Julia Vetromile

Bio coming soon.

Bobby Jones-Hanley

Bio coming soon.

Jason Mitchell

Bio coming soon.

Leslie King

Leslie joined the Black and Jewish Unity Coalition in 2023 and is grateful to be part of an inclusive, social justice organization that strives to build the resistance to and offer solutions for the widening disparities and racism in our American society. 

Throughout Leslie’s adult life she has been engaged in education and advocacy work in community organizations and public schools; in personal growth education; and involved in creating social services for people with legal, mental health, medical needs, and drug addiction issues. 

Leslie was born and raised in Cincinnati Ohio. Her family had deep roots in the Bronx, NY established by her paternal grandparents who fled the Odessa pogroms against the Jewish people in the early 20th century and her maternal grandparents left Hungary for the U.S. at the same time due to antisemitism. 

Although in the 1960s Ohio was a conservative place segregated by race and religion, she was fortunate to attend a fully integrated school 7-12 that drew from the entire city of Cincinnati. As a teen in the 1960s, she was influenced by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Her social activist Rabbi introduced her to readings by James Baldwin, while the same Rabbi and some family friends joined the movement in Selma. Although dance, music and swimming were key parts of her youth, her volunteer work at Head Start, combined with the MLK and Kennedy assassinations and the VietNam war propelled her to leave Ohio to join the movement in California in 1969. 

In the Bay Area she joined the multitudes of community and student activists in the anti war movement. In the course of this work she was part of building a multicultural United Front that was connected to the national movement. The movement was determined to end the military draft, the Vietnam war, and participated in the Civil and Human Rights movements which were aggressively fighting disparities and racism in America.

Despite the increased pressures from law enforcement during the Nixon/J.Edgar Hoover era, she and many others sustained the resistance movement on the Midpeninsula. Leslie helped to meet the needs of the underserved populations by providing health clinics, drug treatment programs, tenants unions, and much more locally. In 1973 she was part of a team of activists who joined the Occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota in February 1973 to assist in providing health services while people were under threat by the Federal government. These experiences built a strong political, personal and spiritual bond with many people, and happily, this included her current husband Bob King. 

Leslie and her husband Bob King are currently living in Sunnyvale. Fortunately, they reconnected after 20 years and have been married since 1993. They are a blessed interfaith, blended family of multi cultural backgrounds that include one granddaughter and 4 sons with Mexican American, African American and Jewish histories. 

Professionally, she has worked as a public high school teacher with a focus on providing a full curriculum for immigrant teens who are English language learners from all over the world; was a partner with Bob, and manager in their rural health care business; a writer and researcher as a paralegal; and in early years she worked in the electronics industry, and assorted jobs. 

Education: Para legal research and writing; Psychology, psychiatric technician AA; BA history, political science; K-12 Social Science teaching credential; MA Education, with emphasis on multicultural teaching. Continuing Education courses in creative writing. 

In her semi-retirement years she is a substitute teacher and tutor in the Sunnyvale community and spends much time with family in Grass Valley. She and her husband Bob are members of Congregation Beth Am in Los Alto Hills, are followers of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta,GA. She is engaged in local educational pursuits to provide Ethnic Studies in the CA public schools.

Bob King

Bob joined the Black and Jewish Unity Coalition in 2022 along with his wife Leslie while the organization was meeting on zoom which allowed them to participate from Sunnyvale without going to SF. Being active ardent seekers of justice, they felt at home. Leslie is Jewish and Bob is from a Black Baptist Church past and now. He felt an additional place for their union and efforts to serve communities to grow. 

Bob is a proud Palo Alto native. He grew up in south Palo Alto where a Black population was at best 8% of the total population. Most of the black population was in a 5 block rectangle from the railroad tracks West to El Camino Real where he lived. Bob was raised going to Jerusalem Baptist Church which his family helped to build and the names of his Grandmother and relatives are on the cornerstone of the church. Thanks to research by his youngest son Elijah, Bob learned that his great grandfather Tuck Greer was a slave in Texas and is listed on The Dawes and Freedman's Rolls of 1900. The family roots drew his family to memorable visits during his childhood and the few remaining elders are still in Texas. 

After Gunn high school graduation, Bob attended Stanford university, participated in the Black Student Union and the larger anti Vietnam movement on campus and throughout the Bay Area. He left to help build a youth school, community garden in East Palo Alto and then a Redwood City medical clinic for an underserved 

community. Here he was trained as a Physician Assistant and he discovered his passion. He had always believed health care was a right and was frustrated by seeing low income people receiving poor care. The clinic educated their patients in self care and confronted the County regarding its low interest in preventative care for the poor. He became an activist in defending community health and the right of self determination. 

In 1973 Bob received a phone call at the clinic on behalf of the American Indian Movement and the Oglala Sioux Tribe to help with their medical needs in Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge. They were protesting to assert their self

determination, their right to keep their customs and a treaty that promised land rights on their Reservation.This was met with violent response from the Federal government. Bob and Leslie were ask to form a group who would deliver food, clothes and medical help and equipment to the territory. 

Upon returning to the Bay Area he decided to pursue a career in Respiratory Care and went to community college to get his training which was based at Stanford Medical Center. After graduation, he worked there for several years and became the Technical Director Respiratory Care at the Children’s Hospital at Stanford. 

Following another of his passions to build a ranch and farm, he bought land and moved to the CA Sierra Foothills with his first wife and son. Eventually, he founded a private Respiratory Home Care business called Community Home Medical, Inc. The goal of the company was to provide respiratory healthcare to low income rural and minority communities in nearby cities. The disparities of access to medicine, poor treatment and increased illnesses in minority communities required more than his small business could provide. 

Therefore, in1994 he was invited to Washington by The Black Caucus of The United States Congress to address the question: “ Can Minority Providers Survive Health Care Reform.” Many suggestions were heard, but not implemented because the medical system was being overtaken by HMOs and monopolies. 

By 1993, Bob and Leslie, both single, met again after 20 years, and he was overjoyed when she agreed to marry him and move to Grass Valley. In 2005 he and Leslie returned to the Bay Area where he continued as a respiratory therapy practitioner in multiple hospital settings and with all age groups. During three years of that time,he was also an Adjunct Professor of Respiratory Therapy at Foothill College. 

After auditing some health classes, in 2016 he was encouraged to return to Stanford University, at 66 years old. He was able to study asthma and received a fellowship to study and suggest methods to reduce repeated pediatric asthma emergency room visits. The hospital location was in the West Oakland community.

He graduated with a degree in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity- Health and Wellness in 2018. 

He continued to practice respiratory therapy and semi retired after the COVID epidemic in 2021. He is now a Substitute Teacher in Middle Schools because he believes that if children “learn how to learn” they will gain confidence for their future. With his medical background, he is also a sub for special needs children mild to severe. Throughout Bob’s life he has played music, loves sports and being a father of 4 sons and grandfather to one sweet girl. 

Education: Foothill College Respiratory Care Program, AS 

Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, BA.