24-hour Crisis hotline:
(415) 647-RAPE
San Francisco Women Against Rape provides resources, support, advocacy and education to strengthen the work of all individuals, and communities in San Francisco that are responding to, healing from, and struggling to end sexual violence.
Centering Sexual Violence, Disability Justice, and the Life Work of Patty Berne
Patty Berne was a brilliant thinker, artist, organizer, beloved community member, and an integral part of San Francisco Women Against Rape for nearly three decades. Patty helped profoundly shape SFWAR’s understanding and practice of Disability Justice, our work with disabled survivors, and our commitment to building movements that recognize how deeply our struggles and our liberation are connected.
We created this compendium to honor Patty and the work, analysis, creativity, and relationships she entrusted to our communities. It brings together Patty’s own poetry and prose, reflections from people who worked, organized, dreamed, learned, and built community alongside her, and photographs and artwork that hold pieces of the life and relationships surrounding that work.
We hope the compendium can be a living resource -something to return to, learn from, question alongside, and carry forward as we continue the work of ending sexual violence, ableism, and oppression in all their manifestations.
SFWAR has been rooted in community since 1973. Today, we continue to provide crisis support, peer counseling, support groups, advocacy, medical accompaniment, prevention education, volunteer rape crisis counselor training, and community organizing while centering those most impacted by sexual violence.
We invite you to sustain our work and DONATE TO SFWAR