>> all right. good morning, everybody. welcome. i see we've got some niners fans in the house. i am michael lambert. i'm your city librarian -- oh, you can't hear me? how's that? i'm michael lambert. i'm your city librarian, and from the bottom of my heart, it just fills my heart with joy to see all of you beautiful people in this auditorium today. this is the first event we've had in the main library for 17 months, so yeah. thank you so much for being here. i want to thank president walton, president of the san francisco board of supervisors for honoring us with his

presence today and for all his leadership and support this past year. we appreciate you, president walton. all right want to thank thank -- all right. want to thank director davis and her amazing leadership. director davis, thank you so much. we appreciate your partnership. again, it feels so good to use this space after 17 long months, and as your host, i do have a little bit of housekeeping for you. the public rest rooms are located just outside the back door. if you follow the curved wall to the right. we have faucet water just across from the latino room where you're going to do some workshops later, and we also have two exit doors behind you that staff can lead you out to the street level. with that, please relax, make

yourself comfortable and enjoy your morning. for all the folks tuning in from home, i'd like to invite you all to visit your neighborhood libraries again. as of this week, all of our san francisco public libraries are open for in-person services again. and now, it's my pleasure to welcome dr. sheryl davis up to the stage. [applause] >> good morning, everyone. i know it's monday, beginning of the week. i think we can do a little bit more, little more survivors energy. good morning, everyone. yes. thank you so much, everyone, for being here. just really want to acknowledge mayor breed and president walton, thinking about how we

come back together, how we center the advances of community and come back to work. reverend fong has been doing this for a long time, who graced us with his present, and building up his community work and taking us up to the next generation, also thinking about brother damian, and we want to thank you for beginning this conversation with us, and i want to thank commissioner clapton for her work at the human rights commission. [applause] >> thank you so much, dr. davis. we are here because we live in a nation that was founded on violence, and one day, this day

will not end this legacy. but every day that we work towards changing this legacy is a day closer to peace and justice. when the human rights commission recon conveniented -- reconvened for the first time on facebook live, we actually became more accessible to the public. one of the first acts was for me to move the resolution that antiblack racism is a public health and human rights crisis here in san francisco. and what do we mean by

antiblack racism? when we talk about that, many of us, because we have been miseducated, and we have colonized minds, think that we're talking only about black people or people from the african diaspora. we are talking about white supremacy and the whole made up construct of race, and antiblack racism is the reason we have antiasian hatred, antitrans hatred. it is the reason why we have

misogynistic discrimination of women and people of color. the reason i talk about this in the history of our nation, which is based on stolen land and the forced labor of african people is because we are often, as in every day, all day long, inundated with the opposite information. we think that we are exceptional if we excel. we think that we are stereotypes when we fail. we think it's our own

individual problem when we don't succeed. together in the knowledge that we can make a difference together, that is the way forward. the other way forward, as alice walker said, to acknowledge our ancestors means that we are aware that we did not make ourselves; that the line stretches all the way walk, perhaps to got or to gods. we remember them because it is an easy think to forget; that we are not the first to suffer,

rebel, fight, love, and die. the grace with which we approach life despite the pain, the fear, the sorrow, is always a measure of what has gone before. we have young people speaking today and talking about their ideas to move forward. we have the elders speaking today to talk about what has gone before. we have to be together. we have to stand together. we have to invest together with each other. the other initiative we

finally took in 2020 was to reach a land acknowledgement for all of our meetings, and we hope for the board of supervisors and all city functions. to read the land acknowledgement that we were able to achieve under tribal leaders is [inaudible] and she is also on the american indian education parent advisory committee. we welcome our sister, mary travis allen. [applause]

>> good morning. so nice to see people instead of on zoom, where you have to mute and unmute. my name is mary travis allen. i was born and raised here in san francisco. lived in the tenderloin, fillmore, lakeview, mission district, so here's my roots. i'm honored to be here, to present this land acknowledgement on behalf of the original people, the ramaytush ohlone people. before this place was named san francisco, it was called

yelloto. most people speak of the original people of this land in the past tense as if we're no longer here. today, the remaining descendants of the ohlone people in addition to the other intertribal american indian people from many tribes continue to live in this city and the bay area. in this city, we have established, with the help of the human rights commission and the board of supervisors, the

american indian cultural district, which is one of two american indian cultural districts in the united states. [applause] >> thank you. we have received funding to help the housing, education, and medical needs of our community. we are now being recognized and uplifted and engaged in the decisions that affect our people. greg castro, who was the principal cultural consultant for the ramaytush ohlone worked with the human rights commission to develop the land acknowledgement statement. this is now read at the beginning of the meetings of the human rights commission, board of supervisors, and has been presented to the san

francisco unified school district commission meetings. this is the land acknowledgement. we, who are gathered here at this violence prevention summit, acknowledge that we are on unceded ancestral homeland of the ramaytush ohlone, who are the original inhabitants of the san francisco peninsula. as the original stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the ramaytush ohlone have never ceded, lost, nor given up their responsibilities as the care takers of this place. as guests, we recognize that we benefit from living and working on their tradition homeland.

we wish to pay our respects by acknowledging the ancestors, elders, and relative of the ramaytush community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first people. to end violence, you must admit and acknowledge all oppressive action that have been imposed to cause people to feel desperate and homeless. elevate the people, hear their concerns, and help them to help valued and supported. thank you. [applause] . >> president walton: good morning, everybody. happy monday, and happy first day of school. it is so great to see everyone here today in person.

i know it's been a while, and this pandemic, particularly with the new delta variant, has done everything it can to keep us from being together again, but it is wonderful to see all of you. over these past 17 months, we've seen increases in violence and shootings, particularly compared to the last couple of years where violence had gone down, and we had seen decreases for a while, and we've lost too many people to violence, particularly gun violence. so before we begin today's session, i want to take a moment of silence for all people we've lost over the last couple of years to gun violence and murder. last week, we lost a 16-year-old, last week, -- last year, we lost a six-year-old,

so let's take a moment to remember all of those we have lost to gun violence. thank you. i do also want to just take the time to say i know we are tired of marching in the street, tired of having summits, tired of having conversations about what we need to do to stop violence in our community, tired of talking to mothers who have lost young ones and grandparents and family members who have lost loved ones, or just talking to family members who are survivors. i know as we do everything it takes to decrease violence, we still have to do it. we still have to continue to come together, we still have to come together to work on strategies to address the violence that is in our

community, and so we we will continue to do so. in my district, we lost two people in the last two days to gun violence, and this has to stop, and the only way it will stop is if we come together and continue to do the work. [applause] >> president walton: and our office has continued to work to address violence through a comprehensive safety plan, which also includes convenings like this, a violence prevention coordinator, increased resources from the city to address violence, best practices convenings, coordination with the h.r.c. and other city departments, street violence intervention and prevention team, s.f. safe, sfpd. of course, the mayor's office with job provision and all ideas community has presented,

and of course, all of our community based organizations and leaders on the frontline. despite our dedication and commit, we have seen too many increases in violence, particularly the last couple of years. we are nowhere near where we were in the early 2000s, but all violence is too much, and we take this seriously. in the last 1.5 years, we have had more shootings and deaths to gun violence than we can remember. more violence against communities of color, and we are all working together to stop all violence.

our summit today will attempt to bring us all together in the name of ending all violence. together with the mayor's office, the human rights commission, and i want to thank director davis and her entire team for putting this together, of course, the office dream team and all the work that they do, and the people on the frontline -- c.y.c., it's good to see you all here. i know we have some members of united playas here, but i want

everyone to know we appreciate your commitment and your dedication to stopping violence because that work that we do together is vitally important, even in the midst of continued violence. we see you, and we will make sure that we continue to support you. with that said, i do have the privilege of introducing our keynote for this morning's session. mr. david mohamed is not only the director of the institute for criminal justice reform, but he's an expert in working on practices that decrease violence and alternatives for incarceration. we're lucky to have some mohamed in the bay area as we

get to reach out to him for his expertise and input in this work that is important and necessary. i want to personally say welcome to mr. mohamed, let you know we appreciate your work. everyone this morning, mr. david mohamed. [applause] >> good morning. director davis, president walton, thank you all. i want to thank president walton for the introduction, but more importantly, for the extraordinary work that he and his team do every day to make san francisco a better place,

to make the bay area a safer place. i am honored to be before you for an opportunity that is going to be less a keynote address than preventing information. for me, it is awesome because this is where i've began my career in criminal justice. i'm a little old, so 1997, i began going into y.g.c.,

juvenile hall. it was this specifically, teaching workshops, and continue to teach them in san francisco for years, and different than expanded in the bay area and throughout the state and indeed throughout the country. i want to say, i want to thank the commissioner for reminding us and reminding me -- i used to emphasize this point -- sometimes, i get so far in the weeds that you forget that this nation was built and founded on violence. and we can blame ourselves and our own community, and while we've got work to do, we need to remember how we got here,

and this is a nation developed and created on the notion of violence. it is not surprising given our founding, given the images that we have this country in our neighborhoods. so i want to thank the extraordinary leadership of president walton, of director davis, of mayor breed. san francisco is fortunate to have these extraordinary leaders in our midst, so thank you, thank you, thank you. [applause] >> and in addition, as president walton said here, the community leaders who do the work, day in and day out, night in and night out, who was

helping out with the work. the city and county of san francisco applied for a grant called calvip, the california violence intervention program. the state awarded that to san francisco. $1.5 million, $500,000 a year for three years. when a government receives that state grant, according to state regulations, you must give half of it to a local nonprofit organization. the city selected svip to

receive half of that award. also in that application were two technical assistance providers, the california partnership for safe abilities and the institution for justice reform. the part of the work which was even beyond the calvip grant was to evaluate gun violence in the city and county of san francisco. now many of us feel like they know of what our opinion of gun violence is, and we may be right, but we don't have an entire picture of gun violence

is in the city and county of san francisco. i'm going to go through this in a lot less time than i thought i had. they showed me a card, and i'll have to go a lot quicker. every individual homicide was investigated between january 2019 and june 2020, to try to get a sense of was something different going on during covid? the 162 homicides involve 329 unique individuals as victims

or suspects, and the 82 shootings involved 86 individuals, so again, a detailed analysis of shootings and homicides. this just gives you, i think, as president walton said, we are concerned, certainly, about the level of increase in violence. we are nowhere near what it was in the early 2000s, and something happened with this huge drop that occurred in san francisco, which everybody in this room should be proud of, and a part of this initiative that i'm mentioning is an evaluation to try to determine, can we look back and see, how did we go from 98 to 45 homicides in one year -- i think it's 2008, 2007, and how can we replicate some of that great work, even though we

maintained that in san francisco, and we're seeing a spike now, which is clearly related to the covid pandemic. the full presentation is about 100 slides, and you're going to get about five of them. so a few headlines, surprising, i think, the average age of victims of homicide in san francisco are 37. some people, they are not surprised, but if you ask the average citizen of san francisco about homicides, they're teenagers, and it's related to drug. now we have some problem teenagers, and we've got some with drug problems, but that's

not the answer. now the average age of arrest for victim and suspect is 15, so very well known to the criminal justice system. one, this tells us that we can do better when folks come into the system in rerouting them and supporting them and not just filing them into the criminal justice system. and people involved have some very specific risk factors. i think what some folks in the city think is that everybody in the bayview is violent. they are a very small group with very specific risk factors. we know them, we can identify

the violence, and therefore we can prevent the violence. this is an overgeneralization, but when you take out the stabbings and beatings of the tenderloin, you get a slightly more focused picture of gun violence. there, the average age is 28. 67% of homicide victims and suspects and 85% of shooting suspects and victims are latino and black men while they kpriez less than 10% of the city's population. some slides to talk about the age range in who was involved in gun violence now. there was a slight increase during covid, but the increase in serious crime of juveniles

and covid is mostly robberies, not shooting. so just understand, when we're talking about gun violence, we're talking about adults primarily. we have the individual incidents of teenagers, and we understand, and they get more news coverage, and they stick in our head more, so we tend to think it is younger, but when we step back, it is young adults, people in their 20s primarily. people in this cluster of, really, 18 to 35, that is involved in gun violence again. again, it's male, black, and latino. a little older, 18 to 35. serious criminal justice involvement, that is the

population that is involved in gun violence now. known to the criminal justice system, and we have supervision, prior parole. 67% had prior incarceration. 62% were prior convicted of a felony, so a population we know, that we can put our hands on, that there should be a level of support. one of the things that san francisco has going on is a good amount of resources dedicated to people involved. but we have a problem all across the country of resource and need. the city of san francisco is well connected to resources,

but we have to do better to connect resources to the needs, and until we do a better job of saying even forces that need the resources the most and ensuring the connection with that, we're going to continue to struggle. all right. so there's some work on prior probation, prior supervision, active probation, prior probation, looking at the vast majority of people who were involved in gun violence are now or were previously under some form of corrective supervision. so we have some dynamics. so somewhere between 53% and 70% of shootings involve groups, right? some people might call it gangs. we don't call it gangs for two reasons. one, it has a legal definition that we want to be leery of,

but when we think of gangs, we think hierarchal groups. that doesn't mean it's gang against gang war. sometimes it is, but sometimes, we're fighting over a young lady, right? and i'm in a gang, rico's in a gang, we're going out with the same girl, and we're fighting over that girl, right? and now, our crews are involved, and exacerbates the beat, right? it turns out a lot of shootings are over there, but it involves crews. it's identifying people that are highest at risk so we can have quality intervention with these folks. and then, there's a large

amount of violence that's -- a lot of it is not shootings, the stabbings and beatings in the tenderloin, which, what i'm going to talk about for the rest is not that, but there is an issue to address there. so 18 to 35 black and latino males who have significant criminal justice involvement who are in crews or groups of gangs, many of them have previous gun violence or victimization or they've been or knows someone who has been shot recently, often in the last 12 months. me and my boy are in part of harbor road. i'm 27 with seven previous arrests, and now, i'm on social media vowing revenge for his

shooting. we joke with some of these young people, you snitching. you the biggest snitch on yourself on social media. so you can address social media and get a sense -- and let me just go with that same example of the here is i'm on social media, saying, they got my boy, i'm gonna get y'all, i am clearly the focus of intervention, to focus intervention on, to dispatch people who have experiences who can build a relationship, trusting relationship, and help them make better decisions. i'll end the assessment and move into the strategy and close. these are just letters.

we -- when we finish this assessment, we met with a group, many of them with svip. this is -- there's actual real group names behind this, mapping the alliances and conflicts that generate a lot of the gun violence, and some of it is individual conflicts that are exacerbated by group dynamics. and so -- then, there's several groups -- these again, we just changed the name because we don't want folks to be competing up there. but these are real groups, and you see there are some that are involved in a lot of shootings both as victims and suspects. and what we saw in the analysis is there's little to no difference between victim and suspects. again, we remember the incident

that involves somebody that's not involved in these dynamics because they get a lot of attention when a child is killed, a small child, or somebody -- i hate the term innocent victim, but that's used, and the -- that gets a lot of attention. that is not usually the case around shootings, right? victim and suspect look very similar, and what we know is, sometimes, you're a victim one day and suspect the next. all right. the map -- this was presented to the police commission, so it's a public document. we can make it available to folks. okay. that was the problem, and now, we want to talk about the solution quickly. now as we do that, before we do that, i want to say this. i think this is one of the most

important pieces of the presentation, and we need to understand what actions or programs or services achieve what outcomes, right? there's a few obvious examples. gun buy backs have no effect on gun violence. now, i'm not telling you not to have a gun buy back. it's great to have those, but it's mostly old folks getting rid of those old ones, and that's fine. there's certain things that achieve certain outcomes. you don't have to call a gun buy back violence reduction. call it getting guns out of the streets or out of homes. that's a great goal, and you should do it, but understand what activity achieves such result. generally, we're talking about

intervention and transformation -- community transformation. there are neighborhoods in san francisco that don't need a gun violence reduction strategy. there are other neighborhoods that do. i want our neighborhoods to not need a gun violence reyuck reyuck -- reduction strategy andee the -- and keep the people there, right? prevention is awesome, but we need to understand prevention and intervention are different and have different timetables.

it can't be either-or. it has to be both. if you are effective about saving those babies in the river, somebody else in the strategy, in the coordination, has to stop the man from putting babies in the river. there has to be both ends, but you see, those are two different activities. those are two different activities. in the long run, they achieve the same goal. one is out in the river, getting babies out immediately. the other, i'm stopping people from putting babies into the river, and one does not achieve the other, right? and so one is not better than the other. they're just different, and we have to do both and. so with that -- oh, here we go.

we often have this mixed up. i call this my rocket science because it's so simple, that desired outcomes should be aligned with our actions and programs. i was in another city, working on gun violence reduction in another city, and they said, we're going to start a mentoring program for students. while a mentoring program is wonderful, it will never achieve gun violence reduction because that's not focusing on the people who are the problem. but it won't achieve gun violence reduction if it's perfect in the next 12 months, right? so the strategy, and i know i'm

over time or getting close to time. four primary pillars. one, data driven identification of people who are at highest risk. so i talked about the analysis that we did. another part of that is a weekly review of shootings, to say which of these shootings have a likelihood for retaliation. if it's a one-off family issue that is a crazy issue that does not have likely retaliation, you move on. if it's a crew versus crew and it's likely to cause some retaliation, you say okay, who is retaliating, who is likely to be retaliated against, and who is going to be retaliated,

and then, you inform them of their risks, similar to covid. people over 65 or people with underlying health conditions, we need to let them know, if you contract the virus, your likelihood of contracting the virus is exponentially more than someone else. same thing here. they need to be informed your likelihood of being shot is higher than other people. you need to be informed, but you also need to know. and then, focus enforcement. you need to reduce the footprint of law enforcement and focus on serious crime and violence. reduce gun violence and also

reform policing, which means stop low level enforcement of drugs and containers. if you stop doing low level enforcement and focus on serious crime and violence, you can effect public safety, so we talked about the risk factors of the people at highest risk. we talked about this already, and this is an example of how we implemented this in oakland, just as an example. used to be a reentry case manager, but a reentry case manager's job is different than

a life coach whose goal is to reduce gun violence. i want to emphasize this as much as possible in terms of goals and how your activities are connected to your clear goals. case manager, reentry, the goal is to not recidivate. that has some overlap but not the same as my pure goal is to get this person to not shoot each other and not get shot. clients are eligible for financial incentives.

we have improved coordination and employment, there's mental health services. there is quite a community of services. now, this exists in san francisco, and we want to focus the coordination. in oakland, we have 35 people to focus on this population, and it's been effective. the live coaching is around

relationship first. this is what is different between service brokering case management. it's about relationship first, and what this means is i'm going to spend time with you, i'm going to get to know you, i'm going to share myself with you, and when you build that relationship, and it allows you to get a mentality shift and then asking for services. you've got to know you are building a relationship with them. so this is kind of how it works. i'll say this for, like, one

minute. relationship, i can't emphasize enough. when you have a [inaudible] but he is my friend, and so i watched it. when you gain a relationship with someone, then you're able to influence them. it's having a relationship and guiding them to make better decisions, and better decisions produce better outcomes. so in oakland, we had six consecutive years of decline, 2020, at the end of march, we had a 38% year-to-date reduction in homicides. it would have been the lowest

homicide rate in the city's history, and then covid hit. so i want to close just by saying so where we are is svip are hiring these training coaches. we have hired two of them so far. so it's not enough, and we want to increase this level of work. we need every agency working together to solve this problem and to reduce this issue of gun

violence that we have. it's going to take all of us working together. we want to support the organizations doing incredible work right now to help them, a, get information to focus on the right people. or we need some support on these are the do's and don'ts in this population. we need to expand it, right, and we need to coordination it

together, and we will achieve extraordinary reductions in gun violence. thank you very much. [applause] . >> well, let's give it up again for david mohamed. [applause] >> this work is extremely important, and we want to really center everything when it comes to violence prevention on everything that happens throughout the day. we want to give it up for all of you for being here, but more importantly, we want to get the conversation started. so our first panel today is centering around this idea of cross cultural community connections, and we have a set of power house speakers for today's panel. so with that, i'll go ahead and

get started. we'll get started with joe jackson morgan, who is the executive director of third street youth clinic. we've got jose yanez [inaudible] de la raza. please welcome cynthia choi, codirector of chinese for affirmative action. an attorney by trade is also the secret of the affirmative action center for northern california. please welcome hillary nakano. [applause] >> please help me welcome patsy tito, executive director of samoan community center, and

please help me welcome nakira jackson, executive director [inaudible]. [applause] >> all right. first of all, how are you doing, and thank you for being here, and let's give them a round of applause. before we hop into it, just a few ground rules, and just expectations throughout the day as we do know some of this could be triggering, especially when we're talking about violence. so for those of you at home, and those of you in space, if that does become something that you're triggered by, we invite you to take space and get in a space where we can process that. we want to make sure this discussion is a healthy one for all of you watching at home, as well. with that, we will go into this

idea of cross cultural efforts. what do you see as similarities and differences in violence prevention and safety and approaches in your community? now before we start, we're running tighter than a holiday budget on time, so if you all just think about one song, think about the time it takes, too, because we're giving you two minutes. we know you get passionate, but we don't want a hard-and-fast time. what do you see as similarities and differences between violence prevention and safe issues/approaches in your communities? we'll start off with hillary. >> good morning. my name is hillary nakano. cochair of a group called japantown for justice. we are based out of san

francisco japantown but were built out of this idea that the japantown community needs to be better supportive of our neighbors in the fillmore and the western addition and needs to build that relationship where we had preworld war ii where our communities were living side by side, and we had black people that took up the japanese american property when they were incarcerated during world war ii, so we're trying to built those relationships between the communities again. i would say in our response to violence, in the japantown community, they are -- or i say we are trying to advocate for more police involvement, and that's not necessarily something that the fillmore or the western addition community is advocating.

i wouldn't call it a tension, but it's a difference in response. and in the japantown community, there's this idea of we should have more security cameras, we should have more foot patrol officers and just make sure that there is a greater response in action, and in the fillmore, the western addition, we're not talking about having a greater police involvement, we're talking about what are the relationships that we can build so that we can make sure that we're addressing mental health issues or black on black violence. it's just how are we going to address this on going issue? >> and patsy, onto you.

>> i think -- and i've been going into the samoan community. i think the difference is they continue with the stereotype of who we are, you know? they always look at us as these big, bad people. they look at us as we don't speak, we don't like to get into trouble, but when they just look at us, they just kind of stereotype us as that community that will try to invade their space. i wish they would just look at us as people and not our color, but i think that's where the

difference is in the samoan community is they continue to stereotype us as what they say. >> okay. >> hi. can they raise this a little bit because i'm kind of tall? thank you. i'm the c.e.o. founder of the transgender association for gender equality. we've got people from everywhere, people who aren't even naturalized here, and i really feel like a lot of the times with violence, it's more systemic, and it's displacement

and limiting based on color and being a black person from detroit, michigan, the outlook for my life and survival, i wasn't supposed to make it to 35 years old, so just bringing it to that space, i'm going to pass it to cynthia, yeah. >> well, hi, everybody. thank you so much for giving us the opportunity. i am the coexecutive director for chinese for affirmative action, but i am here representing a coalition, which includes the ccdc, c.y.c., and c.p.a., and just to tell a little story about our coalition, we have been working together in crisis when there were incidents of violence and

crime. we work with city agencies, regardless of your immigration status, your age, or what neighborhood you live in, that you get the services you need. one of the things we said to get us out of this, to address systemic racism, was to do this within our community to address this, and to do it across communities. we are not going to get to issues around equity if we continue to see each other as the problem, as the threat. and so i'm excited to be on this panel.

it's wonderful that this is kicking off the discussion of the fact that to make san francisco the place that we are loved, it's going to take time, it's going to take investments, and it's going to take leadership. this is why i'm so proud to be a part of the coalition and really applaud our city in those investments. there is no panacea, and we're also fighting misinformation and disposition at levels that we had not experienced before. so this racial reckoning is about all of us, and again, those investments are going to be critical over the next three to five to ten years, but this can happen in our lifetime with leadership. thank you. >> thank you for the question, for the space. really graceful and blessed to

be here. on above of the mission peace collaborative, we have a large investment or a large concentration of nonprofit organizations that have been working on violence prevention for decades, rights? and if anything, the mission has then created interventions that have been, you know, shared with the rest of the community, adopted by the city, and then, expanded. so i would think the biggest tension for us currently has a lot to do with the -- as has been mentioned has a lot to do with the energy and the displacement, the new physical entities in the mission which don't necessarily align with the value of the community needs and the direction we

would like to take when it comes to taking care of our children, right? dealing with our community, and the biggest tension i think -- >> closer? >> i believe the bigger tension does then become how do we work with the institutions and systems that are supposed to protect our children, supposed to protect our communities, and hold them accountable, and make sure that they respect the process that our community has created because the -- you know, the -- dr. mohamed mentioned that relationship being so important. you know, i remember starting the work in 97 also, and there's this thing called relationship capital, i would say. and when you're able to invest in providers that have long-standing relationships that can carry that relationship during that middle

support group through that first contact with police and really being able to hold them and their family through that experience so that they don't recidivate, so i would think that would become one of our biggest challenges. how do we deal with that new messaging that is impacting our community. and because of our documentation challenges in some cases, you know, that pressure then forces people to hide, and that only complicates the problem, right? because then, that interpersonal violence take place, and then, we obviously have people whose mental health is impacted and have the reactions that we have to have when economic distress impacts us. >> so thank you for this opportunity. i feel blessed to be up here for everyone, and i'm speaking from the bayview-hunters point perspective.

i think the technology that we're not addressing is our neighborhood has the lowest median income in san francisco, and as opportunities prevent themselves, we are dealing with the fact that poverty and idleness is playing out in our streets, right? and so i'm glad that he spoke to the displacement. we're also getting newcomers into our community and dealing with the fact that folks that have been here historically have not been addressed, as well. we're trying to compile resources for our newcomers, for problems that are existing, and that tension is playing out. this is also a result of poverty, right?

we saw this -- of course we saw this. folks started to see a crunch in resources. it started to become you're on your own. what we did see is we wanted to make sure that our community had what they needed, right? so this task force came about. folks were really trying to deal with that. >> and this idea that there's different perspectives to be shared even within what we

wanted to discuss. how do we build solidarity across demographics and tear down cultural barriers? >> well, at third street [inaudible] clinic, we've really been looking at this as as the community changed, how do we get services that will be timeless? we can't do everything, so of course we rely on all of our community organizations that will be coming in.

giving them that space to work it out amongst each other, hopefully will help us create this sort of tolerance and acceptance that we want to see in these communities. so i think it's important, being a daughter of san francisco, we grew up in this melting pot of -- of appreciating each other. and again, we celebrated each other, and i think we need to get back to that and stop sort of, you know, breaking apart, and also being aware that certain communities are hurting in a different way, and looking at that and also bringing in people to help solve these issues together. so i think cynthia was alluding to that earlier, that it's going to take all of us to come together and bring back the san francisco of this melting pot and appreciating culture. we don't have that culture

anymore. >> it sounds like what you're saying is celebrate, not tolerate. >> i completely agree. we need to celebrate our diversity, we need to share, we need to be proactive to celebrate spaces to exchange, to break bread, to drum together. when i first came out here, we had thousands of young people organizing, and we had peace marches. we need to be proactive about countering the message that our children are listening to and seeing 24 hours a day, unfortunately, that says that consumption and consuming these, you know, products, are going to get them to a better place or a happy place. we need to remind them that our culture, our resilience, the fact that we've been through what we've been through -- the invocation this year is 500 years since cortez started that invasion, and we need to

recognize the pain that people -- the historical trauma that we continue to experience, and that is manifested in our institutions sometimes. so when we share together, when we break bread, we heal together, and we also are changing healing practices. one of my mentors once said, it takes many medicines -- therapy's not going to work for everybody. psychology is not going to work for everybody. but as long as we're modelling that healthy behavior, it will intervention in that concept moving forward. >> i love how we're all building on each other's

comments. if we don't have people's basic needs being met, we really can't address the tensions, the racial tensions in our city. if we are not building the saved -- safer needs, we need to build that into the system. i do want to lift up the work that ccdc is doing in the public housing units that they manage because they're doing outreach and i want to make

sure that everyone knows what resources and information are available to them. there's a great piece in the l.a. times about the difference between alliship and solidarity. allyship meaning statements of being one and being united, solidarity being a whole different definition, where we feel our destinies, our fate, are inexplicably tied we need to stop these incidents from occurring in the first place. >> thank you, cynthia. for me, i just want to speak

about me. i have to constantly remind myself that this work isn't easy. this isn't easy work, and i have to be willing to constantly modify the strategy because it's always changing, and being willing to continue collaborating. it's, like, so much strength in the world and sometimes you're strongest allies and the people that makes the most change aren't really the people that we pretty much envision, so just being up on it.

>> well, you know, i love to work with people. my folks, my culture, my heritage, we're all about family, and if anyone ever asked me, whether it be my sisters from potrero hill, or my brother down the street, drew, or joy or dr. drew from bayview, we just show up and make sure we're present in that moment in order for us to stand in solidarity. i think one of the things that feel like, you know, our community has to see all of us together as leaders, and when our community doesn't see us together or we're bickering or we're fighting over some stuff, whatever it may be, then they

look at it as if they don't get along, why should we? we need to leave the ego at the door. it will always be about our community, our kids, and not our titles because what we going to do with it? [applause] >> so i just feel like if we -- us samoans, we love to break bread, right? so any time you come visit -- we're up on sunnydale. any time you come visit, we doing barbecue or we doing something, but nonetheless, the substance of it all is making sure that we, you and i feel like we're sisters, we're

brothers, that we can do this together, and no matter what color skin, whether we're brown, black, blue, asian, whatever, that our community sees us, that we can hold hands together and not hold hands and i'm going to punch you in the face after -- i'm kidding, but we're brothers and sisters that god has placed us in that space at the moment. just like how we're sitting up here in solidarity, holding each other up, and you guys sitting there, holding us up 'cause we all need that, especially that's where i see

it as far as culture. i love sharing my samoan culture through music, dance, and language. in everything, there is a proverb we always use at scdc. [speaking native language] >> the path to leadership is to serve, and that's what we're here to do, is to serve our community as one. >> hillary, take us home. >> i love to piggyback off of this idea, this idea that we need to be there every step of the way. it's not about a one-time b.l.m. rally that we throw, and hey look at us rally.

it's not a one-time juneteenth celebration in the community. it's about the support, knowing that someone can call you up, saying hey, we need help. what can you do for us and how can you help us get there? for us, specifically, it's about japantown and the mission, saying how can we get back to where we used to be? in the marketplace, we're doing things such as black-owned businesses who don't have brick and mortars, we're closing streets once a month, and we're having vendors come out so that these small business owners are not so hard impacted by covid and they can continue their businesses. we're putting district

candidate forums. when district 5 district last november, and we're talking about issues that will affect both the japantown community and the western addition community. what are the policies that we want to push for and advocate for that will help our communities together, so it's about this idea that we need to be there every step of the way. it's not about showing up once a month, going to a panel. it's not about talk the talk, it's walk the walk. it's not about us asking folks to come out to the cherry blossom festival in japantown. it's showing up week after week, using our resources to help everyone else, and when we're able to collectively do that, all our communities benefit together, and it makes

the city a better place all-around. >> wow. let's give our panel a round of applause. [applause] >> first of all, let's give it up for them. wow. they just said some major fire. i mean, i lost five pounds up here, it's so hot. but we'd like to thank them all again, and remember as you think of questions throughout the day. with that said, we're going to shift to our next panel. let's give our panelists another round of applause. [applause]

>> before we go on, i'd like to invite a very special guest with us today to share a few words. last week was a tremendously rough and challenging week, but want to invite up jason young, sr., the father of jace young, jr., who lost his life last year on the fourth of july. i'd like to invite him up, and let's just give him a warm, warm welcome. [applause] >> good morning.

i'm going to try not to be too long winded, but i have a few things that's on my mind and my heart that i feel like is very important to the reason why a lot of us are here today. being a parent, a victim in san francisco, it has, in my opinion, started to become normal. we have normalized stuff happening to our loved ones, not standing up, speaking up, addressing the issues because the dynamics are so intertwined. prime example, my son's case,

my son's situation, it's -- a lot of people know or think that they know the story or know some of the story or have heard this tidbit and read that tidbit. but everybody connected, like i said, especially because a lot of the trauma and stuff that hit these neighborhoods and san francisco, everybody be connected tied in, some shape or form or fashion, whether it be from the children all the way up to the adults. and in my opinion, we as san franciscans, people that grew up in the city, love the city, we have to do more to standup for our people, our loved ones, our communities. these other kids that's within these communities that don't

have the proper nourishment. prime example. my son was murdered on the fourth of july, watching fireworks. people were told to go to a rival neighborhood and go shoot. they went halfway to a rival neighborhood and decided to shoot from across the street, and two people got shot. my son was one of them, and there was another individual. he got shot in the foot. in my opinion, the problem is there's not enough accountability at home.

in probation in san francisco, juvenile, adult, i'm somebody -- you know, i grew up in the system. me and damian posey, we was in group homes together, juvenile hall, everywhere; and in my opinion, these kids, they don't really see the big picture. there's a lot of big guys around incarcerated or don't care, but it's why us, we need to wrap our arms around these kids or families in any shape or form or fashion that we can to help them. whether it be making sure they get a ride to nate, to go play rebels. you know what i'm saying? when i was growing up, we used

to go someplace every week. great america, santa cruz. i'm not saying that that is the difference that's going to stap a lot of kids doing things that they're doing as well as these adults that prey on these kids. like i said, back to my son's case, these kids were sent. these are all juveniles with the exception of one. they were pressured by older people in their community to go somewhere and do a shooting and catch a body per se. i'm from west point. approximately seven years ago, my daughter right here graduated from junior high school. one of her classmates that graduated with her from junior high school was the main

suspect in the shooting of jaquan rice. he lost his life in the shooting of west point. est -- he was 13 years old when he lost his life. for my son's shooters, they were 16, 17, and 18 in his case. like i said, i'm all for accountability. when we have a kid, a niece, a god son, a kid that we just know, and we all they ain't on the right path, we have to do whatever it is necessary to get that message across. you know, when i grew up, if i did something wrong, miss susie might have been on the bus, and she grabbed me by my ear or whatever she had to do, take me to my grandfather's house, and

i got chastised for that. again, i think, for me, like i said, it's all about accountability. we have to standup and be accountable in all facets. again, like my thing, like, the district attorney's office. at some point, there's just some things that you can't do. killing kids, mothers, sisters, nobody is on the table. let me just say that, to make that clear, but there was just some unwritten rules on the street where it wasn't a go. kids, elderly, women, off the table, you know what i'm saying? i hit