supervisor avalos: good morning. welcome to the city operations and neighborhood services committee. my name is supervisor john avalos, the chair of the committee. joined to my right by supervisor eric mar, to my left, sean elsbernd.

madam court, please share with us your announcements -- clerk, please share with us your announcements. >> if you wish to submit a copy of your presentation to the committee, please submit a copy. >> please call item one. >> item 1. resolution authorizing the office of treasurer-tax collector to accept and expend a grant in the amount of $240,000 from the earned assets resource network for kindergarten to college program participant incentive funds. supervisor avalos: great. >> good morning. i am with the treasurer-tax office. this is an accept and expend for the initial pilot years of the program. one of them is the dollar per dollar match funds up to $100, for a famine that saves up to

$100. we will provide a dollar match for that. the second is the $100 saved steady incentive. when a family has direct posit, we are going to provide another $100 to that account to provide an incentive. this provides the funding in order for us to have that. we would like to think the current assets resource network and the san francisco supervisors for doing this. supervisor avalos: is there any other general fund support? in last year's budget there was. >> there is a general fund support for the program, over all, but not for the incentives. in fact, the incentives are provided because the city is doing the $50 per student, $100 for students to qualify for free or reduced lunch. supervisor avalos: last year, it

was a bit of a hot potato in the budget. this year will be smooth sailing? >> that is my understanding. there have been no issues. supervisor avalos: the question last year was new program while we were cutting other services. in the end, we approved the program, which i think has great value for initiating savings in families. i thought it was a worthy program to support in the end. this year, it looks like it is going forward. very good. any other questions from the committee? public comment. >> good morning. my name is douglas yepp. i would like to speak out in favor of this item, but i have some cautionary statements.

some of my neighbors were concerned that the government was expanding its reach a bit too far. whatever explanation i gave them did not satisfy them. one of the concerns they mention is that there should be more emphasis on primary and secondary school education, rather than trying to expand the government's scope to college education. so in a sense, i tend to agree with them. if a child does not get a good primary and secondary education , whatever dollars you give them available for college will probably be wasted, even if the child showed interest in going to college. the other concern i have that some of my neighbors mentioned to me was whether there was any emphasis on vocational education. it is no secret we need more plumbers, engineers, etc., so i would like to offer some of my

neighbors suggestions, that some of the money be used for vocational education. by the time they graduate from high school, it should be clear sailing through the apprentice program, and then they would have jobs that could support their families in the future. thank you. supervisor avalos: thank you. is there anyone from the public that would like to comment on this item? seeing none, public comment is closed. motion moved forward without recommendation. voted to the full board with recommendation. please call item two. >> this will also go as a committee report. item 2. resolution authorizing the port of san francisco to accept and expend a grant in the amount of $7,783,556 from the department of homeland security, 2009 port security grant program fund, for the pier 27 cruise ship terminal security system at the port of san francisco.

>> good morning, mr. chairman. director of homeland security at the port of san francisco. i come to request approval of an accept and expend of $7,783,556 to install and maintain the infrastructure. supervisor avalos: thank you. public comment. >> good morning. my name is douglas yepp. i would like to speak in favor of this item. i know this may bother some people but in my discussions, it seems san francisco has been overlooked as a target for terrorists. some people think that no one

would dare to damage san francisco's reputation as a tolerant city, but i, among others, feel like our enemies might be bold enough to use our tolerance against us. this item should be approved, and it would be well-used, especially when there has been some emphasis on the federal level to inspect incoming cargo containers. thank you. supervisor avalos: thank you. we will close public comment period moved forward as a committee report with recommendations. item three please. >> item 3. resolution authorizing the port of san francisco to accept and expend a grant in the amount of $1,612,357 from the department of homeland security, 2007 supplemental infrastructure protection port security grant program for homeland security improvements on the port's waterfront.

>> this is a three-part accept and expend authorization. pier 50 emergency power. there is no emergency power at this point. high-security sensing, phase three. that is continued installation of fencing throughout the court. and finally, building occupancy function program. this is a resiliency system to get our system on line after a disaster. supervisor avalos: thank you. we will open this up for public comment. seeing none, public comment is closed. colleagues? motion moved forward with recommendations as a committee report for tomorrow's board meeting. without objection.

thank you, colleagues. that is our agenda. we are adjourned.

what this all about is your right to freedom of speech. what made america great is an independent, vigorous presence. if a jerk burns a flag, america is not threatened. political speech is the heart of the first amendment. they're expressing their religious beliefs. now is the time to make justice a reality for all of god's children. captioning provided by the freedom forum first amendment center welcome to speaking freely, a weekly conversation about the first amendment, the arts, and american culture. i'm ken paulson, executive director of the first amendment center. david crosby has written and performed some of the most powerful music of the past 35 years. throughout his solo career and his years with the byrds; crosby, stills, nash, and young; and now cpr, he's demonstrated that music can make a difference. now he's teamed with david bender,

a founding contributing editor for george magazine, to write stand and be counted: making music, making history. welcome, gentlemen. it's a book about courageous musicians and courageous music, and at a time when i read on the front page of the new york times that record companies are routinely self-censoring themselves to enhance marketability of music, why this project, why the book, and why the television show now? well, to pick one of your words, courage. we are both very taken with human courage. our heroes have been people who had the guts to stick up for what they believed in, and we saw that there had been no one looking at music being used to gather people in a cause as a phenomenon. the two biggest events in the last 50 years in american history were civil rights movement and the vietnam war.

civil rights movement was all activism. all. vietnam war-- strongly affected by it, strongly affected the outcome, strongly affected the length of that war. we know that now. we looked at this, and we said, "jeez, you know, nobody's looking at it as what it is." how did it get here? where did it-- nobody mandated, "there shall be benefits," you know? how did this come about? well, right away, you run into the name pete seeger. right away you run into woody guthrie. we--i asked david to research it, and david came back with, there is no other work written on this subject, and that was irresistible to us. you know, we feel very strongly about it. we knew we had an advantage if we went to speak to the people who do it, you know? i don't have to walk in cold. i'm not, you know--it's like, "how did you boys meet?" i know, you know, who i'm talking to,

and generally, we're at least acquaintances if not close friends, and we're talking about events that we did together or that we've done, you know, separately, but the same event, you know, at different times. and it gave us a window into these people that other people didn't have. we asked them, "what really matters to you? "what are you willing to put yourself on the line for? "what are you willing to put your rep and your honor "on the line for?" (bender) "and why?" (crosby) "and why?" (bender) you should see their eyes light up when you ask that question. it draws something out of them equivalent to the music. it's the passion. it comes from that place that is expressed often in the art, but when you're doing an interview on a talk show, you don't normally have the chance to do it. i would watch it-- as a fan of the music, i got to watch david talking to many of his peers, some he'd worked with, some he hadn't met before, and there was an exchange and a give and take

that you wouldn't see anywhere else. it was a joy for me, but it also elicited some of the true motivation that i hadn't known about before. i hadn't known that bonnie raitt, as a young girl growing up, was fascinated by joan baez because they're both quakers, and they came out of that tradition-- (crosby) antiwar stuff was, you know, served with breakfast for them. something we learned in doing the stand and be counted and something you'll see in the documentary, that these are the stories of where people come from. where did--what sparked them to do this? it didn't happen for the same reasons for everybody, but everyone has a story to tell, and we learned a lot in doing this project. (paulson) and as you point out in the book, it's not about your career per se, but when you talk about the kind of music that's a big part of the book, you're in the middle of it, and i wanted to ask you about, in particular, one song and one period of time. crosby, stills, nash, and young, top of the world, teach your children is riding the charts,

and then we have the horrible shooting at kent state, and neil young walks in with a song. and today, you'd have a meeting of the marketing department, and say, "no, teach your children "has got to run another 24 weeks, "and then we can cycle it out, and we'll never record and release anything like ohio." what was that conversation about? abandoning-- literally abandoning a hit record in favor of a statement. you're right; it's something that couldn't happen now. we have different people running the record companies now. they're lawyers and accountants, and they absolutely wouldn't do that. we were in a position then when we were very strong, and we had an ally: ahmet ertegun, who was one of the really great old men of the record business and a gentleman and our mentor. nash did an astounding thing, because that was his song that was going up the charts, and he pulled it. (paulson) and he believed in ohio? he believed in it and he pulled it. he knew that we had to put ohio out immediately.