By: Cicley Gay

Bobbie Wrenn Banks, WAND director of education and outreach, and Cicley Gay, STAND director and program associate for partnerships and youth, traveled to the San Francisco Bay Area this fall and met with enthusiastic WAND, WiLL, and STAND contingents.

Representatives from 25 women’s, peace, and human-needs groups gathered at Oakland City Hall for a lively exchange of news and ideas. From this emerged a new coalition, the Bay Area Women’s Coalition Against the War (BAWCAW), which made its debut at the October 26 San Francisco march against a U.S. war on Iraq.

Loni Hancock, newly elected to the California Assembly, attended the meeting and expressed great interest in working with the Women Legislators’ Lobby (WiLL, a program of WAND) and California groups toward our common goals.

Cicley Gay led a panel discussion on “The Role of the United States as a Peacemaker” at Mills College, along with STAND member Alix Jerinic and WAND board member Margo Okazawa-Rey.

A dozen young women who are members of the Mills Civic Leadership Institute also spent a day with WAND in a workshop on the federal budget, with a focus on the U.S. war on Iraq.

WAND’s programs in California, and the women who participated, stand out as a source of hope in these troubled times, and a powerful part of WAND’s national movement for women-led change.