Progressive Oakland Women Empowering Reform (POWER) is a volunteer group of Oakland women, whose founders include officers and members of the League of Women Voters, the American Association of University Women, the Mills College Alumnae Board of Governors, and the National Women’s History Project. The group was started c. 2011, and have sponsored such events as the annual Delilah Beasley Tea at the Pardee Home Museum, and the Oakland Suffrage Parade in 2011 which celebrated 100 years of women's right to vote.
On Saturday, March 22nd, 2014 they co-sponsored an event at Mills College, focused on five distinguished women from Oakland's past. Local author and social commentator Daphne Muse moderated a round table with modern day enactors of these notable personages: the founder of Berkeley’s hospital, Alta Bates; the educator Anna Head; the first African American teacher hired by OUSD, Ida Louise Jackson; the internationally known investigative journalist Jessica Mitford; and the humanitarian Mother Mary Ann Wright.
The honoree of the 2015 Delilah Beasley Tea was Arabella Martinez.
The honoree of the 2016 Delilah Beasley Tea was Kimberly Ellis, the executive director of Emerge California.
The group was originally called Progressive Oakland Women for Empowerment and Reform, but they changed it c.2014.
Links and References
- Progressive Oakland Women for Empowerment and Reform on Waterfront Action
- P.O.W.E.R. website
