WORDS AS MEDICINE
It’s early morning in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, misty and cold. Hypodermic needles and food wrappers litter the streets. Two men in ragged clothing scream at each other on a corner across from an outdoor vegetable market, and one flashes a knife.
A group of men shivers on the sidewalk. People in business suits holding briefcases stride past them. Students clutch smartphones on their way to classes, and tourists walk by with eyes fixed on their maps.
One man stops – a large man in a black Oakland A’s hat, with a beaded wooden rosary draped over his hooded sweatshirt – and recites a verse from a hip-hop poem, a prayer he’s written just for the men.
He’s the Reverend Harry Louis Williams II, known in Oakland and the Tenderloin as OG Rev. For the past two decades, he’s walked the poorest neighborhoods in the city, connecting with people through poetry and prose. His ministry is clear, writ large on his website:
If you’re looking for a preacher to
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