Evening for our regular reception, with lots of incredible food, we have a great list of latinoowned restaurants in our Facebook Event for you to choose from. Be sure to check them out and order one of their specials for this event. This years theme means always united. We have always been here, united by land, ancient trade routes, mother tongues, spirits and gods. [speaking foreign language] today more than ever in the face of adversity and injustice we must look at ourselves as a people and find strength in our multiracial, multiethnic, multifaceted identity, identities with deep roots in this land. We will still be here despite covid19, a pandemic that has disproportionately impacted our Latino Community, a community that is essential to the cultural and economic fabric of this country. It is our resilience, respect and love for one another that has helped us persevere throughout the century. This moment is just a chapter in our story in this land. Only together will we overcome the impossible once again. Now it is my honor to introduce our opening performance, a missionbased group of traditional dancers with origins from the valley of modern day mexico city. [drumming]. [drumming]. [drumming]. [drumming]. [indiscernible speech]. Gracias. Thank you very much. Gracias. [speaking foreign language] i want to thank today we are traditional dancers here from the mission district. [speaking foreign language] viva las americas. We are here, its an honor to be here and we are very proud to represent all the cultures from mexico through all the south. Viva las americas. Gracias. I first met, gosh, over 30 years ago, and i remember the first time i met her, and here was this grand woman full of confidence and just this presence, and i thought, wow. Almost 20 years ago when she first began her journey through the department of public health. She had great capacity from the very moment i met her. What i saw in her was an ability to see things in a much higher scale than most people. She was on a quest, a vision quest. When maria would say i can help you with that, she was going to be full on making sure that she did what she promised she would do. Her was all about making sure that were heard. After her passing, there were ways in which i didnt even realize she was working with the people and the hath that she had. She just had joy. She walked through life with a sense of [indiscernible]. Certainly her passion for art and for the artists in her believed that art is essential to create change, to carry that through in whatever she did. Every community has something to offer to the city, and she worked very hard to make sure that that was echoed in the cultural centers. It was important for her to listen to artists and Cultural Workers and staff and bringing their ideas to the table and leading in that way. One of her biggest loves, her main love, espanola. She was raised to be the beautiful woman that she is, she has left so many gifts for palloma, and paloma was the greatest joy for maria. For sure when she left this earth, she felt loved. Its such an honor to speak to her today and to call her name, and i want to thank all the Community Members for this celebration, the latino heritage, that shes being recognized. Its very important that we never forget her and to keep her memory alive. And the passing of her from so many different people and all these different projects and within the health department, just about how much she meant to them in terms of her encouragement and her leadership and her mentoring of people, from all ages and all walks of life, and thats a huge impact and legacy that she has left. She had an ability to see things in people that sometimes the person themselves could not see. I certainly benefited from that. What she would leave that i couldnt accomplish, things at a time i wasnt sure i could accomplish, and i felt like maria believed in me, then i could do my best. Maria martinez was an incredible leader in our community, and we miss her deeply. A sincere thank you, gracias, to her daughter, paloma, who is watching tonight, for sharing your mother with the world. Your communities here for you and your familia as we grieve this tremendous loss. Now, i have the honor of introducing our host, the 45th mayor of the city and county of San Francisco, mayor london breed. Good evening. Thank you so much for that introduction, rodrigo. It is so great to have a reason to dress up. I wish we could be at city hall right now to celebrate together in the rotunda, but we are still able to have an event that celebrates and honors our incredible resilient and united Latino Community. Thank you again, rodrigo, for serving as our emcee tonight and for our Host Committee for their hard work. That tribute video for maria x. Martinez was absolutely incredible, and i know that her legacy and the work that she did for not only the Latino Community but for the arts and so many other people throughout this city will live on through her work. Tonight we are here to honor a community that has faced significant hardships and difficulties this year, but who has also stepped up to the challenge and showed the world what it is made of. This community has worked to minimize the impacts of covid19 in our Latino Community, but despite our early focus on equity and collaboration with the community, disparities have persisted. We know the numbers. Nearly half of all covid19 cases in San Francisco are in the Latino Community despite only being 15 of our citys population. These numbers are proof that what we are doing was not enough. This Community Organized and advocated for more funding and more resources, and i am proud to work with them and our City Department to deliver. And this is just the beginning. We need to continue working together, not just to minimize these impacts but to go above and beyond in supporting one another and creating longterm and impactful changes beyond covid19. This includes economic and workforce development, housing, Food Security and family support, and of course other resources for our residents and our Small Businesses. It includes making sure that our Latino Community is not only in the room but at the table when these decisions and policies are being made. It means supporting our latinoowned businesses from the mission to visitation valley to the excelsior. It means standing together, always united, to push for more equality and just in all of our diverse communities. Tonight we honor that unity and that spirit of community that fuels our work. And as one of our honorees might say, feed the soul. I hope you all order from your favorite latinoowned restaurant for dinner tonight in place of our regular reception. I have my tacos, my crispy tacos, from puerto alegra, which i absolutely love. We have a wonderful show in store for you tonight. Well be honoring three amazing leaders, roger, melva, roberto, people that i absolutely love and adore, folks who are doing incredible things in the community. There will be some more amazing performances, some spoken word, and even some comedy. The arts are how we truly celebrate and lift up our cultures, especially in San Francisco. While we recognize the immense hardships and difficulties that we all have faced over the years, but especially in our Latino Community, tonight we celebrate hope, hope that well emerge from this pandemic stronger and more resilient than ever before, hope that we will inspire future generations of leaders to step up and to serve like the many leaders who are stepping up today. Hope that well always be united. Thank you all again for tuning in, and i hope you enjoy tonights celebrations. Thank you, mayor breed. Now id like to take a moment to recognize an Incredible Group of latina and latino leaders and organizations that are working to meet the needs of our Community Members citywide, the San FranciscoLatino Task Force on covid19 is collectively minimizing the barriers between latino and latina families and the Resources Available by the city and county of San Francisco, the state of california, and nationwide. They are the greatest example of community uniting to provide and support one another. Its a group of organizations that are working together to minimize the impacts that covid is having on latinos. We have a number of committees to make sure that latinos have access to resources, to make sure that latinos stay alive and healthy and safe, and they have what they need to not only be healthy but to just thrive in the city of San Francisco. The Food Distribution is one of the most crucial gifts that we can give as a community to our community. It is a matter of economic and financial survival. They dont have to worry about using the money to go to food. They can pay their rent or they can pay bills, so during covid, if we can keep our community fed and sustained in a healthy way, they can survive in other ways. They can figure out the other ways to survive. The need that were seeing spans across young people, parents, grandparents, immigrant folks, people who dont have access to technology, people who dont understand how unemployment works or how governmental systems and bureaucracies work, so one of the things were really proud about with lts as far as the resources is that all of the services and employments that we have, they are offered in person. Thats intentional, right, that theres somebody who looks like you who speaks your language who can explain things to you in a way that makes sense. We also have a testing hub. We try to target the Latino Community, the undocumented community, and also the essential services for this community. We try to make sure that we target that population because as the data shows we are 51 of the positive cases. One of the things about growing up in the mission and learning from our elders and our activists is that we do things in a way that is very its with selfdetermination, and our value system and our Guiding Principles are this community led, community implemented and community driven. With those three Guiding Principles, we decide how things are done in this community. Thats really how it works, is we call upon each other to come and support. We need volunteers to give away food, we show up. We need people to staff our resource hub upstairs, we show up. Thats just the nature of the community and thats the nature of the community that we lead. Good evening, everyone. It is an honor for me and i am moved to play the distinct role of introducing to you the recipients of the community award. Roberto has deep roots in the mission community, and throughout his life he had exercised passion in every single advocacy role that he played with our community. He is a father. He is a grandfather. Most recently a young congratulations, roberto, by the way. Roberto has a unique talent of feeding and quenching our thirst for culture and bands and music throughout San Francisco. However, most recently due to the covid19 pandemic thats mostly affecting latino families in San Francisco, he has taken up a role in distributing thousands of food bags throughout the city and primarily from 701 alabama street. Thank you, roberto. I appreciate you. I love you, my good brother, and most importantly i want to say that i take joy, much joy, in those calls that you make where you start the conversation with a couple of hilarious jokes that make it difficult to remember the rest of the conversation. [speaking spanish]. Were here at the Mission Food Hub which i started actually out of my house back in march, and through april, and then the need just kept growing, and so i was able to work with our Community Partners who own the building here. A shout out to them for giving us this space. Started in may on Cinco De Mayo and started with 500 families and the need just kept growing and growing and the lines kept growing, and so today we are now servicing 7,000 families three days out of the week. Whats really cool is that we provide latinoculturally appropriate food for our bags. For me, it feeds my soul, my heart, my spirit, my mind that ive been able to collectively work with hundreds of volunteers to provide the most basic human need for people during this crisis, and i really believe that food needs not only your stomach but it feeds your mind and it feeds your body. For me its been a miracle of how not one Single Person that i reached out to to come help have told me now, to this day, and in fact, people have told me thank you. I say, no, thank you, and its been beautiful for me to know that theres so much amore and so much love that is within the Latino Community, and even outside the Latino Community, of people that from all races have contributed in one way or another to get us through this crisis. This award recognizes the miracle that has happened here in the mission and that just organically grew and now supports people in the excelsior, the valley and the bayview, and its just, like, grown. And for me, its a blessing, you know, to be surrounded with so many people who just care and are dedicated and committed to human life. Our second performer is a social justice advocate who uses the power of art and spoken word to organize, educate and heal communities. She is a bilingual poet, muralist, Community Educator and organizer hailing from San Francisco, california. Her passions have taken her around the u. S. And the world to places like spain, france, belgium and morocco. You can also find her murals in art galleries, restaurants and various businesses throughout San Francisco, oakland and valejo. Please join me in welcoming her. I dedicate to the peacekeepers, everyone who put down the gun and picked up the pen to write, to make art, poetry and posters for rallies. This one is for you. And for anyone who fight against gun violence. I woke up at 2 31 a. M. To rounds going off. I dropped to the floor, heart beat accelerated. Are you okay . I checked for survivors and i skipped myself. Trauma, its an outofbody experience. And gunshots this friday night proved the plague of violence is a direct correlation with mattresses on the floor. Symptomology includes surviving by any means necessary. Encompass the death of children and young adults. Hurry, call 911, and tell them another innocent person got shot today by pain, desperation, poverty, racism and depression. The glock is still hot from setting off three rounds, pop, pop, pop nine left in the clip and nine millimeters never felt so big. Car scrapes off, burning rubber, leaving fingerprints on concrete, evidence blood shed and regret. Fast cars revving, making geometric landmarks. We call those hood scars. The Coroners Office is calling someones mama tonight to deliver heartbreak and trauma. Your child was identified by the coroner. You can pick up the body once you choose a mortuary. Call us back once youre ready. Case number, we dont care. You can pick up the body monday at earliest. Enemies are out for vengeance, blood for blood, eye for an eye, causing the same cycle to repeat again, same nightmare tomorrow, same time, same place. Living in hostile territory creates mutations in behavior where we dont sleep near windows, we dont stack bunk beds, we dont start fights we cant win. We close every curtain and shade. We lock every window and door before bed. We say our prayers before we sleep because bullets have no name. We close our eyes to dreams and just a moments sleep when another driveby wakes us up again, fire on both sides means is dead, can i get off this roller coaster of emotion . No im told bullets take no days off. So we drop the cover, palms sweating, heart racing, automatic responses to hit the pavement, so mattresses are purposely left on the floor for safety. Thank you very much. My name is sports to fly. Can you follow me on instagram and facebook at force to fly to see my tour throughout mexico. Thank you for your time. Good afternoon. Im here to introduce this years recipient of the neighbor award. Its my great honor to introduce roger. I go way back with him, when he was just a youngster, organizing his mission district, organize his block, his family, his neighbors against an unlawful eviction during that time. And i got to meet him as an organizer, got to really see his revolutionary spirit, eagerness, his boldness to just, you know, fight for the rights of people, and i see it to this day as president of the twu, 258, and so im just proud of him. Im proud to introduce him. Hes my comrade, my confidentant, good friend. For many of us, a great source of pride, and we look forward to so we looked at him to do many more amazing big things, fight for the needs of our people. My name is roger moreko, president of the transport workers local 258. Ive been in this position for approximately two years now. I started working in driving about seven years now i believe, and one of the reasons why i got involved with the union is i saw that there was sort of a need to organize the membership and to mobilize our workforce, and so me being a grassroots organizer and a mass mobilizer in district nine, the mission district, i decided to get involved, and i started pumping people up, getting them ready, getting them educated, teaching them about whatever the case may be, you know. Little things here and there. How to get involved, why to get involved, what actions to take and why its important just to get involved in general. Being an operator for me, i guess i would hav