mr. edwin lee. [applause] mayor lee: thank you. thank you very much. welcome to the people's hall in san francisco. i want to first of all say -- i have always wanted to say this. the commissioner is such a wonderful person, and she has been our commissioner on immigrant rights commission, but you could see her when we walked in. she was hustling around getting everybody settled, doing what we needed to do to have a successful event, but she has been a wonderful adviser to me for so many years and a great asset to the city. i want to give you a round of a free shares applause. -- appreciative applause. thank you so much. it is my personal pleasure to welcome all of you here to celebrate nowruz. this has been something that supervisor mirkarimi and i talked about for so many years, to make sure we on this day and make sure all of you feel so warm and welcome, so, we are joined by supervisors wiener, farrell, cohen, and there will be other surprises that will come in as well. they know and we know that the celebrations here are very important. they estab

mr. edwin lee. [applause] mayor lee: good evening. as you know, i usually do not read speeches, so i'm just going to talk of the top of my head, but also, really, from my heart. for 21 years, working in san francisco government, i have seen a lot of departments, worked in a few myself, and when these awards came, oftentimes, i kind of said to my cell that it would be need to get one of those awards. somebody will recognize the work that gets done here. as i went through years before of these awards, i often thought maybe during these first few years that -- is it about a new program? are we recognizing new programs? is it all about maybe people getting out of the way so that the new program can get recognized? maybe that is what it is all about. over the years, it has been more difficult to get news programs started and more about how we reshape government and make it better from within. that is what i have been trying to do for some years. and i know that the awardees tonight are not so much about new programs. they are about retooli

mr. edwin lee, mayor of san francisco. mayor lee: good morning. i'm happy to be here, joining our supervisor from district 3 and president of the board, david chiu. sunday streets has been around for about three years. in 2008, we began with a couple of events. we were learning from some great cities throughout the world, particularly bogota, colombia, where we have learned from that mayor and from international leaders how wonderful that event was, in terms of not only taking over the streets, but connecting up with our neighborhoods. if you know anything about me, having been a former dpw director and city administrator and now mayor, you know i have a passion for linking up all of the neighborhoods in the city as much as possible. and i will talk about that later because it becomes invaluable to events like what we have seen in japan to really have strong neighborhoods. but what i want to announce today is next sunday, march 20, is the first of eight planned sunday streets kickoffs. next sunday, we began in the embarcadero. it will be linking u

mr. lee. >> if you would be kind enough to please raise your right hand and repeat after me. i edwin m. lee. >> i edwin m. lee. >> do solemnly swear -- >> do sol manyly swear -- solemnly swear -- >> that i will support and defend -- >> that i will support and defend -- >> the constitution of the united states -- >> the constitution of the united states >> and the constitution of the state of california -- >> and the constitution of the state of california >> against allen miss foreign and domestic -- against all enemies foreign and domestic -- >> against allen miss and domestic -- >> that i will bear true faith and aline of scrimmagens. >> that i will bear true faith and aline of scrimmagens >> to the constitution of the united states. >> to the constitution of the united states. >> and to the constitution of the state of california. >> to the constitution of the state of california. >> that i take this obligation freely -- >> without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion -- >> without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion -- >> and that i will well and faithfully -- >> and