fair chance act. i won't repeat what's already been said in a very articulate and heart felt manner. i'll just say thank you very much for co-sponsoring and i hope that this is just the beginning of a [speaker not understood] like this. >> thank you, ms. welna. good afternoon, i'm machaela davis i'm a staff attorney at the aclu in northern california. one thing we do is work on alternative to incarceration around the state. we really are focusing on counties redirecting resources to strategies that strengthen communities and make our communities safe and healthy. decreasing barriers to employment and housing as everyone knows is one of those key strategies to keeping our communities safe and healthy. as the state continues to undergo the changes under criminal justice realignment, county level reform is all the more important. and we're looking forward to san francisco continuing to serve as a positive example to other counties around the state. so, i want to express our strong support of the legislation and thank supervisors kim and cohen and the rest of the board for their

support. >> thank you, ms. [speaker not understood]. good afternoon, supervisors. my name is ernest stokes. i'm a long time resident of san francisco, i live in the bayview district. basically i'm here because i'm in favor of the fair chance ordinance because i believe the legislation the way it is right now is unjust. i when a person has served their time, served out their sentence, the [speaker not understood] should end. without the fair chance ordinance, there is no end to the punishment. i mean, they are continuously being punished. the current legislation which presupposes a number of things. number one, people can't change, can't grow, can't be rehabilitated. in other words, it presupposes

that. the history is destiny. fair chance ordinance says that, number one, we believe in people and that people can change, can grow, and everyone can make a contribution to society. in closing, i'd like to say that every saint has a past. every sinner has a future, and that's why i support fair chance ordinance. thank you. >> thank you, mr. stokes. good afternoon, my name is [speaker not understood] and i'm here with power, people organized for employment rights. and we are also here to support the fair chance ordinance. we started a project a little over a year ago that in collaboration with [speaker not understood] advocates, a number of groups called the black priorities project and we conducted a bunch of listening sessions all over the bay area. many of them in san francisco

and the top three issues that came out of those were housing, employment, and criminalization as the number one causes that were leading to the displacement of african-american families. we're excited about the fair chance ordinance is that it links all those issues, removes some of the really critical structural barriers that are impacting our communities. it still is elusive when you don't get hired for a job so i think all the enforement pieces that are in here are critical. they're going to still be difficult to up lift. we're excited about that. and we thank the leadership of supervisor kim. we hear there is possibly unanimous support for that. that's very exciting. and i think the next step might be to look at policies that are about sort of affirmative action you know because that's where we get to the step where we say, look, folk are coming out prison. we already know so much of our community is impacted. how do we start an employment program and get some of these big corporations to say we're going to affirmatively hire people coming out of prison. this is one of those steps that takes us in the right direction and it's historical. thank you.

>> thank you. hi, i'm edmond juicy. [speaker not understood]. you started with love, family and friends and brotherhood moving beyond. and just to think this year i found out martin luther king, there were like 2 80,000 people in jail. today america has 8 to 10 million people in jail. this is a perfect opportunity to give people a new start. just myself, two years ago i ended up in san francisco jail and i got acquitted for the charges. but, you know, i learned while i was in squall ~ jail about fair chances coming out. this is a good day. when i learned that people in jail really do need fair chances when they're there and coming out to our community. i live in the tenderloin, 55 mates, it's pay part that's heavily -- you know, that's how

we go to bed, we wake up. we know everything [speaker not understood]. it's going to be a good start. [speaker not understood] right here, martin luther king said this year, you have to keep moving forward. this is the day that san francisco is moving forward for our nation because it's very important that united states stay great. and i think this is it and also happy to get the people from city college to sign it. [speaker not understood] that's the rams. it's about city college, too, all the people for justice. we are so happy to sign this thing, it was just a joy to collect these names. i'm so glad community for partnership, it [speaker not understood] that we can change and grow in san francisco. thank you all for bringing this today and let freedom ring, let freedom ring, let it ring.

>> thank you, juicy. good afternoon, supervisors. my name is beatrice [speaker not understood], i'm an organizer with power. and just like jaren said, we launched the black priorities project and we've had a number of conversations with members of the black community, those in the bayview and the fillmore and different parts of the bay area. and unfortunately the large number of incarcerated women [speaker not understood] 850 bryant and a lot of them told me personally that it was very challenging for them to think about the prospect of being released and not having a place to go, not being able to find a job where they could pay the rent and stay in san francisco. few of the women have family out here. when they get out they feel like they're a burden to their family. a lotful them are single mothers. thinking about the choices they have to make about their life experiences. they have children but they feel safer in a way returning,

being able to be out and have the opportunities to have, you know, a -- being able to afford housing and find a good job. its was really difficult to hear, but something we wanted to help support this community. national statistic show that 50% of black men and 50 40*% of latino men will be incarcerated at some point in their life ~. those percentage numbers are very high so we need to support communities of color and having access to jobs and housing so that they can build themselves a future. thank you. >> thank you. i'm going to call up the last set of name cards before the last speaker that i had already previously called. jeanette a louise johnson. [speaker not understood]. [speaker not understood]. and if there are any other speakers that did not sign a card, please do line up. hi, everybody. my name is [speaker not understood], i'm 16-year-old and i'm here with project [speaker not understood] we're

here and talking. project is an advocacy program that consists of [speaker not understood] or has a parrottction who is incarcerated. and i'm speaking in support of the fair chance ordinance. i'm here today because my mom was incarcerated in 2009. she was in san francisco county jail and she wasn't let out until 2010. when she was released it was difficult for her to get housing and to get a job because she had a lot of felonies. therefore, it was hard for us to -- my brothers and my sister and i to live with her wasn't able to keep a house or stable job because of her felonies. so, it took about 3-1/2 years for us to live with her and it was very unfortunate because i was in a very uncomfortable situation with a guardian and i just really wanted to live with my mom. it would have really been beneficial if she had services or anything that could have helped her with her housing even if she did have felonies.

so, and i also want to say before she was incarcerated she was working at kaiser. she had a cool house and everything. she was comfortably supporting us. but because of her felonies it's really hard for her to do that when she was released. now i'm able to live with her and she's able to keep up a job and a house, but it was just really hard and i could only imagine for people who have more kids than my mom or anything like that, who has a lot of felonies and aren't able to work. so, yeah, i'm done. thank you. >> thank you, ms. [speaker not understood], for sharing your story. hi, my name is jeannetta johnson. i'm the director of programs at transgender [speaker not understood] also known as ttijp and i'm also a proud member of all of us or none. and i just wanted to come up and just say that i work with transgender people that are getting out of prison and it's been really challenging to find employment and housing and it's

almost like being transgender and you have the other like stripe on your back or other different franchisement on you. we would like to eliminate -- if we could at least eliminate that, that would be really, really great. so we could possibly have better opportunities at housing and employment. thank you. >> thank you, ms. johnson. hello, my name is cynthia cruz. i am a proud member of the league of women voters, but i am here speaking on my own as a resident of district 5. prior to the work that i do now, i actually work in mental health services and i just want to bring up -- first of all, i want to say my heart is just wide open with the community support and all the people that were here rushed here to get here in time to

speak because i just didn't know how full the room would be. but the people i saw coming into the clinic, they already had so many thing against them. and when they were looking for jobs and housing, the thing that i saw the most was they had to actually reveal things that were illegal to reveal. they had to reveal their medical histories in order to explain sometimes the reason why they got caught up in what they did that got them in jail in the first place. and, so, i just want to provide that specific glimpse into the fact there are protected categories of people and they give up that protection to try to mitigate the risk of losing out on a job or a place to live. so, thanks so much. >> thank you, ms. cruz. my name is dorsey nunn.

i'm the executive director of legal services for prisoners with children and the co-founder of all of us or none. and one of the people who initiated the ban the box campaign. and i'm probably here for a different reason. you know, i would like to say i'm just here for employment, for formerly incarcerated people, but that wouldn't be true. i'm here because i recognize that as a result of the discrimination, between 57 and $65 billion a year is stolen from poor people and that's what the end result of discrimination means. i recognize that in the city of san francisco where we're bleeding a population of african americans that if we don't do something different, pretty soon we won't be here in san francisco at all. our numbers have already dwindled and i think as a result of the discrimination that we face, it makes it

pretty difficult to maintain residency in san francisco. i'm a proud homeowner. i'm a proud taxpayer, and i keep saying i stay in san mateo, but i spend four nights a week in san francisco. so, like i can see the dwindling numbers. so, if anything that i want to report out is that number, 57 to 65 billion dollar a year. and if you don't come to grips with that, you're going to always have poor people in your city. thank you, mr. nunn. thank you for all your work. good afternoon. my name is vanessa jackson. i'm part of all of us or none. and i'm coming from another perspective. i go out, i do case management. i'm a minister. i do motivational speaking. and there's a lot of young

african-american males and women, but more males that really get up in the morning and come to my classes and speak to me about trying to get a job, and that box blocks them. people look at an african-american young man and they think of them as gangsters and dope dealers and hood lams. there's a lot of them that want to work. they want to feed their families. i think the discrimination of the box, it might stop them from getting financial aid, welfare, housing, it stops them from being a man for their families because nobody wants no bum that can't support their children. so, if that's going to separate their children, that box, we need to look at that because we should be trying to mend these families together and have them be a part of their children's lives and with that box, it's not going to help them. it's just going to make them return back to prison, maybe do life, these young men and these young women are brown and black really try to be active and

really get up early in the morning to show people that they're not who these people think they are. you know, the first thing they say is gang bangers because their clothes hang down. and that's just what the generation is doing. these young men and young women need a job. so, i'm just asking that we look past the box and look at your heart and give these young men and women a chance. >> thank you, ms. jackson. hi, michael lion, san francisco gray panthers. over the past 40 years workers have taken an incredible hit. the economic disparity now is like it was back before the crash in 1929. working people are just incredibly put upon now. and i am firmly convinced that

a major cause of that has been mass incarceration because it's really made people think twice to be worried about, about fighting back. and mass incarceration has a lot of aspects to it. it has -- it has to do with the incredible number of people who get arrested and, of course, this is very [speaker not understood] of it, but it also has to do with incredibly long sentences that people serve in jail and it also has to do with the lifetime kind of sentences that people have with the discrimination against ex felons. so, i think that anything that can be done to reduce this lifetime aspect of mass incarceration is good and should be supported. >> thank you, mr. lion. good evening, good

afternoon. my name is vanessa banks. i am a member -- a native of the bayview hunters point community. i'm also interning with coleman advocates. i first would like to say from the bottom of my heart to thank jim -- i mean jane kim and malia cohen for bringing on this initiative for us. growing up in the bayview hunters point back in the early '80s and '90s wasn't always easy. some of us have felonies on our records because of hearsay, not of actual crimes that we committed. because of the discrimination and the pipeline to prison and the color of our skin, we are often categorized and cast out of everything. so, i do believe that this is a new day. the system that has all set us up as failure can be broken and can be mended. we are new people and it's a new day and it's a new time.

and like martin luther king said, whether we go from here, chaos in the community, thank all you supervisors because i see we're going for community. >> thank you, ms. [speaker not understood]. good afternoon. excuse my voice, i'm kind of sick. my name is isabelle perez and i work firsthand with felons coming home from prison [speaker not understood] and i just want to say thank you on behalf of all the folks that i work with because this is huge. i think everybody deserves a second chance. and 80% of the folks that i work with want that second chance and that's the only thing that they need to move forward along with support. so, i just want to say thank you on behalf of all my

participants. thanks. >> thank you. and that, last but not least, mr. gandy. i want to thank you, supervisors. you folks are wonderful people. you give the opportunity to san francisco to move forward, showing example of what government can really do. so, i really appreciate it. i was lucky. i have problems with the criminal justice system. and due to the fact that i had a really cool employer who overlooked at that, they went ahead and hired me and they said, hey, man, we know you're good. to this date i've been working with community housing partnership, you know we've been working with your office specifically, jane, in gathering all the signatures. i just want to say thank you to everyone because i'm like the official registrar and all i really mean is [speaker not understood]. so, no big deal but to be you every day [speaker not understood], also took signatures. i saw what san francisco wanted. people were so willing as juicy

mentioned, to just sign this like nobody's business. they were just about ready to carte blanche sign t. so, with all that being said, that's really wonderful ~. i now have here in my possession basically the signatures that we gathered through community housing partnership. [speaker not understood] because we kind of got a double count. we have 1145 that we officially entered in the computer and another 500 online, that brought it to 1700. we roughly estimate we're over, there are still more. so, i want to say these 1700 people represented here, these are the folks who [speaker not understood] into work and everything. they kind of trump you supervisors. you guys only have 11 or something. so, i'm hoping a little bit of undue peer pressure from san francisco makes a difference. obviously you see the light, you know what's going on. so, i don't need to do that again. just want to thank everyone in san francisco and thank you. (applause) >> thank you, mr. gandy. and if there's no further public comment, seeing none,

i'll ask the chair to close. >> we'll close public comment. [gavel] >> thank you. i will [speaker not understood]. i do have some amendments to introduce. we did learn just before land use committee there are [speaker not understood] that will involve a continuance to land use committee again next week before we can pass this out to the full board. but we did pass out copies of these amendments and i wanted to clarify them. some of them are just clean up language and some of them are actually a result of further discussions with the chamber of commerce and with some of our attorneys that have been working on the fair chance ordinance. so, one, this is just a summary of run down of the amendments. we clarify the definition of convictions to only include felonies and misdemeanors, not infractions. we revised the definition of unresolved arrest to be clear on when it occurs. we removed the questionnaire requirement in the employment section. this is a suggestion of the chamber of commerce and revised

the notification requirements [speaker not understood] when the employer provides the applicant and employee with a copy of the background check to indicate the [speaker not understood] at issue. so the applicant and employee has more direction when they provide the employer with evidence of [speaker not understood] or other mitigating circumstances. we added a checking mechanism where olfc and hrc will track the number of complaints they receive and the resolution on an annual basis so we can measure the impacts of the ordinance. we added language to the preemption section to make it clear that there are some employers, hospitals for example, that are required to look further than 7 years into someone's conviction history pursuant to state and federal law. we added language to olfc's enforcement section allowing them to enskier into whether an employer conducted the directly relatedness test. olfc will now have the ability to substitute their adjournment for the employer's judgment on whether that person should or should not have been hired. the purpose of this amendment is to capture employers who regardless of details or type

of conviction have a complete prohibition on hiring applicants of the conviction history. we added the same preemption language to the contracting section as it exists in the employment and housing section. we clarify the definition of contractor to also include those responding to requests for proposals in addition to bid including adding a defined term for bid. conforming changes to the contracting section to parallel the changes that have been made in the other sections of the ordinance against more clean up, added language to clarify the requirement this ordinance will apply to work being done under the contract with the city and to employees that are performing that work. other nonsubstantive changes to correct [speaker not understood], correctorers, those sorts of things, ensure conform its throughout all sections of the ordinance ~. and if there are any questions on the amendments, but if not, i'm hoping that we can take a motion to incorporate them. >> supervisor tang. >> i don't have any questions specifically about the amendment so i'm happy to recommend that we take those.

and also that i did want to address something that came up in public comment, which was that there was a question regarding affirmative posting requirements for housing providers. and i don't know if this is a question to be answered by supervisor kim or city attorney, they had some questions regarding liability issues. so, i was wondering if someone could address that. >> i'm actually happy to have the city attorney just clarify that very clearly. we did take a private cause of action from this legislation actually after conversations with employers. but if our city attorney would like to address that question. >> deputy city attorney jon givner. yes, a supervisor kim mentions, there's no private cause of action. olfc on the sections regarding housing, hrc and the city attorney have the authority to enforce the ordinance against the housing provider. the speaker during public comment mentioned concerns

about liability for the individual employees of the housing provider and the ordinance does not provide for liability for those individuals. >> thank you. >> thank you, supervisor tang. supervisor kim, so, you are moving the amendments. okay. and can we take the amendments without objection? the amendments are accepted. [gavel] >> and then we need to continue this by one week? >> i will make a motion to continue for one week, being that the amendments are substantive so they need to sit for a week so the public can view the amendments. but i just want -- i forget to mention at the beginning that we do have the support of our public defender and our district attorney both jeff and george as well as our sheriff's office. so, we do have many different faces ~ of our public safety community supporting this legislation. and i just wanted to take an extra time to thank some folks that have really been tons and tons of meetings at our office, with a lot of different

stakeholders. supervisor cohen's office. and i want to give a quick shout out to jamtracy, bill gandy, jesse stoute, michelle rodriguez, meredith [speaker not understood], and dorsey nunn. i know that this has been a long process and i really appreciate you all sticking with us to get through this to the end, to really put forward a legislation that has a broad coalition of support. i think something that we have not anticipated when we started this discussion a year ago, it's great to be here and just having primarily broad support for this legislation. i think i anticipated a much, much more controversial process and i'm glad we were able to work through so many of the details to get to this place. now that we're at this place, i don't think we can take for granted what we are about to pass. this is a really big deal and i'm so excited san francisco is going to be the city and county to implement this for all of our employers and contractors and subcontractors from the city and i hope that we are role model for the rest of the country for those who have yet to follow this way and

following in our footsteps. and, so, want to thank those individuals and, of course, we'll have this at the full board. there will be an opportunity again. of course, ivy lee, ahn drape a [speaker not understood], they were the ones doing the groundwork. i get to sit here and take the credit. if not for their diligence, their many, many hours with our city attorney, with all of our city departments working with you all ~ would not be in this place that we are today. so -- (applause) >> okay. and, so, do be back here on monday. so, i will make a motion to continue to next monday and thank you all. >> supervisor -- i'm sorry -- [gavel] >> i'm sorry, we've not completed the matter. so, if folks if you have a conversation, if you could take it to the hallway. supervisor tang. >> i want to take this opportunity to thank supervisor kim. i know there are so many

changes to this legislation. i feel very comfortable with it now with these amendments. so, thank you to all of you coming out as well. i won't be here next time in land use, but happy to support it being continued and being sent to the full board. >> supervisor kim. okay. so, supervisor kim has made a motion to continue the item one week. that will be february 4th, is that correct? excuse me, february 3rd. the motion is to continue the item one week to monday, february 3rd. can we take that without objection? that will be the order. [gavel] >> madam clerk, is there any additional business before the committee? >> there is no further business. >> then we are adjourned. [gavel] at 62942 working with

together we can support your children. it's been my dream to start is a valley school since i was a little girl. i'm having a lot of fun with it (clapping) the biggest thing we really want the kids to have fun. a lot of times parents say that valley schools have a lot of problems but we want them to follow directions but we want them to have a wonderful time and be an affordable time so