>> i just want to make a public statement to acknowledge that appointments to the police commission and any commission which is a policy-making body is very important. i want to encourage about keep in front of our minds the importance of not only to elect women, but to work to get more women appointed to these bodies that help make legislative decisions for our city and county of san francisco. >> i am from san francisco. i grew up in the local neighborhood. i did my under deprad wait work at fisk university, where i studied political science with a concentration in public administration and worked eight years largely in the public sector. then i earned a master's degree from carnegie melon in pittsburg, pennsylvania. i spent some time as assistant executive director for a

non-profit. we did work if a lot of kids in the neighborhood. i have done fundraising for candidates and issues. i have experience with the federal reserve bank of san francisco. when i look around my neighborhood and see the changes that are happening, i so there is no neighborhood grocery store. i see that small businesses in particular are coming and going, and they haven't been able to really sustain themselves. from my work experience in working for the city in the mayor's office as well as in the non-profit, i had a good sense as to what some of the challenges were. when i look in the future, i could see more challenges coming. i thought i had a set of experiences and more importantly a passion and desire to serve. >> i understand that no one wants to have their programs cut. of course not. i also want everyone here to understand that no one up here wants to cut programs because they don't care about the population being served. there are no value ains here. we are all on the same team. it is a tough situation, as we

are here so that we can begin the work together. >> i am actually more forward thinking. for me it is less about being left or right, or in this town, moderate or progressive. it is really about the issues and about creating policies that will have a sustainable and lasting positive impact on the families that live here. it is very costly and difficult to do business in sfrinls, to raise your children in san francisco, and i would like to have a voice at that table to really create policies that will minimize that san francisco is not a big business-friendly city. i think we started to go in the wrong direction. the reason why we started walking down that path largely was because of political ideology. when you deal with me, you are dealing with facts, less than politics. i really want to have a positive impact on the city overall. >> good afternoon, everyone. how are you? >> good. >> it's a nice day today. thank you for coming out to our community event. please give a round of

[applause] to them. we have a lot of development going on. you see how lovely leland street looks. do you like it? >> yes. >> beautiful, isn't it? we are going to continue. we have a library that is going to be opening up in june. that's right. so i will see you all there at the library. there is a lot of activity going on. it is important we remain connected and engaged. >> would you mind if we were to pull the seniors together and translate for me in a mini meeting? >> yes, sir. >> what we are going ready to do is we are going to have a quick little mini meeting to -- because we didn't translate my short message before. >> i just want to say i want to welcome everyone to the event. >> we have folks in visitation valley only talking with visitation valley. we have folks in bayview again

only talking in a very small corridor of 3rd straight and the merchant corridor. we don't have people talking to the hill merchant association, doing patch. all these fragrmented conversations are happening, largely talking about the same thing, crime, keeping the streets clean, supporting sbaubs. that is something i made a concerted effort on the campaign to build bridges. >> along third street, dog patch, and everyone along the cord door has the same complaint. >> i have the same complaint. >> we have the third street merchant corridor and an opportunity to revite lies what i consider to be the main artery of the business district. it is a pretty long street. there is a lot of opportunity there. let's not squander that. when we recruit businesses, we want it to be a healthy mix that reflects the cultural

history of the southeast part of the city. we are all human, and how to connect with that human spirit, whether you are in public housing, own your own property, or if your asian, african-american, male or female, we are really a community. when we start to realize and move in the direction of being humans and having this human experience and connecting together, really if you will, being each other's keeper, then san francisco really begins to continue to thrive. >> the san francisco cons tri of flowers in golden gate park is now showing a new exhibit that changes the way we see the plants around us. amy stewart's best-selling

book, "wicked plants" is the inspiration behind the new exhibit that takes us to the dark side of the plant world. >> i am amy stewart. i am the arthur of "wicked plants," the weeds that killed lincoln's mother and other botanical atrocities. with the screens fly trap, that is kind of where everybody went initially, you mean like that? i kind of thought, well, all it does is eat up bugs. that is not very wicked. so what? by wicked, what i mean is that they are poisonous, dangerous, deadly or immoral or maybe illegal or offensive or awful in some way. i am in the profession of going around and interviewing botanists, horticulturalists and plant scientists. they all seem to have some little plant tucked away in the

corner of a greenhouse that maybe they weren't supposed to have. i got interested in this idea that maybe there was a dark side to plants. >> the white snake root. people who consumed milk or meat from a cow that fed on white snake root faced severe pain. milk sickness, as it was culled, resulted in vomiting, tremors, delirium and death. one of the most famous victims of milk sickness was nancy hangs lincoln. she died at the age of 34, leaving behind 9-year-old abraham lincoln. he helped build his mother's casket by carving the woodallen petition douche the wooden petition himself.

>> we transformed the gallery to and eerie victorian garden. my name is lowe hodges, and i am the director of operations and exhibitions at the conls tore of -- cons tore of flowers. we decided it needed context. so we needed a house or a building. the story behind the couple in the window, you can see his wife has just served him a glass of wine, and he is slumped over the table as the poison takes affect. a neat little factold dominion about that house is actually built out of three panels from old james bond movie. we wanted people to feel like i am not supposed to be in this room. this is the one that is supposed to be barred off and locked up. >> the ole andersonner --

oleander. this popular shrub is popular in warm climates. it has been implicated in a surprising number of murders and accidental deaths. children are at risk because it takes only a few leaves to kill them. a southern california woman tried to collect on her husband's life insurance by putting the leaves in his food. she is now one of 15 women on california's death rowan the only one who attempted to murder with a plant. >> people who may haven't been to their cons tore or been to -- do serve tore or their botanical garden, it gives them a reason to come back. you think let's go and look at the pretty flowers. these are pretty flowers, but they are flowers with weird and fascinating stories behind them.

that is really fun and really not what people normally think of when they come to a horticultural institution. >> "wicked plants" is now showing at the san francisco conserve tore of flowers. unless next time, get out and play. when a resident of san francisco is looking for health care, you look in your neighborhood first. what is closest to you? if you come to a neighborhood health center or a clinic, you then have access it a system of care in the community health network. we are a system of care that was probably based on the

family practice model, but it was really clear that there are special populations with special needs. the cole street clinic is a youth clinic in the heart of the haight ashbury and they target youth. tom woodell takes care of many of the central city residents and they have great expertise in providing services for many of the homeless. potrero hill and southeast health centers are health centers in those particular communities that are family health centers, so they provide health care to patients across the age span. . >> many of our clients are working poor. they pay their taxes. they may run into a rough patch now and then and what we're able to provide is a bridge towards getting them back on their feet. the center averages about 14,000 visits a year in the

health clinic alone. one of the areas that we specialize in is family medicine, but the additional focus of that is is to provide care to women and children. women find out they're pregnant, we talk to them about the importance of getting good prenatal care which takes many visits. we initially will see them for their full physical to determine their base line health, and then enroll them in prenatal care which occurs over the next 9 months. group prenatal care is designed to give women the opportunity to bond during their pregnancy with other women that have similar due dates. our doctors here are family doctors. they are able to help these women deliver their babies at the hospital, at general hospital. we also have the wic program, which is a program that provides food vouchers for our families after they have their children, up to age 5 they are able to receive food vouchers

to get milk and cereal for their children. >> it's for the city, not only our clinic, but the city. we have all our children in san francisco should have insurance now because if they are low income enough, they get medical. if they actually have a little more assets, a little more income, they can get happy family. we do have family who come outside of our neighborhood to come on our clinic. one thing i learn from our clients, no matter how old they are, no matter how little english they know, they know how to get to chinatown, meaning they know how to get to our clinic. 85 percent of our staff is bilingual because we are

serving many monolingual chinese patients. they can be child care providers so our clients can go out and work. >> we found more and more women of child bearing age come down with cancer and they have kids and the kids were having a horrible time and parents were having a horrible time. how do parents tell their kids they may not be here? what we do is provide a place and the material and support and then they figure out their own truth, what it means to them. i see the behavior change in front of my eyes. maybe they have never been able to go out of boundaries, their lives have been so rigid to sort of expressing that makes tremendous changes. because we did what we did, it is now sort of a nationwide model. >> i think you would be surprised if you come to these clinics. many of them i think would be your neighbors if you knew that. often times we just don't discuss that. we treat husband and wife and they bring in their kids or we

treat the grandparents and then the next generation. there are people who come in who need treatment for their heart disease or for their diabetes or their high blood pressure or their cholesterol or their hepatitis b. we actually provide group medical visits and group education classes and meeting people who have similar chronic illnesses as you do really helps you understand that you are not alone in dealing with this. and it validates the experiences that you have and so you learn from each other. >> i think it's very important to try to be in tune with the needs of the community and a lot of our patients have -- a lot of our patients are actually immigrants who have a lot of competing priorities, family issues, child care issues, maybe not being able to find work or finding work and

not being insured and health care sometimes isn't the top priority for them. we need to understand that so that we can help them take care of themselves physically and emotionally to deal with all these other things. they also have to be working through with people living longer and living with more chronic conditions i think we're going to see more patients coming through. >> starting next year, every day 10,000 people will hit the age of 60 until 2020. . >> the needs of the patients that we see at kerr senior center often have to do with the consequences of long standing substance abuse and mental illness, linked to their chronic diseases. heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, stroke, those kinds of chronic illnesses. when you get them in your 30's

and 40's and you have them into your aging process, you are not going to have a comfortable old age. you are also seeing in terms of epidemics, an increase in alzheimer's and it is going to increase as the population increases. there are quite a few seniors who have mental health problems but they are also, the majority of seniors, who are hard-working, who had minimum wage jobs their whole lives, who paid social security. think about living on $889 a month in the city of san francisco needing to buy medication, one meal a day, hopefully, and health care. if we could provide health care early on we might prevent (inaudible) and people would be less likely to end up in the

emergency room with a drastic outcome. we could actually provide prevention and health care to people who had no other way of getting health care, those without insurance, it might be more cost effecti i'm robert chief and i'm the park's supervisor in the parks in the sunset district. i've been working here for 3 years. we are 60-70 street below street level. the 64 acre park. the park is divided into 2

sections we are in the stern area. when you get over to pine lake meadow and pine lake, pine lake is considered a natural area. in 1847, the green family came out here, back then this was kind of an empty canyon and sand dun area. they claimed this property. in 1892. george green who's a second generation built the truckdaro club house. there was a hotel then. it was said this was the place to go if you were weary of the dirty city and the police. there were a couple of gun fights the front door has bullet holes. i don't ever repair them. 1931 stig mond bought the

property from the green family. she donated it to the city of san francisco and had a specification, i'm giving it to the city that will be used forever for the enjoyment forever of the people of the city of san francisco. it has ever since. every summer the stern grove association in san francisco rec and parks put on 10 free concerts. usually people come out at 10 in the morning it's a family affair. everybody is on the lawn with picnics and it's free. anybody can come out. it's a great way to spend a sunday. >> goes to 1-2 in the afternoon and runs until 5. [music]. thanks to the stern grove association they renovated the concert meadow. it used to be a rolling grafsy

area. put in a new stage and stage building. they put in terraces. we get from 8,000 to 12,000 people. and the meadow next to the concert meadow is full of people even though they can't see the music they hear it. i walked into the meadow several times and they don't even care. we do have literally events going on day and night. the concert association has kids days during the week. the performers come out for hundred 200 kids. now, the truckadero truck house gets rented out for weddings and retirement. the croquet clubs and horse shoes.

2 play grounds, tennis courts. we have from 25 to a hundred dogs here. it's like bisons going across the mid west. there are so many dogs they are covering the ground cht it's a get together. all the dog walkers know each other. if you go to pine lake day camp now, you will see 50 kids there. the r directors are wonder. >> the pine lake is natural. they take of the area around the lake. they plant natives that are drought tolerant. one that stands the dry summers here. the whole park is under going quite a bit of reconstruction. they will renovate the trails

around the lake. and the big project is the capital project for pine lake meadow. they are going to returf the dog run and the meadow by the day camp. we are looking for a very busy fall. by the spring of next year should have major renovations to the mark thal make it an outstanding park. i don't ever refer to it as my park. all the parks belong to all the people. this park belongs just as much to the families in the bay view sdrishth as it does to the gentlemen that lives across the street. i'm happy and proud to be the caretaker for them. i wake up every day and thank that i have