also of importance to women, and the lgbt community, your respective of marital status and sexual orientation. tomorrow at city hall, we will be holding a round table to discuss that issue as well. making some advancements, making international women's day relevant to the twenty first century. we have a lot of work to do together, but we will prevail. [applause] >> i just want to say that john proceeds me.

he came all the way just to be with us and convene meetings tomorrow. it is nice to have him and his family's commitment to the community. [applause] >> congratulations to all of the winners. we just did a show on foreclosures just a day. john, you would have been a great guest. i asked him about the proposed cuts to the home energy assistance program. it is up to everybody to make the phone calls. it is a crucial program not that we don't want cut. i hope you can stay around for the upcoming sessions because we have great conversations coming out.

a number of multinational corporations are actually approaching municipalities that are broke, why don't you let us take it over it will take off like wildfire. a4:45 for those of you that have to leave, thank you so much for coming. be sure to check out the incredible photos tonight. women all over the globe are taking to the streets to demand equal rights. [applause]

>> for those of us on the board, i know many of us have young ben

was in the city. i know a ton of my friends have left the city. one thing that the strike me as we have a ton of data, but it is a different places. this year, we will call for those constituents to come together to understand the issue better and, going forward, enacting policies to extend that period . of all the places i have been, this is my favorite. i am a born and raised san franciscan. more important, i represent district 2. i grew up in the marina district close to the palace of fine arts. my parents still live in the same set of plants that i live in. i went to grammar school here. i went to st. ignatius here. i am a proud wild cat. i went to college at loyola- marymount university in los

angeles. i had a scholarship to play baseball. i remember coming down here to christie field, when my dad was in the military, seeing how the beaches have transformed into but we have today. you cannot beat the views, of course. it just holds summoning memories and i can come here with our kids, our family. i ended up going to ireland to get a master's degree at the university college of dublin. i went back to the states and went to law school at university of pennsylvania. then i came back, and choosing to live in san francisco was natural to me. when you are a child, you do not realize what you had until you leave home. i had the opportunity to live in los angeles, abroad in ireland, and there is no place like home, when you are from san francisco. i have been a corporate attorney

at palo -- in palo alto. i became an >> i worked in the finance industry about 5 1/2 years. in the summer of 2009 i joined a venture capital firm with two other partners. >> we are all excited about the americas cup here in district two but one thing if you think about it everyone knows what fleet week is like here in the marina. this is fleet week on steroids. think about fort mason, these will be the most brings taken places to watch the americas cup. what we're working on and working to continue to work on and want your input on, how do we make it a positive experience for the people that live here. >> i'm happily married and my life and -- wife and i live around laurel village. we have two children, five around they. we are proud parents and now just excited to be here on the board. i think i'm in the middle. i'm a moderate person.

fiscal fiscally conservative and that is the way i intend to practice what i preach here. in terms of getting into politics, i think for me it was really that reasons. first being from here, i think that was part of my own motivation, feeling a sense of roots in san francisco. also raising our children here. i think we went through as a young family the discussion and dialogue that many young families go through. should we move to the suburbs? away decided to stick around and we are very happy we did. once you stick around i think it was a turning point to say we are here for good. what can we do to make this place better? there were a lot of lessons to be learned in running a race in san francisco. a few that stick out, money does matter. raising money. that is a simple, somewhat unfortunate fact if you want to be candidate. most importantly, one thing i drew out of it is hard work and

utter determination is the thing that will, i think, allow to succeed more than anything else. i came from the private sector and looking at honestly answering the question did i have something different to offer that i thought would be valuable it san francisco right now and i think a hrrpbl part of our -- large part of problems are financial and with my background i think i can add a lot of value and that is why i decided to bet in the race. >> it means there might be some small profit if you run it correctly but not always. that is something we really need to keep in mind in our city government. from my point of view is that. we have to figure out what is it lake -- like to be a business person in the city and what we can do to not only have full restaurants and bars but making sure it is worth it to continue to open successful places that make our community that much better. >> we have a huge unemployment

rate in san francisco. it is about 9.6%. the fact that we have not done much about that in city hall i think has it change. that certainly is something i will be focused on in the beginning here in city hall. putting people back to work. it is an individual issue but it is a family issue and we've a lot of families still struggling and i think people have lost sight of that. hopefully we will be getting out of the recession soon but we need to do a lot to accelerate getting out of that recession, making sure families are back at work and children are provided for. to me that is my biggest priority. i think that we do lose a lot of sight in the past district supervisors lost sight of the fact that we do represent san francisco as a whole and we need to make sure in city hall we are enacting policies, laws and legislation that move the city forward as a whole. these are the neighborhoods i grew up in, so for me it is fun to be in them to really understand what is going on and

be able it fundamentals some of the thinking and some of the people that are making decisions. >> right here we played football. flag football right here every year. we hung out right in the gym. directors looked after us. parents used to check in but not only one parent, they checked on all the kids. that is what is great about this district, the community. the family base of everything. >> exactly. and look how you turned out. you are doing ok. >> doing all right. two local city guys. >> there you go.

>> i tried to think about this room as the dream room, where we dream and bring some of those

dreams to life. i feel very blessed that i have been able to spend the last 31 years of my life doing it my way, thinking about things better interesting to me, and then pursuing them. there are a lot of different artists that come here to work, mostly doing aerial work. kindred spirits, so to speak. there is a circus company that i have been fortunate enough to work with the last couple of years. i use elements of dance and choreography and combine that with theater techniques. a lot of the work is content- based, has a strong narrative. the dancers have more of a theatrical feel. i think we are best known for our specific work. in the last 15 years, spending a lot of time focusing on issues

that affect us and are related to the african-american experience, here in the united states. i had heard of marcus shelby and had been in join his work but never had the opportunity to meet him. we were brought together by the equal justice society specifically for this project. we were charged with beginning work. marquez and i spent a lot of time addressing our own position on the death penalty, our experiences with people who had been incarcerated, family members, friends of friends. pulling our information. beyond that, we did our own research. to create a picture that

resonated with humanity. it is the shape of a house. in this context, it is also small and acts like a cell. i thought that was an interesting play on how these people make these adjustments, half to create home. what is home for these people? the home is their cell. people talk a lot about noise -- very noisy in prisons. that is interesting to me. looking at the communication level, the rise of frustration of being caged, wondering, where does redemption fit into the equation here? [singing]

i think both of us really believe the death penalty is wrong, and is flawed for many reasons. the list is as long as my arm -- about several others. we feel this is important for both of us, personally, to participate in the debate of this issue in a way that we can help people frame it for a conversation.

>> i came out to san francisco about seven years ago. i was trained as a carpenter. i got sick of the cold weather and the hot weather. i wanted to pursue art. i thought i really be here for about three years. here i am, 7 years later. ♪ i have problems sleepwalking at night. i wanted to create a show about sleep. a mostly due painting kind of story telling. these are isolated subject matters, smaller studies for the

larger paintings. i fell in love with it and wanted to create more of them. it is all charcoal on mylar. it is plastic. i was experimenting and discovered the charcoal moves smoothly. it is like painting, building up layers of charcoal. it is very unforgiving. you have to be very precise with the mark-making. a mark dents the paper and leaves the material embedded. you have to go slowly. the drawings are really fragile. one wipe and they are gone completely. it is kind of like they're locked inside. all of the animals i am showing

are dead. i wanted them to be taking -- taken as though they are sleeping, eternal sleep. i like to exaggerate the features of the animals. it gives it more of a surreal element. it is a release subtle element. -- it is a really is subtle elements. the range of reactions people get is that normally they get what i am trying to achieve, the sense of calmness, it's really gentle state of mind -- a really gentle state of mind, i guess. ♪ >> this is one of the museum's

longest art interest groups. it was founded by art lovers who wanted the museum to reflect new directions in contemporary art. it has been focused on artists in this region with an eye toward emerging artists. ♪ it is often at the early stage of their career, often the first major presentation of their work in a museum. it is very competitive. only a few artists per year receive the award. it is to showcase their work to have a gallery and publication dedicated to their work. ♪

i have been working with them on the last two years on the award and the exhibitions. the book looks at the full scope of the awards they have sponsored. ♪ it has been important to understand the different shifts within the award program and how that is nearing what else is going on in the bay area. -- how that is mirror beiing wht else is going on in the bay area. ♪ there are artists from different generations sometimes approaching the same theme or subject matter in different ways. they're artists looking at the history of landscape and later artists that are unsettling the history and looking at the history of conquests of nature.

♪ artists speak of what it means to have their work scene. often you are in the studio and do not have a sense of who is really seeing your work. seeing your own work at the institution have gone to for many years and has an international audience is getting the word out to a much larger community. ♪ >> just a few steps away from union square is a quiet corner stone of san francisco's our community to the meridian gallery has a 20-year history of supporting visual arts. experimental music concert, and

also readings. >> give us this day our daily bread at least three times a day. and lead us not into temptation to often on weekdays. [laughter] >> meridians' stands apart from the commercial galleries around union square, and it is because of their core mission, to increase social, philosophical, and spiritual change my isolated individuals and communities. >> it gives a statement, the idea that a significant art of any kind, in any discipline, creates change. >> it is philosophy that attracted david linger to mount a show at meridian. >> you want to feel like your work this summer that it can do some good. i felt like at meridian, it could do some good. we did not even talk about price until the day before the show. of course, meridian needs to

support itself and support the community. but that was not the first consideration, so that made me very happy. >> his work is printed porcelain. he transfers images onto and spoils the surface a fragile shes of clay. each one, only one-tenth of an inch thick. >> it took about two years to get it down. i would say i lose 30% of the pieces that i made. something happens to them. they cracked, the break during the process. it is very complex. they fall apart. but it is worth it to me. there are photographs i took 1 hours 99 the former soviet union. these are blown up to a gigantic images. they lose resolution. i do not mind that, because my images are about the images, but they're also about the idea, which is why there is text all over the entire surface. >> marie in moved into the mansion on powell street just

five years ago. its galleries are housed in one of the very rare single family residences around union square. for the 100th anniversary of the mansion, meridian hosted a series of special events, including a world premiere reading by lawrence ferlinghetti. >> the birth of an american corporate fascism, the next to last free states radio, the next-to-last independent newspaper raising hell, the next-to-last independent bookstore with a mind of its own, the next to last leftie looking for obama nirvana. [laughter] the first day of the wall street occupation set forth upon this continent a new revolutionary nation. [applause]

>> in addition to its own programming as -- of artist talks, meridian has been a downtown host for san francisco states well-known port trees center. recent luminaries have included david meltzer, steve dixon, and jack hirsch man. >> you can black as out of the press, blog and arrest us, tear gas, mace, and shoot us, as we know very well, you will, but this time we're not turning back. we know you are finished. desperate, near the end. hysterical in your flabbergastlyness. amen. >> after the readings, the crowd headed to a reception upstairs by wandering through the other gallery rooms in the historic home. the third floor is not usually reserved for just parties,

however. it is the stage for live performances. ♪ under the guidance of musical curators, these three, meridian has maintained a strong commitment to new music, compositions that are innovative, experimental, and sometimes challenging. sound art is an artistic and event that usually receives short shrift from most galleries because san francisco is musicians have responded by showing strong support for the programming. ♪ looking into meridian's future, she says she wants to keep doing

the same thing that she has been doing since 1989. to enlighten and disturbed. >> i really believe that all the arts have a serious function and that it helps us find out who we are in a much wider sense than we were before we experienced that work of art. ♪

>> what if you could make a memorial that is more about information and you are never fixed and it can go wherever it wants to go? everyone who has donated to it could use it, host it, share it. >> for quite a great deal of team she was hired in 2005, she struggled with finding the correct and appropriate visual expression. >> it was a bench at one point. it was a darkened room at

another point. but the theme always was a theme of how do we call people's attention to the issue of speci species extinction. >> many exhibits do make long detailed explanations about species decline and biology of birds and that is very useful for lots of purposes. but i think it is also important to try to pull at the strings inside people. >> missing is not just about specific extinct or endangered species. it is about absence and a more fundamental level of not knowing what we are losing and we need to link species loss to habitat loss and really focuses much on the habitat. >> of course the overall mission of the academy has to do with two really fundamental and