coast before making her permanent home in the Bay Area. Her parents, immigrants from Ukraine, settled in New Haven Connecticut. Bea attended nursing school during World War II and her first job after graduating was Assistant Head Nurse in the Neurology Department at New York Hospital. In the post-war years Bea gradually made her way west and eventually set up home in Oakland with her family. Bea joined Kaiser Permanente in the midst of its transition from a wartime operation caring for workers at Richmond's shipyard to the national healthcare giant we know today.

Disrupting the Challenges to Cancer Care and Access: Lazarex Cancer Foundation

In a recent blog post, Dana Dornsife, Founder & Chief Mission and Strategy Officer, shares how she and her team are working together to expand their program offerings and increase access to clinical trials and life-saving care for people facing cancer. "The programs offered by Lazarex and changing the course of cancer for marginalized individuals because barriers to clinical trials are being removed," said Dolores Moorehead, WCRC Community Engagement Director and Client Support Clinician. "When an individual with a life-threatening diagnosis can call Lazarex to not just learn about a clinical trial, but also have financial needs addressed, this is addressing equity in cancer care."

Founded in 2006, Lazarex Cancer Foundation’s primary mission is to identify clinical trial opportunities and help patients with the travel costs of trial participation – removing the primary barriers of knowledge and financial burden that prevent cancer patients from taking advantage of the medical breakthroughs that trials offer. Over the years, they came to learn of the many barriers that penetrate deep into society and have embedded themselves systemically, especially within our underserved communities of color.

“Dana’s visionary leadership has been instrumental is ensuring that all people have access to clinical trials and the programs developed by Lazarex help eliminate financial barriers,” says Amy Alanes, WCRC Executive Director. “She advocates for change at the highest levels within medical institutions and corporations who manufacture cancer drugs, and she does this while staying connected to her heart work – serving patients – recognizing that true transformational change will happen when more people of color have access to life-saving care.”

WCRC is grateful to be able to share this wonderful resource with our clients and community!

Volunteer Spotlight

Aileen Ta

Help Desk Volunteer

Aileen is a first-year student at UC Berkeley with an intended major in Public Health. Interested in working for a charitable organization and providing services to under-served communities, she connected with us via a Health Services Internship. She appreciates WCRC’s culture of sharing and helping one another, and the close-knit community we are so proud to serve, as well as our organizational values of cultural humility and active listening. When not volunteering at our help desk or studying, she can often be found hanging out and having a picnic with friends at Memorial Glade on the UC Berkeley campus.

Kiley Murakami

Help Desk Volunteer

Inspired by a personal connection to cancer, Kiley joined WCRC as a volunteer in August 2022. Her work with us allows her to express her found passion for broad community support for cancer patients. A second-year pre-med student at UC Berkeley, she appreciates the convenience and connection of our volunteer offerings to her educational career. Hailing from Southern California, she is also an enthusiastic basketball player and fan (go Lakers!).

Women's Cancer Resource Center

2908 Ellsworth St

Berkeley, CA 94705

510-601-4040

Women's Cancer Resource Center

The Women’s Cancer Resource Center improves equitable access to cancer information,

support and care.

All of our services are free,

and are funded entirely

by charitable giving.

ENORMOUS THANKS to

Page Hodel for gifting us with the use of these hearts

from her Monday Hearts for Madelene project!

DONATE NOW!