tv Juneteenth Kickoff Celebration 2023 SFGTV July 7, 2023 1:00pm-3:01pm PDT
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>> ancestors for freedoms and all others who dared to define, defend and develop our interest as a people, we pour. for our elders who helped us give us wisdom and strength for our fathers, mothers who rest in the valley of the departed, we pour. for the youth, who represent the future and tomorrow we pour. for remembrance of many women, men, and the human rights
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struggle, we pour. for the new world we struggle to build, we pour. for the principle as our guides in and out of every day live, we pour. for our all mighty creator who makes all things possible, we pour. thank you. we now want to bring up our mc for today. mr. shawn william. >> we are not doing that. some of y'all is acting like you don't have hot burns on the back of your neck right now. acting real upty, this is our celebration and you guys are acting real real real upty right now. happy juneteenth.
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[applause] stop playing with me. this mic moves, i can go everywhere. i see you. we are going to be celebrating us, black music. really just music because music is black music. we create when we have nothing-we create everything, not something, everything. so, we are going to be celebrating ourselves, our music, our culture, our heritage and there are two rules. rules on a celebration? yes. rules on a celebration. rule number one, there are a lot of influential people, inspirational people and young people who are inspirational in here. look to your, front, back, right. we are family in here. get all this
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golf clap out of your system now. we are not doing that today. introduce yourselves. get to know each other. yes. alright. i like that. i like that. we will be passing around the offerings in a minute, because we still have building fund to make sure we get that building. rule number two, and this is very important, i am mc for the evening. that means my job is to move this crowd. i receive my check early. it cleared. i would like to be the mc this year and year after that. you guys, rule two, enjoy yourselves. there will be a lot of great music up here. we are not people of trouble, we are people of bass and drum so when the music hits your soul you better not give me that piedmont golf clap stuff. i know some have good iras and
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credit scores, but leave the 9 to 5 on the shelf and enjoy yourselves. we are going to enjoy ourselves. we are going to act like there is a wood en spoon and fork on the wall. we are going to act like there is a freezer behind me with a crisco can and chicken grease and you cannot mix those. we will be black like you got to go to the kitchen, go out to the garage, to the third freezer and get that meat. get the neck bones and ham hocs and thaw it in the sink. we are going to enjoy our blackness. i like to come back next year. there are a lot coming up and move you. a lot of great speakers coming up. this is second annual. enjoy your is lf. celebrate yourself, embrace your blackness and learn how far our music has
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come. with that being said, i will bring up the first speaker, coming up. it is a honor and pleasure to bring up this woman. please make sure your respect every person-not yet? we are go toog ing to get in the african dance. hold on. we are going to get in the african dance. (indiscernible) they are not asking me to come back just for that.
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[singing and drums] >> everyone please give it up one more time! >> clap it. clap it up. clap it up for them. >> also, we are asking if you are in the back to please minimize your conversation, because we can hear it up here in the front. i want to make sure we give the performers the respect they deserve. >> sarah can you hear me? >> i can hear you!
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>> can you hear me clear? >> loud and clear. >> that means if you can hear me back here you can hear me talking back here so we want to respect everyone who comes up to the microphone. i know you are talking about the show is so great and look at the costumes, but if we can keep it to a church whisper we greatly appreciate it for all the artists who comes up here and speakers. it is very important we listen to everyone as they come up. also, you don't have to stand. you guys do to protect us. you don't have to be on the wall. there are all kinds of seats where you can sit. there are seats over there, so please, you will be here a little while, so please, keep it going. so, with that being said, i'm going to bring up the next speaker, the correct speaker, thank you very much for the assistance. we are going to bring up an very important person, start clapping now, not the golf clap
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for ms. felicia jones. keep it going. [applause] >> thank you so much. thank you so much. what i want you to do is everybody stand up. put your hands up in the air and wave them flags like you just don't care. it is juneteenth. freedom day, jubilee day, emancipation day. wave them line you just don't care like you are enjoying what we are doing for you. thank you so much. i see you in the back. thank you so much. we are happy to have you. thank you and look you guys are in here honey. our second annual mayor london breed juneteenth kick-off. yes. and we want to say thank you to our
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mayor and often times i call her my mayor, my boo, and anyone who knows me knows how much i love me some mayor breed, so we want to say thank you for all that you do. i understand that you have been on the news a lot, but everybody want to look at what she's not doing, but honey, you need to start reading those press releases so you can learn about what she is doing. [applause] alright. clap it up. what she is doing! clap it up. come on people. clap it up. all you dki recipients up in here, getting money because of mayor breed and shamann walton, show your appreciation for these two on juneteenth day.
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ain't nobody else did anything for black folks in san francisco like the dki initiative. and so we say thank you. we say thank you. i want to say hello to all our esteemed guests. chief. hi! chief nicholson, hi! deputy chief, hi! okay. hi! kimberley, hi! shamann, hi! i i don't know you. >> i'm new. i'm engardio. >> thank you. da brooks. and then too from my other employer, chief adams. assistant chief carter. chief fisher in the back. anybody else from san francisco sheriff
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department? anyone else? did i miss any other electeds? who? you are pointing, i don't know who you are pointing to. oh, preston. hi, dean preston. supervisor preston, welcome. yes. of course. where is dr. davis? director dr. cheryl davis. yes, we love her. we love her. and so with that, you know, i'm going to let you sit down while we bring up shamann. throw the flags in the air and wave them like you just don't care! it is juneteenth. it is juneteenth and here's shamann walton, board of superriser. >> thank you so much felicia. real quick before i say a few words. i you want to stand up if you black. stand
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up if you black. so, i did that because i just wanted to see who claim us. so, i know when i walk outside. thank you everybody. you can sit down. so, first of all, as you know, juneteenth is a celebration, and it is celebration of a time period where slaves in texas did not realize and understand they were free and this was in 1865. and it took us all the way till 2022 to be recognized as a national holiday, but i want to thank everyone in this room. i want to thank all the leaders in the city. i want to thank everyone across the state and country to come together to make sure juneteenth is recognized as a national holiday. you did that. give yourselves a hand. [applause] and we should not just
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be celebrating juneteenth and celebrating freedom when we get to this certain time period in june. we should be celebrating freedom, juneteenth, the accomplishments of black people, 24/7. not just in june and not just in february. [applause] now, there is another thing that happened in 1865, which makes the work we have been doing here in san francisco so prevalent today. we were promised 40 acres and a mule in 1865. raise your hand if your ancestors got that 40 acres and a mule. okay, just checking. just seeing who is here with me. so, as we continue to make sure that we do everything we can in black leadership here in san francisco with the dream keeper initiative, with the folks who are working down at community making sure
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our people are connected to services, connected to resources, receiving or just doing san francisco, it is also very prevalent that we remember the reparations we were promised that we never received. so we'll keep fighting here in the city to make sure that black people receive their just due. we will make sure we right the wrongs of the past and we will make sure that we achieve equity here as a black community. i just want to say, thank you all for coming to celebrate with us on this second annual juneteenth celebration right here in city hall. as you know, we have a black mayor. as you know, we have a lot of black leadership here in san francisco and we cannot let this be the end of black leadership as we go into the future. [applause]
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so, with that said, remember we have a gala tonight, remember we have a celebration in fillmore tomorrow, celebration in bayview sunday. celebrate juneteenth, enjoy yourself, have a good time and make sure you understand the meaning and why we celebrate this now, national holiday. thank you. [applause] give >> give it up one more time for shamann walton. about to get into the music portion. you ready for some music? that was weak. you ready for some music? alright. we are about to get into right now. it is a spiritual with director cheryl evan davis. father daughter dance. our journey continues with jazz with sara and blues
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are teri. make noise now for the artists who are about to rock the stage right now. let's go. >> i often blame the mayor for people thinking i can sing. i will ask you all to do me a favor. first and foremost is recognize and understand the role of spiritual in the black experience and so i would say it is a dual purpose in the song and in the singing so i'll ask you to do your best as i'm singing to listen to the words, and think about them with that dual message. on one front, it is about hope, and the belief that things will get better. that it is about whether it happens on this earth or in heaven or in the by and by, and on the other hand it
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shake that off. that was good. sara. sit in it for a minute. i'm a blues singer. all this music you hear today, it came from the blues. we are the root. i'm going to do a song by one of my favorite blues singers, gospel singer ms. (indiscernible) can you put your hands together? this is message i think everyone needs to hear. [guitar and singing]
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i'm going to do a song i wrote. you see, we have seen a lot of changes happen around here in the bay area, and this song was inspired when was on facebook, and the police were called on the church for worship ing too loud and there was a drum circle on the lake and they were calling the police on the drummers. this song is entitled, gentrification blues. [drums, guitar, singing]
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>> give it up one more time! it is beautiful how we can take pain and make it into just pleasure. i see people using fans now like it is church. it is getting hot, yeah! with that being said, we are about to take it to 1959. take it to a place called detroit, aka the motor city, where there was this brother named berry gordy
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who started a company with only $800 and decided to call it motown, home of icon-i was about to say legends but icon like stevie wonder, jackson 5, michael jackson, the supremes and my mama's favorite, marvin. start clapping now for the san francisco theater company. nate the soul singer and ryan. >> how you doing? we got a couple temptation songs for you. you all ready for that? alright, let's go. [singing]
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>> thank you thank you thank you. i'm rodney earl jackson, jr., artistic director of the theater company. >> anthony jackson. >> amen, amen, amen. we got one more for you because our wonderful may loves this song but dedicated to all the beautiful black ladies in here. especially looking at dr. cheryl davis and looking at my beautiful mother. alright. alright. i'm going to take the glasses off for this. get into
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>> hello everyone. my name is nate the soul singer and i'm going to come to you about r & b music. i'm a r&b artist myself. i had to do studying and get history. r & b music was born in the 40. lewis jordan is one of the first r & b artist with is you is or is you isn't my baby. since we had so much old school i decided to do more in my era which i think you'll all enjoy. r & b music has done
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a lot of things. talks about love. talks about heart break. money. having it, wanting it, needing it. my job is to get you all out of you seats today. so, we can party to this r & b music. come on! and of course if you know any of these songs, please sing with me. [singing how will i know by whitney houston]
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up for -my name is ryan nicole representing hip hop for you all and before we get into it, i want to give history. hiphop started as a protest. it didn't start as a party. we know hip hop music more blinging flashy and ratchet but that isn't how we are going to do it today. is that okay with you all? we are going to start with the word because the word is where hip hop started. it started as spoken word first. do you know we are the center black people are the center. another word for the center is the nexus. right? we make this whole thing go down. we make this whole thing happen, so juneteenth is about freedom and releashing the shackles but first freedom in your
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mind. we are the nexus, meaning the freshest, meaning the center of attention, the essence, the light source, indandescence, the shunshine, bright florescent, caept reject it. better if you accept this. elevating position (indiscernible) people stay connected, i am what i am, (indiscernible) [singing]
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going to do some things we don't normally hear on the radio. we are going to do love stuff. i'll do the last song and get out your ways because we have more performances coming up. my name is ryan nicole. this is love song. a little sweet. it ain't but bumping and grinding, even though i'm not mad at that, but i feel you've been inundated with that. can you two step with me now? i'm grown y'all. i can't be bumping and grinding and twurking and all that. my knews hurt. got arthritis. [singing] erking and
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soul singer. we would like to also recognize mr. reverend brown. give it up. from the baptist church. you having a good time? you enjoying yourselves? why not because it is evolution of our music so of course you having a good time. i'm about to bring up a sister one more time to make sure she has announcements. start clapping right now had, give it up for ms. felicia jones one more time! [applause] >> yes! the evolution of our music. if you enjoyed yourself, one more time, stand up with your flags in your hand and raise them to the sky like you just don't care. i mean, i'm sitting over there and i'm just like, wow! if
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director asked me next year to do this again, it is like wow, what am i going to do, because this has been fabulous. this has been fabulous and can i'm so glad you enjoyed yourselves. we are going to close out with the caribbean vibration. the caribbean vibrations are in the house. uh-huh! they going to show you what they working with. yes! i love them, because my cousin, my first cousin, my second cousin have all danced with this group for over 30 years, and so, she has been asking to come into city hall and i was like, okay. evolution of music, i got to close this out with a bang. i got to close it out, girl. here we are. shawn, you going to introduce them? thank you all so much for coming
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and again, i'm so happy you guys enjoyed yourselves and our house! and our house! and our house! and we have to be comfortable and coming into our house by the name of city hall. [applause] >> give it up one more time for ms. felicia jones. i'm go to read this off the bio so wasn't like i wasn't doing my homework but we want to bring them up correct. so, caribbean vibrations launched in 2010. you can start clapping right now. by founder, designer, dance choreographer trisha bell fast williams a native of-not only know for the vibrations and vibrant and beautiful
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costumes but the ultimate and authentic carnival experience in northern california representing all caribbean islands. steadily growing and evolving into a powerhouse mass band and focused on our masqueraders. establish a new standard and serving becoming the first all inclusive caribbean carnival group. i don't think you heard me, established as a new standard. becoming the first all inclusive caribbean carnival group in california. caribbean vibration mission is deliver the masquerade with amazing costume, exceptional service and teaching of cultural caribbean dance. ladies and gentlemen, give it up for caribbean vibrations! [applause] >> caribbean vibrations!
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know, it's not much free left in the world anymore so we managed to do that through donations and through our gift shops. you got a real look and real appreciation of what early transit systems are like. this was the transit of the day from about 1875 to about 1893 or later, you know. cable car museum is free, come on in. take a day. come down. rediscover the city. you can spend as time you want and you don't have to make reservations and it's important to be free because we want them to develop a love for cable cars so they do continue to support whether they live here or other places and people come in and say, yes, i have passed by and heard of this and never come in and they always enjoy themselves. people love cable cars and there's none left in the world so if you want to ride a cable car, you've got to come to san francisco. that what makes the city. without the cable cars, you lose part of that, you know, because people who come here and they love it and they love the history ask
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they can ride a cable car that has been running since 1888 or 1889. wow! that's something. can't do that with other historical museums. rarely, have i run into anybody from outside who didn't come in and didn't feel better from knowing something about the city. it's a true experience you'll remember. i hope they walk away with a greater appreciation for the history, with the mechanics with people are fascinated by the winding machine and i hope the appreciation, which is a part of our mission and these young kids will appreciate cable cars and the ones who live here and other places, they can make sure there will always be cable cars in san francisco because once they are gone, they are gone. it's the heartbeat of san francisco that founded the cable and the slot and without the cable cars, yeah, we would lose something in san francisco. we would lose part of its heart and soul. it
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george floyd was huge. it opened up wounds and a discussion on something festering for a long time. before rodney king. you can look at all the instances where there are calls for change. i think we are involved in change right now in this moment that is going to be long lasting. it is very challenging. i was the victim of a crime when i was in middle school. some kids at recess came around at pe class and came to the locker room and tried to steal my watch and physically assaulted me. the officer that helped afterwards went out of his way to check the time to see how i was. that is the kind of work, the kind of perspective i like to have in our sheriff's office regardless of circumstance. that influenced me a lot.
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some of the storefronts have changed. what is mys is that i still see some things that trigger memories. the barbershop and the shoe store is another one that i remember buying shoestrings and getting my dad's old army boots fixed. we would see movies after the first run. my brother and i would go there. it is nice. if you keep walking down sacramento. the nice think about the city it takes you to japan town. that is where my grandparents were brought up. that is the traditional foods or movies. they were able to celebrate the culture in that community. my family also had a dry-cleaning business. very hard work. the family grew up with
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apartments above the business. we have a built-in work force. 19 had 1 as -- 1941 as soon as that happened the entire community was fixed. >> determined to do the job as democracy should with real consideration for the people involved. >> the decision to take every one of japan niece american o japanese from their homes. my family went to the mountains and experienced winter and summer and springs. they tried to make their home a home. the community came together to share. they tried to infuse each home are little things. they created things. i remember my grand mother saying they were very scared. they were worried.
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they also felt the great sense of pride. >> japanese americans. >> my granduncle joined the 442nd. when the opportunity came when the time that was not right. they were in the campaign in italy. they were there every step of the way. >> president truman pays tribute. >> that was the most decorated unit in the history of the united states army. commitment and loyal to to the country despite that their families were in the camp at that time. they chose to come back to san francisco even after all of that. my father was a civil servant as
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well and served the state of california workers' compensation attorney and judge and appellate board. my parents influenced me to look at civil service s.i applied to police, and sheriff's department at the same time. the sheriff's department grabbed me first. it was unique. it was not just me in that moment it was everyone. it wasn't me looking at the crowd. it was all of us being together. i was standing there alone. i felt everyone standing next to me. the only way to describe it. it is not about me. it is from my father. my father couldn't be there. he was sick. the first person i saw was him.
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i still sometimes am surprised by the fact i see my name as the sheriff. i am happy to be in the position i am in to honor their memory doing what i am doing now to help the larger comment. when i say that we want to be especially focused on marginalized communities that have been wronged. coming from my background and my family experienced what they did. that didn't happen in a vacuum. it was a decision made by the government. nobody raised their voice. now, i think we are in a better place as country and community. when we see something wrong we have change agents step up to help the community affected. that is a important thing to continue to do. you talk about change and being a leader in change and not knowing whether you have successes or results.
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the fact of the matter is by choosing to push for change you have already changed things. through inspiration for others, take up the matter or whether it is through actual functional change as a result of your voice being heard. i think you have already started on a path to change by choosing that path. in doing that in april of itself creates change. i continue in that type of service for my family. something i hope to see in my children. i have a pretty good chance with five children one will go into some sort of civil service. i hope that happens to continue that legacy. >> i am paul, sheriff of san
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lab where residents come and get support when they give help about how to set up an e-mail account. how to order prescriptions online. create a résumé. we are also now paying attention to provide tech support. we have collaborated with the san francisco mayor's office and the department of technology to implement a broad band network for the residents here so they can have free internet access. we have partnered with community technology networks to provide computer classes to the seniors and the residents. so this computer lab becomes a hub for the community to learn how to use technology, but that's the parents and the adults. we have been able to identify what we call a stem date. the acronym is science technology engineering and math. kids should be exposed no matter what type of background or ethnicity or income status. that's where we actually create
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magic. >> something that the kids are really excited about is science and so the way that we execute that is through making slime. and as fun as it is, it's still a chemical reaction and you start to understand that with the materials that you need to make the slime. >> they love adding their little twists to everything. it's just a place for them to experiment and that's really what we want. >> i see. >> really what the excitement behind that is that you're making something. >> logs, legos, sumo box, art, drawing, computers, mine craft, and really it's just awaking opportunity. >> keeping their attention is like one of the biggest challenges that we do have because, you know, they're kids. they always want to be doing something, be helping with something. so we just let them be themselves. we have our set of rules in place that we have that we want
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them to follow and live up to. and we also have our set of expectations that we want them to achieve. this is like my first year officially working with kids. and definitely i've had moments where they're not getting something. they don't really understand it and you're trying to just talk to them in a way that they can make it work teaching them in different ways how they can get the light bulb to go off and i've seen it first-hand and it makes me so happy when it does go off because it's like, wow, i helped them understand this concept. >> i love playing games and i love having fun with my friends playing dodge ball and a lot of things that i like. it's really cool. >> they don't give you a lot of cheese to put on there, do they? you've got like a little bit left. >> we learn programming to make
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them work. we do computers and programming. at the bottom here, we talk to them and we press these buttons to make it go. and this is to turn it off. and this is to make it control on its own. if you press this twice, it can do any type of tricks. like you can move it like this and it moves. it actually can go like this. >> like, wow, they're just absorbing everything. so it definitely is a wholehearted moment that i love
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experiencing. >> the realities right now, 5.3 latinos working in tech and about 6.7 african americans working in tech. and, of course, those tech companies are funders. so i continue to work really hard with them to close that gap and work with the san francisco unified school district so juniors and seniors come to our program, so kids come to our stem hub and be exposed to all those things. it's a big challenge. >> we have a couple of other providers here on site, but we've all just been trying to work together and let the kids move around from each department. some kids are comfortable with their admission, but if they want to jump in with city of dreams or hunter's point, we just try to collaborate to provide the best opportunity in the community. >> devmission has provided
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services on westbrook. they teach you how to code. how to build their own mini robot to providing access for the youth to partnerships with adobe and sony and google and twitter. and so devmission has definitely brought access for our families to resources that our residents may or may not have been able to access in the past. >> the san francisco house and development corporation gave us the grant to implement this program. it hasn't been easy, but we have been able to see now some of the success stories of some of those kids that have been able to take the opportunity and continue to grow within their education and eventually become a very successful citizen. >> so the computer lab, they're doing the backpacks. i don't know if you're going to be able to do the class.
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you still want to try? . yeah. go for it. >> we have a young man by the name of ivan mello. he came here two and a half years ago to be part of our digital arts music lab. graduating with natural, fruity loops, rhymes. all of our music lyrics are clean. he came as an intern, and now he's running the program. that just tells you, we are only creating opportunities and there's a young man by the name of eduardo ramirez. he tells the barber, what's that flyer? and he says it's a program that teaches you computers and art. and i still remember the day he walked in there with a baseball cap, full of tattoos. nice clean hair cut. i want to learn how to use computers. graduated from the program and he wanted to work in i.t..
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well, eduardo is a dreamer. right. so trying to find him a job in the tech industry was very challenging, but that didn't stop him. through the effort of the office of economic work force and the grant i reached out to a few folks i know. post mates decided to bring him on board regardless of his legal status. he ended his internship at post mates and now is at hudacity. that is the power of what technology does for young people that want to become part of the tech industry. what we've been doing, it's very innovative. helping kids k-12, transitional age youth, families, parents, communities, understand and to be exposed to stem subjects. imagine if that mission one day
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can be in every affordable housing community. the opportunities that we would create and that's what i'm trying to do with this >> bring up person that [laughter]. for me it was we had neighbors growing up that were fold my dad he is raising me wrong for having me pursue the things that are not traditionally female roles. and i think the biggest barrier to anyone in general is when you have cultural norms that make you feel like you can't do something that make you doubt yourself and make you feel you should not be there i don't belong. those other big efbarriers i think that is the thing to focus
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