Specific legislation. We are united here today. Over 150 current members of the house and over 200 candidates united in the belief that the peoples house must be wrested from the grip of special interests and handed back to you, the American People. Unhappily, americans today are cynical. They are tired of broken promises. Tired of being misled. Tired of spin from a white house that seems to govern on the principle that you can fool the people. Some of the time and tired of a congress that raises their taxes and wastes their money through the lens of cspan cameras. Americans are just dismayed by the sight of a revered institution corrupted by absolute power. A house of representative that now routinely stifles free and open debate cobbles together thousands of pages of bills behind closed doors and refuses to live by the laws it imposes on everyone else. And most damaging, has adopted as its central philosophy, the belief that ordinary people cannot be trusted to spend their own money
Valuable work that has been done. And you know, the some things and i think that i spoke at that first meeting, that there is a lot that we know. And then there is that lot that we dont know. And it really is coming from the peoples own voices. About what it is that they want and what they need that we think is so much more valuable than our just trying to sort that out ourselves. And so, i was especially thankful to marcy for your comments and i think that speaks so much to another Strategic Plan that we are working on in our office and it gets with that, and that is those folks that have dementia and really cant speak for themselves. And it really is true in the Lgbt Community those folks are even more isolated and have less to look and in terms of support. I was making notes today and i go to hearings and that is what i do and i was glad to hear you say in the very beginning that data collection, cultural competency and the bill of rights for the folks in institutional care and thos
Cultural competency within each one of those cultures. On the lgbt issues, and i think that part of it is or was demonstrated by the only limited success that the task force had in reaching out to the russian communities and others in getting response back. And so i think that we need to very, and we need to really focus on cultural competency in communities that may discriminate within their own culture. And it is not only the predominant communities in the city, but also, it is other communities as well. And i think that this is extremely important. And the started as one something mentioned early on and the first speaker at the Human Rights Commission early on bill abrams has been involved in it since the beginning and i am happy to announce that the California Association of human rights organizations is giving bill an award next friday for his human rights work and it is only one of four awards given in the entire state of california and i want to congratulate bill on that honor.
Desperation and a lack of hope in this community and it is something that we need to look at immediately. Because for every month we dont look at these issues, we may lose more seniors and we may lose more individuals, who take their own lives. The other thing is come is cultural come pentcy and we have done a lot of work in the community in the various communities of various culture thes the Latino Community and the emensa community and others. And we find tremendous lack of cultural competency within each one of those cultures. On the lgbt issues, and i think that part of it is or was demonstrated by the only limited success that the task force had in reaching out to the russian communities and others in getting response back. And so i think that we need to very, and we need to really focus on cultural competency in communities that may discriminate within their own culture. And it is not only the predominant communities in the city, but also, it is other communities as well. And i t
The folks that have been attending the meetings and doing the hard work, and keeping me in the loop when it seemed right to do so. And we want to thank you and we look forward to working on the report itself. And i think that as a Department One of the things that we are known for is implementing what has been put in front of us and so we look forward to that. Thank you, director. And now the executive director of the Human Rights Commission, commissioner sparks. Good morning supervisors, thank you for the community to speak. There are a couple of things that have not been i think mentioned here today. One is the commitment that these Task Force Members have had and made to this process. It was very seldom that we at the hrc facilitated the meetings from the very beginning and was very seldom there was an absence at these meetings. And it was very vibrant and very committed group and a group that brought not only knowledge but a lot of emotion to the process. One statistic that i cant