Transcripts For SFGTV Government Access Programming 20240713

End Domestic Violence in their community, we are so happy to see you and we are so happy to stand with you always. Survivors and their children are our heroes. They take the courage every year they are beyond heroic every day to step out of violent situations and risk becoming homeless or worse. They risk it because of this safety net here. We have to get rid of gun violence, we have to protect our citizens, we have to protect our residents, our most Vulnerable People in San Francisco and we can do it. I think supervisor stefani really gave us a good task. Lets get this legislative work going, lets work with the Police Department, lets get guns out of the hands of abusers and stockers. It is pretty simple. Dont let anyone make it complex for you. It is not out of the hands of abusers and stockers. So their lives in the lives of children count. We are all here to do everything we can to end Domestic Violence in every community to make San Francisco the safest city in the nation. Can we do more . Yes. Must we do more . Yes, and we will. Thank you so much. [applause] thank you so much, beverly. Under mayor london breed, she has made a historic investment in these services. The largest budget ever for services to victims and their families of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and human trafficking. We are really blessed to be in a city that is making this huge investment. I want to recognize a few more people. Nicole from the Mayors Office helped make today happen. [applause] kelly has joined us from the Human Rights Commission and the sharp office. Tammie bryant from the San Francisco county democratic central committee, we need our Political Leadership here as well, and we have our friends from san mateo county, our Domestic Violence advocates from our neighboring county who are here. As i mentioned, the theme of tonights event is building pathways to safety. Domestic violence is often the cause of homelessness, especially for our Lgbtq Community and families with children. Our Partner Agencies play a vital role in providing services to survivors of violence and we are fortunate to have a diverse set of services to reach our diverse population. Just a reminder, we will be lighting city hall purple and concluding tonight will be the red womens lightning group. Lets hear it for them. [applause] so tonight we want to recognize the commitment and hard work of our partners who provide Emergency Shelter. Our next week our next speakers represent organizations that do this every day. Join me in welcoming the executive protect project director of the first asian women shelter in the country. [applause]. Good evening. My name is orchid. I have orchid coloured glasses and i am ready for this years Domestic Violence Awareness Month press conference with all of you. I am here with asian womens shelter, and with every person here who believes that ending Domestic Violence is key to building healthy, safe, and hopeful communities. So this year, 2019, it actually marks the 30th anniversary of the first time that the u. S. Congress passed legislation to designate october as national Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And when they passed that legislation for the first time in 1989, it was eight years after the National Coalition against Domestic Violence. It had grown an initial day of unity in 1981 into a week, and then a month of events. These events were designed to do three things that we are still doing today. One is to mourn those and to honor those who have been killed by people perpetrating Domestic Violence, two, to celebrate and to support those who have survived and are still surviving today. And three, to connect those who work to end violence so that we can lean on each other, uplift each other, and amplify our longevity and our impact beyond what any of us could do if we were in isolation from each other. So 30 years later, we have come a long way and clearly, we are not going anywhere because our job is not done yet. We have so many to honor and mourn here in our city, as well as across our state, nation, and world. Whether they were killed by their perpetrators, framed by them, had their mysterious deaths covered up by them, or were driven to suicide or selfharm by the people who made their life unlivable. We also, 30 years later, we have so many to support and to celebrate as they rebuild their lives from rockbottom after having given up everything to try to carve out a new future for themselves and for their children, and because violence travels intergenerational he, for their childrens children. They survivors are champions who are trying to reroute this intergenerational violence and carve out a new lifeline for their family. Amidst odds that i think would make most of us at least to me, not be able to get up in the morning. And 30 years later, we have so many more of us who are working to end violence and who have been gifted the progress that has been made by those who came before us. But still, we have to be here and we have to be really loud. We have to be really clear, we have to be really confident and sure about what we are doing, and we are. Theyre still people in forces out there who are perpetuating myths about Domestic Violence and to need our help to become more aware. They still think Domestic Violence isnt actually that big of a deal, that it is a contained issue, that it is special interest or it is private or it is personal, it is about anger or it is about alcoholism, and that theres nothing we can do because its about individual people and individual people are who they are. Some people are just inherently more violent and others are inherently more submissive. We are here every single month, and especially in october to take those myths and grind them to a pulp and flush them. We know they are not true. We are here 30 years later using this platform to say Domestic Violence, it is personal, it is private, and it is social. Is political. We are showing that this is an issue that we pay a tremendous price, an unacceptable price for allowing to continue. At the asian women shelter here in San Francisco, we know that Domestic Violence is interwoven into every single issue that we are arguing about in the country right now. Immigration, gun violence, guncontrol, homelessness, workforce development, poverty, gender, justice, policing, equal pay, all of it. And now 30 years later, we have more data. Others have mentioned some of these pieces. On average, 20 to 24 people per minute, that means we are approaching 100 since i have been talking. Our victims of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in the United States. Ten to 12 Million People over the course of a year. That is completely unacceptable. In a 16 year study ending in 2010, while we know Domestic Violence victimizes people across the gender spectrum, that study showed four in five victims were female identified. When we look at the numbers, the risk factors for women living with disabilities for survivors who are indigenous, survivors who are black, survivors who are transgender, undocumented, who speak limited english, we know the pathways that we have to create, they dont look the same way. We have to have all kinds of different pathways that address the different barriers and challenges that different survivors face in our communities and our neighborhoods and in nurse neighborhoods and families. We will have to recognize, as has also been said before, the kids. The kids. Nationally, the majority of people who abuse their intimate partner do so in front of the kids. And 50 also abuse their children, but over and over, week after week, in our counties here in the bay area, we see decisions made that dont reflect knowledge of this. That somehow think that you can terrorize your intimate partner but be an amazing parents. That is not true. In 2018, every town for gun Safety Report indicated that at least 50 4 of Mass Shootings in the United States revealed that the perpetrator also shot a current or former intimate partner or family member. Over 54 . And almost 100 of those perpetrators of Mass Violence have histories of violence or verbalized violence and hatred against women. We cant say that they are unconnected anymore. We cant say Domestic Violence is private and personal anymore, that it is only personal and not connected to Public Health and Public Safety. What i want people to know this month, and i want people to still know it, know it even better in november, and even better in december, and be able to tell all the people you know about it, but not so much that they dont invite you to their parties anymore, that violence violent armed perpetrators are a deadly force in america and also here in our city and San Francisco. And ending Domestic Violence is central to saving lives, to saving childhood, to saving our Public Health and our Workplace Safety and our school safety, and ultimately our future. So to all the partners here, whether you are in government, whether you are a nonprofit, if you work at night, if you answer the crisis line, if you are an advocate with infants or an advocate with adults or seniors, thank you so much for your creativity and your stamina and you are not alone. None of us is alone. To the survivors out there, i want to tell you that when you feel at your most alone, somehow , a tiny place in your mind and heart, belief that you are not. We are out there. We are scattered all across the city and we are scattered all across the bay area. We speak your language. We grew up in a family like yours, we grew up in a neighborhood like yours and we cannot wait to support you to find all of your strengths and decide what you want to do to have a better life. You can call us. You dont have to know what you want to do. Most of us have no idea what we want to do with our life. You dont have to know, either. But you can call and we can talk about it. We wont judge you, and we wont gossip about you, and we care. It is our whole life. This is what we care about the most. To the kids out there, to the kids that are being woken up several nights a week in fear, to the kids that wake up and spend their night time comforting their younger siblings so that they wont make anything worse, to the kids that then have to get up and go to school and they cant focus and their grades arent good, and theyre making disruptions and having marks of negative attached to them, i want to tell those kids, i want you to know, we cant wait to work with you. We want to help you with your homework, we want to help you rebuild your relationship with your nonviolent parents, we want you to have a safe place at night and to sleep with stuffy his and have hope for your future because we have hope for your future and we are going nowhere until this issue is gone thank you. [cheers and applause] another round of applause for orchid. There are a few more City Department heads that have joined me, in addition to fire chief janine nicholson. Linda, department of department apartment of technology, we could not have done the app without her and her staff. Please recognize linda. Also, walking torres has joined us, director of the office of economic and workforce development. Our next speaker is kathy black, executive director of the [speaking spanish] the first domestic shelter in california. Please give her a warm welcome. Thank you. Orchid, you are awesome. I just want to say that. In keeping with todays theme, building pathways to safety, i want you to know, i will take it a little bit more local and i want you to know that we respond to calls for help from victims of Domestic Violence of all ages , 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We give survivors the tools to transform their lives. We seek to prevent future violence by educating the community and redefining Public Perceptions about Domestic Violence. We attempt to accomplish this by engaging nearly 20,000 women, teens, men, older adults and children each year through a continuum of expert intervention and prevention services. We also envision a community where Domestic Violence is not tolerated in equal access to asset asset building opportunities that is freely available to all. I want to talk about a local stat from our shelter. That is of the 7,000 hotline calls we take every year, or this last year, 500 of those were from the San Francisco Police Department Law Enforcement and from the medical community. We are working really hard to engage Community Partners who are out, First Responders, and to make a difference in that way i feel like that ties to the mayor mayors press release today because we believe these early interventions are really key to future safety. That by connecting victims and survivors with Community Resources like the ones represented here, and all out there, i see my crew out there. That helps reduce the incidence of future violence. And some other highlights from this past year, just so you get an idea about the scope of the work that some of our programs provide, we provided 10,991 nights of shelter to 368 women and their children. Eightyseven of the mothers who stayed in our shelter participate in Family Counseling and support groups. People are eager to learn and eager to get resources. We often operate at or over capacity. Last year, it was 22 of the year that we operated either at our full capacity or over. What that means is that in the middle of the night when the Police Department calls, we bring out, and we are full, which we are a lot, we havent rollaway beds, we have couches, we figure things out and we will shelter victims and survivors overnight while they are figuring out what their next move might be with the expert help of the staff and our Community Partners. Also, i think i want you to know that, again, whether it is 10 0a First Responder is going through the legality assessment lethality assessment tool, that when they connect that victim with an advocate at our shelter, and they decide to do an intake, that victim is going to meet the same advocate at the door of our shelter so that it is not theres compassion, theres consistency, and i think that makes a big difference for people. It is a real personal connection over 92 of clients, of our clients report, and im sure this is true of my partner programs, as well, over 92 of clients report positive outcomes across our five key metrics, which is, i have to look and see what it is, knowledge, safety, his stability, agency, and isolation. With that, i want to really say that we are one agency as part of a larger safety net, and i see my friends here, and my allies, and we couldnt do the work without city partnerships, political allies, people like joaquin who has been a friend for years. Thank you for everything you do for us. And the Community Partners we work with. Thank you very much. [applause] our third and final representative of our Domestic Violence Emergency Shelter community is sherry, executive director of the riley center, Saint Vincent de paul society. Please give her a warm welcome. [applause] good evening. If we are to address and prevent Domestic Violence holistically, we must provide comprehensive Supportive Services centred on the survivors trauma and need while highlighting their individual family and Community Systems, strength and protective factors. And if we focus our efforts in providing client centred, trauma informed and culturally sensitive Supportive Services, we will support the longterm healing of intergenerational cycle of violence experienced by survivors and their children. This will lead to a stronger, safer, and healthier family and Community System free of violence. This is what we work on at our center. We have four major programs in which we do this. We have our transitional housing program, we have rosalie house which is our Emergency Shelter and our crisis line, we have our Community Office where survivors can get the ser