you tonight. >> the last time that i tried this, i pulled out a parking ticket. i got lucky this time. in spanish, hope, is aransa. and the plural is suransa many hopes. this is esperansas, in memory of sadako. >> for mother nature, and the ocean. but the rivers and the forest. who will speak for the redwoods and the brisle cones? for the sailors lost at sea, for the eyes that search for them, for the soldier and the soldier's widow. for the one in jail, and for

the one that waits for the one in jail. and for the one who never had a chance to speak and found guilty. for the lovers torn apart and for the ones kept apart by, laws and prejudices. for the spare rows and the humming birds and for the weeds and the hararas and for the women of gaza. for the one tortured in the darkness. for the refugees wrapped in barbed wire. for each and every human being who sleeps tonight out in the rain. for shelter, for every human being who sleeps tonight out in the rain. for the child with nostalgia to be born, for every child to get

home safe. for the elderly alone, for the worldwide end of hate, disease, and poverty. for a just world still to come, where no one goes hungry and the water is clean. and prisons are outlawed and schools are free. and exciting. and poetry, mandatory. for police and politicians. for the indians of the amazon and for the jaquar faced for extinction and for the battle to stop and for every last gun to be forged into a pen, and for the most hopeless, hopeless

in the world, those without even dreams to get by. here there is 100, 10,000 origamis waiting for you, floating in the rainbow of hope >> thank you. >> san francisco poet, that was moving. >> okay we mentioned something called the sisters of perpetual indulgence, if you don't know who they are, any san francisco event who does not have a sister back stage or on stage is not a san francisco event.

representing the sisterses of professional indulgence. >> as always, we are so honored to be a part of this magnificent celebration. i would like to also thank my sisters, sister patent leather and sister jaya gamoore and sister may joy in the wings. i would like to start off by making a confession, i have not filled out my wish. and my wish would be i wish donna sasha would give me her necklace, doesn't she look gorgeous? >> maybe dreams, maybe wishes do come true. so, today, we are gathered here in the heart of our city, beneath a symbol of energy and

life and hope for the world. you have decorated it with peace cranes and light. wishes and dreams, and most importantly your energy. and now, on behalf of the sisters of perpetual indulgence inc, we gather this energy and strength that we may send it to the nuns above and to give it to any and all that needs its strength. to release the energy of hope that this magnificent tree represents i will ask each and every one of you if you please every time you hear me say we say... you will evoke the words of harvey milk by saying as one group you got to give them hope. now please raise your hands towards the tree of hope and we say you got to give them hope.

for all lgbtq young people struggling with bullies and intolerance, we say that you got to give them hope for all transgendered people fighting to live with dignity and respect. we say you got to give them hope. for all of those who seek to protect the rights of lgbtq people across the world, we say you got to give them hope. for our sick and elderly in need of a will having word, a sign of hope, we say, you got to give them hope. each of us gathered here tonight gives witness to the power of hope in our dark world. to you, we say p you got to give them hope. >> to each of us struggling with our own dark places in our hearts, we say, you got to give

them hope. i asked each of you as you leave here tonight, a promise, to reach out to at least one person in your life this holiday season, and say, i love you. to give you strength to do so, we say you got to give them hope. now, i will ad lib just a little bit and also to all of those regions that have recently been affected by natural disasters the eastern sea board of the united states and japan and other places in the world we say you got to give them hope. and now, with the energy raised through or from this tree, from the energy raised in our hearts, we seal these blessings and anoint you all with a holy blessing with our love. please administer the glitter. last trouble we got in trouble

with housekeeping, so we will do pretend glitter. as it spreads may your love and cheer spread, may it remain on you as long as it is needed and work its way to every part of you that needs magic and light. and now, loudly please, repeat after me. 1, joy, more joy. always joy. and continue to repeat after me, blessed be... this blessed day. tuesday, december 4th, 2012. and as sisters as we always end our blessings, repeat after me, amen, awomen, and all of the others. thank you. and have a beautiful holiday

season. [ applause ] >> this is how we celebrate the holidays in san francisco, you are not in kansas any more. let's hear it for the sisters. before we go any further we have one more speaker and some of you have been siping wine, barefoot and bubblely, let's hear it for barefoot and bubblely, afterwards you will be enjoying food was donated by restaurants and asked again and again by so many organization and events and i want to recognize them with lots of enthusiasm, cafe, floor, hot cookies, bomba, garden, and paxis.

i am sure that i with missed somebody and before we close out we have one speaker that impersonally looking forward to, this is going to close out the program and at the close of those programs we will do a count down and if you think that tree is pretty now, wait until you see it lit. we are honored to have a special guest tonight, isabel ayunda, the best selling author and considered to be the world's most widely read spanish language author. now there is something her novels, the house of spirit and pola and the city of beasts some of the books have been made into films and inducted into the american academy of arts and letters and received the national literature prize and awarded the literature award and also a writer and humanitarian and how appropriate to have her here,

improving the lives of others around the world promoting hope and social justice, honored to have you here and your husband, william gordon, both are here tonight. she will share a message and i will her to do a short count down and i think that we will start at 82. probably ten. please join me in welcoming isabel iyenda. >> thank you, thank you, thank you. i feel like a rat compared to this lady. really, thank you for this invitation. hope, that is the key word for the year to come. not irrational, but realistic optimism, there are many good reasons to be very hopeful. it is time to put our losses

and frustrations in a paper bag and burn them. they belong to the past. the new year is like a last stage where we will write our dreams and hopes. what do we hope for? not only jobs, the end of the recession, and a congress that works for a change. let's be greetier. let's hope for a better country, and a safer world. for more compassion. and let's also wish for good fortune for this, our lovely city of san francisco. at the personal level, let's hope for less stress, because the crucial event that determine our life, are beyond our control. and that and good things just happen let's not blame

ourselves too harshly when things go wrong. there is usually room for a lot of mistakes and new beginnings. strength comes from overcoming obstacles. that is how we learn and never from our success. we learn from our mistakes. if we are here to end and we do all of the time we just turn around and start again. we all make foolish choices and yet we are here standing, aren't we? we san franciscoans feel entitled to good coffee and permanent happiness. [ applause ] >> i agree with the coffee. but happiness? it is over rated. there is something... there is nothing wrong with struggle, and some pain. if nothing hurts we are dead.

all of this wining about the state of the world is so annoying. the world may not be good, but it is certainly better than it was before. this is why i am hopeful never before has humanity had so many resources, knowledge, power, and information. it has never been so interconnected, we are stronger and smarter and we lived longer than our grand parents. it can certainly destroy the planet but probably we will not. we will improve it. because that is what we have been doing since the stone age. we are moving forward and hear in california, we are always a step ahead of everybody else. [ applause ] >> so these are my hopes for the next few months. that we can all have meaningful life. and that we can be close to

each other, and participate in our communities, and serve and volunteer. caring for others is cheaper than therapy, it makes a lot of sense and you get to meet nice people. >> i hope that we will be more joyful, creative and playful. that we will have less caution and more passion in matters of the heart. and that we will enjoy sorrowfully this crazy, and extraordinary city of san francisco. when we light this beautiful tree, let's make a wish. let's wish that all of us fall in love with life. thank you. [ applause ] >> i am going to buy one of her books now, i am telling you. >> all right, we are not starting at 82 because i want to see how that tree looks, are

they ready upstairs? there is my signal. let's start with 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. happy holidays. isabel. thank you so much for being here and all of the speakers and the people on stage and for coming up with this wonderful idea and if you don't come there won't be a party and so come against next year, my wish that you will ask me to mc this again next year, let's enjoy barefoot bubbly and the restaurants that i listed take your programs home, i'm donna, sachet. thank you. ♪

>> okay, good morning, everyone, and welcome to this press conference today. as you can see, i'm honored having the mayor here with us who is tremendous partner in this process. as well we have dr. morassi

from the department of health and women. and we have behind me a group of advocates that have tirelessly worked with our office and the community to make sure that domestic violence victims in our city are well treat and had provided with the services that they require in order to recover, in order to be able to move on. today we're also announcing a grant. we were given a grant of $650,000 from the department of justice. this is a grant that my office applied for with the assistance of casa de las mujeras. i don't know why i keep saying that. [speaker not understood] the issue of women's shelter and other organizations. the goal of this grant is to be able to enhance our ability to deliver services, especially for the most vulnerable victims of domestic violence. as many of you know, this year -- this month we celebrate domestic violence month. and every year my office has an

event that we do in order to educate service providers and the public about the things we can do in order to enhance our services. and we're so fortunate today that we're also getting this grant. the reality of domestic violence is a serious crime and don't let anybody else tell you otherwise. one in three households in the u.s. are impacted by domestic violence. around 22% of every women report having been the victim of domestic violence. if you walk into any of our prisons, you will find that the majority of the people that are in custody, that are in prison for violent crimes have themselves been either the victims or witnesses of domestic violence in the home. this is a real problem, and i think that we need to ensure that we focus on the victim and that we focus on the family and that we make sure that we continue to do everything that we can to protect the victims of domestic violence. this is not a personal issue.

this is not an individual issue. frankly, this is not a political issue. this is a public safety issue and i am so honored that our mayor is here to say a few words and then we're going to turn it over to dr. morassi and then we'll answer any questions you may have. >> thank you. let me begin by thanking our district attorney george gascone. he's been a wonderful leader, a very, very solid collaborater on this domestic violence challenge that we all have. you know, the month of october has been incredibly exciting, and whether we announce its a the innovation month or the orange month, we also have always committed it to being domestic awareness month. and the people that are standing to my sides and behind me really are to be congratulated because one of the reasons why district attorney gascone and the commission on the status of women are recognized by the

department of justice is because we have a solid, solid community-based level of organizations that touch literally every one of the survivors that come in to the services, reach out to them, making sure we're taking care of them, making sure we have community-based processes as well as services to help survivors and help the families. now, it's in the context of some very serious data that will be reviewed by everybody here, sobering data. 17% increase as reported by our adult probation on cases involving domestic violence. 47% increase in the crisis hotlines that we're receiving, whether they're nonprofits or coming through directly with the da or commission on the status of women, compared to last year of 47% increase. in child support cases, over

200% increases in those cases, they're reporting increases in some form of family violence associated with the child support cases. so, these are very sobering challenges that we have as a city and county of san francisco. and, so, it is within this context that the d.a. and the commission on the status of women went to and proceeded to get a grant application with our department of justice. and i will first and foremost thank president obama and the department of justice for recognizing a big gap that we have, a gap that is reflective of our multi-culturalism. and, therefore, this specific $650,000 grant is really to fulfill a huge gap that we had when we are looking at immigrant families. we're looking at particularly latino and asian families, but immigrant families who, for many years, we knew that we were not getting the right

level of reports, the right level of services because of the cultural gaps here. so, this is targeted and aimed at that gap. and it is, i think, very telling that we have our immigrant families stepping up and feeling confident in this city that they can work with all the community agencies that are involved here, and really try to help us end domestic violence because that's the goal of all these agencies. it isn't really to tolerate or just provide a service. it really is to end domestic violence. and that's been the goal of this city. and that's why we work so hard. george and our office. it is part of my new program as well, the interrupt, the predictive policing, the interrupting the patterns. the most important part of that is community organizing, dee anna and my office is doing, is really organizing our communities eastern better. and i think that with this emphasis on our immigrant

populations, that oftentimes don't get the initial treatment and word out because of the language blocks or the cultural barriers and the strong, strong cultural barriers here that really have a dominance of the male side of things and attempt to kind of squash this and make it other than what it is. * even we need to bring this out in the shout and making sure that all of our services are available, that there's reports and ultimately every agency here today wants to hold the abusers accountable at the highest level. we need to make sure that accountability is visible so that we can offer a preventive nature of these programs and stop domestic violence from ever happening. that's obviously the very strongest goal that we have to have, but we have to do it in the right way, holding people accountable, having multi-cultural services for the victims and survivors and allowing their voice to be heard, and not suppressed in any way. this is the goal of this grant, and it will i think help in the

next two years with every single agency. so, i am so happy for not only the department of justice and president obama seeing this to be important, but that all the family of agencies that we have are can you having together very strongly to prevent this from happening. so, migratefulness to especially the community-based agencies because without them we would not have the model programs that we have. * we wouldn't be able to penetrate the barriers that exist, or to offer hope to victims and their families for overcoming this very, very strongly challenged area of our city. and i want to continue making sure this city is very strong in this and makes it very visible as part of our public safety approach to everything that we do. thank you very much. (applause) >> next i'd like to invite to the podium dr. morassi, the director of our department of health.

>> thank you very much. i'd just like to take a minute to introduce who we have behind us today. esta solo futures without violence, cathy black. (applause) >> from the casa. from asian women's shelter we have orchid, [speaker not understood]. (applause) >> from mujeras juan a flores, and my commission on the status of women vice president nancy rodriguez, president julie sue, and commissioner andrea shorter. (applause) >> so, thanks to the work of the people behind me, i'm happy to say that despite the fact that our police department receives 4 thousand cases of domestic violence annually, to date we have zero domestic violence homicides. that's something to celebrate. (applause) * >> 10 years ago we were looking at 10 or 12 domestic violence

homicides a year. and today, knock on wood, we still have zero. it's really a testament to the community-based agencies, to the $3 million investment led by the mayor's office in direct services to our domestic violence direct services. and what the past year has taught us is that there are many misconceptions about domestic violence in our community, and i want to set the record straight. for the record, number one, domestic violence hits all demographics, regardless of income, regardless of education levels, it hits white, black, asian, latino, straight, gay, lesbian, transgender, young and old. number two, domestic abuse, whether physical, verbal, or economic is a crime. number three, there are dozens of resources to help those experiencing domestic violence represented by the folks behind

us. the city invests $3 million to provide crisis lines, emergency shelters, transitional housing, counseling and other vital services in dozens of languages. we're expanding these services substantially with this grant from the department of justice. and i just want to acknowledge maria and tara and paul henderson from the mayor's office for their work on this. (applause) >> language should never be a barrier to receive services or to report a crime. that's what domestic violence is, a crime. like what giants' pitcher romo did to the detroit slugger at the bottom of the 10th inning last night, let's strikeout domestic violence. together we are a world champion team just like the giants to end domestic violence in san francisco. lights out. game over. (applause) >> does anyone have any

questions for any of us? >> [inaudible] [speaker not understood]. >> let's set the record straight. this is a grant and we applied for it a long time ago. and we just got the grant award, number one. number two, my office has been holding the seminar for domestic violence awareness month for several years. so, the grant and this event has nothing to do with anyone. the other thing that i want to make really clear is that i think we need to -- and i'm going to use a metaphor here. we need to keep our aye on the ball. when it comes to domestic violence, the ball is not ross mirkarimi, it's not george gasc