>> good evening, everyone. my name is syria i'm the executive director of artists ease cultural center it's my pleasure to ask the honorable mayor ed lee to come to the stage and say a couple of words (clapping.). well, thank you syria and also thank you for your our leadership and arab cultural center. i wanted to be here tonight i don't have enough time to watch the american stories i understand it's about community

and community believe and it themes isulnar valuable i know you'll have a wonderful panel discussion afterwards but i want to signal my american heritage month in the city and stress to you the importance of building bridges to utilize our city to the vandal. i want to make sure our city government as well as the things we do continue that strong history of diversity in our city. i i know the americans community is strong and we need to promote that. i hope that with this film and with the theme with e and with the panel discussion that all of us do our part in being

ambassadors of our different cults and continue breaking the barriers and creating understood. having come back from soul contemporary and china we're welcome to be a voice in the rest of the word where there's misunderstanding for a lot of things. here we had a better job in san francisco promoting the understanding and want to continue that leadership. let the film begin but thank you for reaching out across our different communities to built a stronger international community. thank you very much equal good

everybody and thank you for being here to witness and a celebrate the signing of dues process for all ordinance in san francisco. and first, i'd like to commend supervisor avalos for your work supervisor in bringing this important legislation to this body before the board and public. i want to thank all the other supervisors as a role wholly know they spent a lot of time on this to think about the changes we're macro and i especially want to give a particular things to tang and kim for oh,

amendments it strengthened the ordinance itself. i also want to give a very strong thank you it the numerous agencies about public safety but the cabinet rights ease the cabinet advocates many are in the room today including the groups that xhiepsz is rights committee i had the opportunity to hear the stories of victim who were getting tangled up with icing detainers for trying to cooperate with our police department. i'm also glad to have our police chief and he also is the first chief in the state of california to support assemblyman trust act which all of you has been signed

by governor brown. thousands of our members of our limited english and immigrant community, in fact, all our commensurate's live in fear of did he portion and they've mistrusted the system. so this is a message i want to send by the signing of this ordinance and i'm speaking to our immigrant communities that's it's safe absolutely save to call the police if you're a victim or witness to a crime. everyone knows we need to stand against s come we also retain some local flexibility to deal with violent felons and while we compromised on that aspect of it

and understood how complicated that was that perhaps we had points of view on we never lost sight of getting rid of s came. so we do what i think other government's should do we found the common ground and that's why i'm proud to be signing this ordinance. i'd like to take p the opportunity to invite supervisor avalos what it's meant to him but basing also to the rest of the city. thank you, mr. mayor. and i want to thank you for your work on this legislation. we met in early august to discuss this item and i was very impressed with how much you thought about the issue and what the city is facing and the

immigrant in inform and around this country is facing with the s come system. your well, with our staff. i want to thank law enforcement as well as for your input in contrast this legislation and thank you sheriff and the police departments who helped craft this legislation. i most of all, i didn't bring this legislation forward as the defense economy did interest i represent a district about 50 percent of usor foreign-born so some people on the street have experience with immigration that are really unfair to the contributions they're making in san francisco but the organizing that was good morning and the conversation was very, very

strong and actually passing this legislation and doing the advocacy puts you tell u us at a higher level to protect immigrants. and the relationship we build between government and community will strengthen our police efforts to make us safer. and most of all, i want to thank people like nellie who got entangled as a victim and later spent 8 months facing deportation procedures. no one should have to have fear of calling the police wondering if they're going to get deported. people should be able to come forward as witnesses or victims and this legislation helps that happen. as the mayor said no one here

should have any fear again if you're immigrant call the police whether you're a victim or witness. i want to thank the colleagues. i do want to thank supervisor kim for helping to bring forward amendments we worked all agree on to move forward this legislation. everyone are regardless of our citizenship status should have due process and it's a constitutional right and it's the fifth amendment of our constitution and we here in san francisco uphold that and we say that our values should drive our values. thank you, mr. mayor. look forward to your signing this legislation

(clapping) there it is, done (clapping) ♪

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ hello, welcome to meet our district supervisor. i've neon norm from district 7 which includes accident twin peaks and san francisco wood and other neighbors neighborhood today, we'll get to know him and talk about the tough issues. welcome supervisor thank you for joining us let's talk about our background. i was born in san francisco and

i grew up in the north area and basically went to the public schools and jean parker and san frays parker. i lived in this area and from there, i went to city college then i went to cal and received my bachelors in civil engineer and worked there for about a decision that's not where my passion was so i left the job and went back to school and never turned back. that's what i've been doing pretty much all my life in the classroom or working on organizations that will focus on children and families. that's a little bit about my

bathed >> born and raised san franciscan good for you. why did you choose to stay in the city >> i love the city. i'm very passionate about the city. i made the decision to focus on children and the families. i keep on asking the same question when i was younger why would i want to focus my efforts in san francisco. are there other places in the world where i could make a difference. i'm talking about the late 50s and 60s. there was at that time, a lot of population coming in from china. it was an opportunity for me to help people that were struggling

in awe second amendment and getting used to things over here. >> what motivated you to get involved in politics. >> part of my motivation i guess you have to look at where i started. i as i mentioned he earlier i wanted to help people and at the time it was children and family. after many, many years of serving people i realized in providing services that somehow, i have to impact the decision-makers so i started advocating on issues i cared about. i was somewhat effective and wouldn't it be nice if i could do something different i ran an organization for 20 years.

i felt i needed to grow as much as the impact i made the decision to leave the organization and asked myself now what. i want to make a bigger impact that's when i ran for the school board. people said you you've been involved in the issues and being in the classroom and one that grew up and having two daughters it seems like a natural thing to get into. i judgment into being an elected official >> you've worked on the school board house has that prepared you. >> there's a couple of of things that prepared me to be on

the board of supervisors. number one i not only came in there the ranks vs. the youth director and tutoring uneven he run your organization and you can't miss like running the organization especially, when you're faced with cuts how do you handle the cuts. and in better years when you get some center funding how can you use that funding effectively. so those opportunities helped me to be on the school board. for 8 years on the school board we had to talk about kit because of state funding. again, it grew my experience in

how do you handle this and work with the community to make those. and once you do that how to you articulate that. those experiences lend themselves really well. >> we're going to talk about the budgeting but what did you learn about campaigning. it was really interesting on the school board you have to campaign citywide. and when you do it citywide you can talk about the issues by nobody confessors about the same issues. you have to do it at two levels.

one you need to focus on the district issues at the same time there's a lot of special interest groups that are not focused on those issues but we're on the citywide issues. you have this tension how do you balance it so people who care about the citywide issues what makes sense to them. i made a decision citywide issues are also going to be there but if i'm going to run i have to look at the interesting issues. so i listened to people. it was early on i made the decision to start knocking on doors and asking people and say

i'd like to hear about your issues. it's really difficult to do that after awhile because people asked what's our platform. i didn't have a platform i listened to people my platform was on what people are interested in >> i mentioned that citywide issues are different. >> there are many issues one of the things is counts economy in san francisco is improving a lot. we didn't take a hit like the rest of the country. i look at the stats today and how are the wider margins in cal

how do we sustain, you know, that growth so everybody can prosper. it shouldn't be just for the wall street folks but it should be for the mainstream. so that's one of the things it's always a challenge in the city to make sure there's prosperity for all >> san francisco is always facing cuts and whether or not to increase taxes how will you approach those. well, that first of all, i'd like to say as i mentioned earlier when i was the executive director of an organization and being on the budget committee

for 8 years. one of the things i've learned from being an administrator i does not - my values would be we don't spend more than what we have and if we don't have enough there's two things you can do you can cut things or look for more revenues. for me, i would be taking the same approach how to generate more revenues for the services the city needs. and if we need to cut we don't have the revenues where do we cut. those are some basic things i believe we need to protect the safety net forepeople that are the most vulnerable and education issues would be very high on my priority particularly

childcare. the services for zero to 5. it's a benefit for not only the young but also for the working parents >> you mentioned varies needs for people that are vulnerable in the city what do you think about the housing needs and what should is about addressed. >> the housing needs are growing and where do we meet the grouth growth. district 7 that there's a tendency for anywhere to say yes, we understand we need growth but don't change my neighborhood. i'm sorry for me, i feel like everywhere in san francisco needs to be a part of the solution and that if there's opportunity to provide some

growth in housing we should do that. there's always being to be tension of don't do it here. i'll listen to folks is this too much, too little and still be part of the solution. part of it you allow for some growth and have you have to be smart. how do you work with the community. it's important for me that my you type of development to ask this is what we're envisioning what adjustments do we need to make? i've seen that on ocean avenue forensic they built a