san francisco housing development corp. -- okay. on behalf of [inaudible] i guess you guys know that that is the owners proud daughter. for those that have supported juneteenth, i'd like to thank you very much and come out to the activities we will be having on june 19 and 20. we start with june 18, a comedy show at the african-american culture center. that will start about 7:30.

following that at 11:00 on saturday a.m., we will start the parade. the parade will be on fillmore, down fillmore to mcallister, mcallister into the civic center. at the civic center, we will have outstanding entertainment for the two days. we will have a health care, and housing corporation, an exhibit, and we are going to have some outstanding entertainment. one of the entertainers that will be on the program i see is here now. he is one of the entertainers, so many other entertainers will be there. i want to thank you very much for coming out. [applause] >> also, let me remind you that the san francisco black film festival that lady montague started in build up to be internationally recognized, that will be june 17 through 20, and we just want to encourage you all to attend that as well. we are so excited and grateful

to all of you for coming out. let me say very briefly that there are some people here who do not ever move to get their names mentioned, but i'm going to mention some of them right now. duane garrett, camille dawkins from the mayor's office, just as an outstanding job of helping and supporting on putting this together. mr. leroy king, keith jackson, reverend is male birch. fisher burch was here somewhere. he works with putting a parade together. the young lady who came out and accepted for kpoo. that is rachel townsend, my child. shelly tatum who just does outstanding work. montana jennings, tell helps raise money and he is a guy who does not mind raising money or doing groundwork, either, as all

of these people are. raymond brown. janet bonds, and janet sits at the table right there. she helps on every aspect. the jordan group, and ms. collins. all of you. we thank you for doing such an outstanding job, and let me say this, that every year they are accepting volunteers, so any of you looking for something to get involved in, there are a lot of good things to do. this is one of the many that you can get involved with and support. now, let me give you the very important direction -- there is food over on the other side. please help yourself. hang out with us a little while longer. god bless you. go in peace. thank you.

>> there has been an

acknowledgement of the special places around san francisco bay. well, there is something sort of innate in human beings, i think, that tend to recognize a good spot when you see it, a spot that takes your breath away. this is one of them. >> an icon of the new deal. >> we stood here a week ago and we heard all of these dignitaries talk about the symbol that coit tower is for san francisco. it's interesting for those of us in the pioneer park project is trying to make the point that not only the tower, not only this man-built edifice here is a symbol of the city but also the green space on which it sits and the hill to which is rests. to understand them, you have to understand the topography of san francisco. early days of the city, the city grows up in what is the financial district on the edge of chinatown. everything they rely on for

existence is the golden gate. it's of massive importance to the people what comes in and out of san francisco bay. they can't see it where they are. they get the idea to build a giant wooden structure. the years that it was up here, it gave the name telegraph hill. it survived although the structure is long gone. come to the 1870's and the city has growed up remarkably. it's fueled with money from the nevada silver mines and the gold rush. it's trying to be the paris of the west. now the beach is the suburbs, the we will their people lived on the bottom and the poorest people lived on the top because it was very hard getting to the top of telegraph hill. it was mostly lean-to sharks and bits of pieces of houses up here in the beginning. and a group of 20 businessmen decided that it would be better if the top of the hill remained for the public. so they put their money down and they bought four lots at

the top of the hill and they gave them to the city. lily hitchcock coit died without leaving a specific use for her bequest. she left a third of her estate for the beautify indication of the city. arthur brown, noted architect in the city, wanted for a while to build a tower. he had become very interested in persian towers. it was the 1930's. it was all about machinery and sort of this amazing architecture, very powerful architecture. he convinced the rec park commission that building a tower in her memory would be the thing to do with her money. >> it was going to be a wonderful observation place because it was one of the highest hills in the city anywhere and that that was the whole reason why it was built that high and had the elevator access immediately from the beginning as part of its features.

>> my fear's studio was just down the street steps. we were in a very small apartment and that was our backyard. when they were preparing the site for the coit tower, there was always a lot of harping and griping about how awful progress was and why they would choose this beautiful pristine area to do them in was a big question. as soon as the coit tower was getting finished and someone put in the idea that it should be used for art, then, all of a sudden, he was excited about the coit tower. it became almost like a daily destination for him to enjoy the atmosphere no matter what the politics, that wasn't the point. as long as they fit in and did

their work and did their own creative expression, that was all that was required. they turned in their drawings. the drawings were accepted. if they snuck something in, well, there weren't going to be any stoolies around. they made such careful little diagrams of every possible little thing about it as though that was just so important and that they were just the big frog. and, actually, no one ever felt that way about them and they weren't considered something like that. in later life when people would approach me and say, well, what did you know about it? we were with him almost every day and his children, we grew up together and we didn't think of him as a commie and also the

same with the other. he was just a family man doing normal things. no one thought anything of what he was doing. some of them were much more highly trained. it shows, in my estimation, in the murals. this was one of the masterpieces. families at home was a lot more close to the life that i can remember that we lived. murals on the upper floors like the children playing on the swings and i think the little deer in the forest where you could come and see them in the woods and the sports that were always available, i think it did express the best part of our lives. things that weren't costing money to do, you would go to a picnic on the beach or you

would do something in the woods. my favorite of all is in the staircase. it's almost a miracle masterpiece how he could manage to not only fit everyone, of course, a lot of them i recognized from my childhood -- it's how he juxtaposed and managed to kind of climb up that stairway on either side very much like you are walking down a street. it was incredible to do that and to me, that is what depicted the life of the times in san francisco. i even like the ones that show the industrial areas, the once with the workers showing them in the cannery and i can remember going in there and seeing these women with the caps, with the nets shuffling these cans through. my parents had a ranch in santa

rosa and we went there all summer. i could see these people leaning over and checking. it looked exactly like the beautiful things about the ranch. i think he was pretty much in the never look back philosophy about the coit. i don't think he ever went to visit again after we moved from telegraph hill, which was only five or six years later. i don't think he ever had to see it when the initials are scratched into everything and people had literally destroyed the lower half of everything. >> well, in my view, the tower had been pretty much neglected from the 1930's up until the 1980's. it wasn't until then that really enough people began to be alarmed about the condition of the murals, the tower was leaking. some of the murals suffered

wear damage. we really began to organize getting funding through the arts commission and various other sources to restore the murals. they don't have that connection or thread or maintain that connection to your history and your past, what do you have? that's one of the major elements of what makes quality of life in san francisco so incredible. when people ask me, and they ask me all the time, how do you get to coit tower, i say you walk. that's the best way to experience the gradual elevation coming up above the hustle and bustle of the city and finding this sort of oasis, if you will, at the top of the hill. when i walk through this park, i look at these brick walls and this lawn, i look at the railings around the murals. i look at the restoration and i

think, yeah, i had something to do with that. learning the lessons, thank you, landmarks meet landmarks. the current situation at pioneer park and coit tower is really based in public and private partnership. it was the citizens who came together to buy the land to keep it from being developed. it was lily hitchcock coit to give money to the city to beautify the city she loved of the park project worked to develop this south side and still that's the basis of our future project to address the north side.

let me tell you about the project and a lot about san francisco and by the end of this, you're going to feel like you have been buried about the new deal. i am only scratching the surface. i haven't even gotten through it. it's terrific. i recommend that is supplementary reading. homework assignment that you have to do that. i am going to tell you about the living new deal project and a lot of stuff that got done in san francisco and various other

places as well, too. we have to really learn from the last great depression. because, in fact, we might be having another one soon. the great depression was photo. the farm security division which turned good photographers into great ones. berkeley photographer dorothy alang. these give you an idea of just how apalling bad the great reh depression was. the best we have, as well as movies, it's difficult to million how it was. we tend to look back through

the safety net, which was created by the new deal. it was very difficult for young people to understand a time when there was no social safety net. when you lost your job, within a short period of time, you lost your home, food, everything. you were out on the street and your family broke up. it was an apalling time. one tow which some people would like us to return. here's a guy himself, that's actually a light bounce off of fdr roosevelt. this was his chakra. this was march 4th, 1933. he made the statement and he

made it, i didn't understand a long time. the point i was making, people were terrified. because it seemed like the economy had no bottom and the banks were going down and there was no federal deposit dollars. so imagine a time when we actually had a president who told us we should be courageous rather than trafficked in fear. to his own advantage. there's been a long war on the new deal. it was when roosevelt got started. almost immediately, the more than great realized the lengths he was willing to go. at the beginning, roosevelt didn't understand how far he

was going to go. the dupont family and the ones that set up the american liberty league. that was successful because they have unlimited amounts of money. there were so popular, they were not able to stop it. they began to finance right-wing think tanks. they have been successful to the university of chicago economics department and notable fraud such as milton freed man. the idea of neoliberalism is there should be massive,

selective tax cuts. margaret thatcher it is there is no alternative. of course that's absurd. there was an alternative. we have to connect the dots to understand what is going on today. i read the chronicle. so what i've done is put together a montage of the murder of public sector, which is going on everyday. in fact all of the public sector is in body shape. public libraries, parks from the municipal to the national level. our character is among the worst in the world.

the new deal deals with things in a different way. when i was going to school, california school's were the best. now they are among the worst with the new budget cuts. of course, my university is being privatized. all of the higher education is being privatized. all through the uc system. how do you run a modern state with tax cuts? we resort to desperate, back last november, we were asked to vote to make four indian casinos in san diego county pony up money.

i thought this was a joke. they voted to do it. now, the governor proposes to borrow against future revenues. how did they deal with these social problems when the economic problems were far worse than what we can imagine today? this is from larry halprin's. and it has these quotes from roosevelt on the wall. he said in one of his talks to the people, "the test is not whether we have more, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little".

it's a different philosophy than that which we have become used to. what i am going to show you is a lost civilization. it's a strange place. and yet, it becomes oddly familiar after a while because we built it and use it every day without knowing it. it has been buried. the living new deal project is like an archaeological dig. we are going after the new deal in california, but hope to extend throughout the united states. i thought that i am, photographer robert dosson could photo. it's gradually become a collaborative prejudice, which

is state wide and is being sponsored by the california historical society for research and labor employment at berkeley. this is part of the team. part of it is community involvement. we want people to become aware of what's around them. the records are terrible. he lives up nevada city. i told him what i was doing and he was consciencious. he had a stack of clippings about what the new deal had done in his area and walked around while he showed me

sidewalks and parks and schools and gardens and camps that had been done. he said, i didn't notice. then he became mayor. it's exactly the kind of thing we want. this is or was the living new deal site about a couple months ago. it's much denser now. san francisco county is the best documented of all the california counties. we think that all of california will look like san francisco now. when you begin putting in the work of the civilian conservation core, you find it's everywhere. we are talking about a lot of agencies. roosevelt loved building things. he was the lord of the manor at

hyde park. it shows roosevelt in his convertible. if you visit there, you could see he could drive using the upper part of his body. he's pointing to the plans of the hyde park. he was quite a passable architect. once he became president, he was able to build a lot more. even though henry loose was generally opposed to roosevelt. we ran a double page on his to

show how the work he had done. i couldn't get it all on my standards. in the west, you would see without the new deal projects, the republican voting sun belt cities wouldn't exist. they were built at that time. so, it's as i say. there was at least a dozen agencies that left remnants. i am going to give you a primer on all of these. the premise was to put people to work. there were agencies that covered all of these. the land had been ruinned by a variety of things. this is one of the posters and these are archival photographs.

this shows the ccc boys. many of them had been riding the rails. they were starving. they were illiterate. here they are in one of the camps, which were run by the army and it was like a military organization. they were out in the wilderness. you could leave if you wanted to. this was a civilian conservation core. this is not trickle down next. in fact, it worked. it began to float local economies. they did an enormous amount of

work. they wanted millions of trees. i looked over into alabama across a great forest of trees that were 70 years old. they're planted in huge numbers. imagine the kind of wildlife that becomes. they did an enormous amount of work and when the war was here, there was ready to go fight. this was not what this was intended to do. there are a few statues. they built a lot of lodges and visitor centers. these are just beautiful. amount of landscapes of ccc. this is the