cans with disabilities act month in order to succeed and function in the real world, despite our disabilities. because of muni, my friend who has cerebral palsy and because of braille blind individuals can read. and because of closed captioning and american sign language, the deaf and heard to hear can watch movies and tv and know what is going on. i may live in post-ada america, but i can appreciate what people like ed roberts and judy have done to get these things. i just wish that the ada was more aware in the school curriculum, so that other students could learn more about it. i just feel fortunate i could learn more about it when i did. thank you. >> thank you, joanna. now joanna. >> all of you have been a really tough act to follow and

i brought this upon myself. while all of my co-workers have been preparing for, this i will just speak off the top of my head. i'm going to start by saying as we initiate this new segment of mdc's "my ada story." i'm going start by saying that i am as old or i feel as old as the ada has been passed, which is exactly 25 years. wouldn't you all like to be 25-years-old right now? especially in the 40s body. so the reason i'm saying that is because i moved to the united states exactly a month after the ada was signed into law. actually august 25th, 1990 to be exact what was my first ins, immigration document was

stamped for entering the united states. who entered that country at that date was an 18-year-old greek girl with a very, very thick accent and really poor grammar, who has lived in another country for 18 years, where i had to fight -- my parents had to fight every step of the way for me to go to a normal school with normal kids, where i had to prove every year at the beginning of the school year i was good enough to be with the normal kids in front of a judge. and where after i got into the university, the national exams by scoring pretty high on the national test. i was told sorry the court decision only reaches up to the end of high school. my parents at that time had big dreams for me. i was going to go to law school and become a lawyer and

live at home and be taken care of by my brothers and sisters, but i had different plans. [laughter ] so i came to the united states. because back then, there was this talk of this, like disabled people, who were as disabled with me or even worse off. there was this guy, who was on a respiratoor, an iron lung, who was a mover and shaker going all over the country. i came to the united states, and just like every college student, i actually went to iowa for my first year. for many, some reason my parents said if it was okay on the midwest but not the west coast because it was too far

away and my buddy and i decided to do a cross-country trip on the greyhound. do you remember the greyhound? >> yes. >> yes i do. >> so it's not that far ago. it wasn't that long ago. remember it was the winter of 1990, meaning that the ada was not enacted and transportation did not become accessible to some time '94-96. so my friends and i took a trip from san francisco -- from iowa, from cleveland, iowa, all the way to san francisco in a cross-country strip through the snow blizzards of december. and the only way that i could get on an off the bus was basically relying on the kindness of strangers. so many passengers, black, white,

mexican, native-american did a human-chain, including the various bus drivers. so we traveled through chicago milwaukee, utah, where we got snowed in and finally san francisco. and then on the way back, we said forget, we're flying. it was too long. [laughter but now i am saying that story, because i am starting by saying that i was very fortunate to become -- to have this inspiration of coming to this new country. because even though, even as a 17-year-old, i knew what incredible truth and what profound effect it was to be in that country, where you recognize for the first time in the world, you are recognized as a human being, with a real human worth. as i was growing up, there were stories in the news about

parents committing mercy-killings for their disabled children and going free. because there was no civil rights law that protected people with disabilities. and not that i want to speak ill of my poor country that is going through hell right now, but my other aspect of my ada story, of all of our ada stories that the law is not worth anything unless we are able to advocate and speak for it. so let's move to 25 years later. you know, from not being able -- the ada has given me a job, has given me a passion, and through graduate school, and college graduations, i have had to use services through the disabled services program. but often times i had to learn that in order to get along, you have to go along. so rather than wearing a chip on my

shoulder and invoking my ada rights i had to simply smile and charm people with my personality. unless it has to do with my family, that is when i draw the line. i have always known that i wanted to be a parent and i have always known that i wanted to be a parent through adoption because of my own experiences, and because of my professional interests. i always felt that children need a home and we don't need to reproduce more when we have so many without a home, especially children with disabilities are the last ones to get adopted. because they are somehow the "damages goods." how far have we come along anyway; right? so this past year, well actually several years when my

daughter came into our lives, we had to go and become a perspective adoptive home. we went to several foster family agencies and were told that a disabled mom that works outside of the home, and the children stay home with dad is a non-traditional arrangement. therefore probably not possible. and so discouraged from that, we worked with an agency that specializes in enlisting parents, adopting children in the foster care program and again, joanna is the token heterocouple in a couple of gay and lesbian parents. it was really fun and we made great connection and soon enough our daughter came in our lives, who is now 9. just like every good parent i wanted to torment her and

decided to give her a little sibling. [laughter ] this time, laws have changed and foster care licensing rules and the california care licensing have changed and required that all foster parents -- in order for a home to be licensed as a foster home, all adults over the age of 18 must be cpr certified. now my disability is such where i can comprehend cpr principles and instruct others how to do it, but i am unable to do it myself. so the designation came from community care licensing from our home was certified as a foster home, but only my husband, who did not have an apparentphysical disability.

but only my husband is to be the foster parent. i am the roommate, who lives in the home. and they said we are giving your ada rights because we allow you to live in the room, even though you do not have a cpr certification. yeah, you know, i got a little upset. the interesting thing, especially when this little boy was identified, and he was matched with our family because he has a disability and because we're a great role-model for this little boy to be able to live in this world as a person with disability by being taught how by a person with disability. community care licensing didn't like that, because the child was "medically fragile." so our lovely agency, i picked up the

phone and i was like, you know what? we need to do an exception on this. we have two ways of doing it. we can either make a phone call, or we can write a letter and the letter is going to be on a legal letterhead. so basically the argument that i made at that time was that community care licensing is a title what entity? title ii entity and therefore has the responsibility for providing reasonable modification to policy and procedures. the reason mode cation modification policy is that i will be a licensed foster parent and therefore, this kid's perspective mom with the exception of the cpr certification with the

condition i will have a non-disabled person to be able to act in cases of emergency. as if i could change diapers on my own, but you know, that is another story. so because i was able to write this nice, slightly threatening letter, it took less than 24 hours to get the license. and our son is now moved in with us. today he is actually close to the third-month anniversary. the reason i did not prepare for this today and i was not planning for today, because i just came back from maternity leave. so the ada full circle, as you said, goes from preventing me from going up-and-down the greyhound in a human chain to actually being a mom and not doing crazy things

any more. but the most important part is knowing the law, and knowing how to advocate for yourself and for others. thank you. >> thank you very much, joanna. thank you everyone for sharing your stories. i have learned a lot about my colleagues today, a lot of good stuff and i think everyone here definitely earned their seat at the table. is there any public comment on these items? okay. then carla, you are up again with the director's report. >> thank you, co-share. i have three items today, a very brief overview of our ada celebrate and ada month, a report on supervisor mar's hearing on employeing with people with disabilities and also a shout-out to the patient no more exhibit and also the disability unity festival. on our ada 25 celebration, i

think it's been covered pretty well so far today, but i'm going add a last few points. one of them, this is really in my experience the best celebration that we have ever. we had about 500 people cram into the north light court in city hall. there was this really lovely cross-section of the disability community that was represented, and i think that the secret sauce to the event was the collaboration that we had with the community alliance of disability advocates. and our mayor's disability council. because this ended up being the type of event where everybody reached out to their different constituencies to really rally the base. and we had advocates and friends from east bay, and the north bay, and from the south bay join us.

i was really delighted that our mayor was able to join us and to issue that proclamation. i thought his comments were very supportive of the work that we all do together. and i also really wanted to acknowledge and thank supervisor wiener and supervisor tang, because they were there. but supervisor mar also. i mean his remarks were just so sincere, and spot-on, and he also was the supervisor who sponsored the ada month resolution before the board. he followed up also on july 7th by issuing certificates of honor to both our office, as well as the community alliance of disability advocates. so we just really appreciative of his efforts. i was so glad to have supervisor tang here today, because the timing of her introduction of her legislation

was just so wonderful, and she introduced her resolution on july 7th. i appreciated her diligence and her persistence in sticking with that process for about two years. so moving on to the mar hearing yesterday. tieing in our ada celebration. our theme was "it doesn't stop here." and while we had so much to celebrate this year, our consistent narrative in the disability community is that our dream under the ada has still not come true and that employment is really one of those unfulfilled dreams. we can't truly live independent lives until we have economic independence and meaningful jobs. and so supervisor mar held a hearing yesterday at the public safety and neighborhood services committee on the city's efforts to employee more people with disabilities. and you might recall that he had held a hearing a year-ago

as well. and it was his hearing in june, 2014 that was really the dat catalyst for the advisory group for the employment of people with disability and this group started to meet in yarn of january of this year and included joanna fraguli and me and the department of human resources that did all of the staff report and over 17 disability advocacy organizations. these advocates are the people who are really the experts. they are the organizations who have employment program and really know how to hire the people with disabilities. the conclusion is that the city needs to use all of the tools at our disposal, including rule 115 that you heard me talk about earlier. the committee also issued 28 recommendations broken up into

short-term initiatives and long-term initiatives that address outreach, recruitment, examination, appointments, and retention, as well as reasonable accommodations, as the way to employee qualified individuals who have a disability. and in my [kph-efpbts/]s comments at the hearing yesterday, i focused on four areas. to a single person as point of contact for this program of hiring people with disabilities and that position actually was funded by the board of supervisors during the add-back process and that is going to be a reality. the second recommendation was to develop hiring goals and hiring goals really mean looking at numbers. you know, trying to bring more people into the city's workforce. but the third recommendation was creating a survey to establish baseline numbers. so that we would understand how many employees we have now? so

that we can measure how much progress we're making through employing more people in the future. the last recommendation from the committee would be to continue the work of the committee, and set up a mechanism where there is a report-back to the members of the board of supervisors, so we can seek their guidance and support for the next steps. and be accountability for our accomplishments. so i think that the hearing was a great success, and i want to give a shout-out especially to co-share senhaux. because you were so eloquent and so articulate and gave some great public comment yesterday. >> do i detect a tone of surprise in the voice? [laughter ] >> no, just appreciation >> i'm sorry, i just had to tease you. thank you. >> just appreciation. i encourage this council if you want to watch it the playback, you too, can tell whether it's surprise or appreciation by watching

co-chair senhaux on the sfgovtv play back. next sunday july 26th, which is actually ada day the exhibition will open at the bart station. it will be at 2:00. and the patient no more is a collection of oral historis from the people who participated in the 1977 occupation of the san francisco federal building. this is the 504 occupation that you heard talked about. the interactive media exhibit is a project developed by san francisco state and i encourage everybody to go. i'm going to go for the opening, but my understanding it will be open for a few months. in september san francisco is going to host the disability unite conference and parade. the conference will be at

hastings college friday, september 25th and the parade will be on saturday, september 26th. the festival is organized by the independent living centers in the bay area, including independent living resource center san francisco, silicon valley, independent living center for the center for independence of individuals with disabilities, community resources for independent living, independent living resources of solona and contra costa and our staff may not know it yet, but we're going to have a float in the parade. more event-planning. we'll have the big ford pickup truck, yay! [laughter ]. we hope you join us and be part of our float. we want to support this event.

should be a lot of fun. to find out about these two event and others happening throughout the bay area for the rest of this year, please visit our fabulous website that nate put together for us called "ada 25bayarea.org." that concludes my report. >> thank you very much. >> is there any further public comment on any topic not on today's agenda? is there any correspondence? >> there is no correspondence. >> very well. are there any comments from council members or announcements? council member harriet wong. >> the association of chinese families of disabled or chinese families of disabled and their

families are invited to morning tea. it's given by the women's fellowship of g gcc, but i think they mean ggrc. it's going to include light refreshments, songs, games, crafts and sharing. i would really encourage the families to attend, because it's a great place to meet a lot of people that can give you resources, or they have already been through whatever hardship that came along. so it's really a good resource. it's going to be at 378 18th avenue, san francisco. august 8th. 9:30 to 11:30 in the morning in fellowship hall. you can rsvp to lacy lee, and i

have actually met her. so she speaks english. the phone number is 510-508-8429. 510-508-8429. thank you. >> thank you. any other council member announcements? no? then we are adjourned.

(clapping) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ celebrating the wow. turnout this is our third annual to celebrate pride we notice we didn't have community event for pride. we actual had 19 we had godzilla

and are you ball weird names i think its unique we're able to have special event we're all women that relax and have fun you know everything is friendly and kind we're all equal i'm happy that.

>> good evening and welcome to the general public comment sgrlz the presiding officer is ann lazarus joined by commissioner vice president honda and communicating and xhig commissioner bobbie wilson's commissioner wilson will be a da will provide advise and i'm cynthia goldstein the board's executive director we're jind obey representatives from the departments that are cases before the aboard carli short is the bureau manager for the department of public works and we'll be joined