 I'm really happy to be here. I'm going to read something that's a little bit about me, which San Francisco is in my bio. I realized so many times, so it'll also be in this. And also something I'm thinking about. It's called Currency of Kindness. Cities are in my genes. This pull toward urban epicenters comes from the heart. This desire to understand the intricacies of neighborhoods with names like the sunset, the Richmond, the Mission, and Barcadero, and Hunter's Point hits me like chemical wiring. And pupils, sharp enough to see extremes, do not be sheltered from the delight and grief, gentrification in native grasses, generations of families that stay like we do, the beauty and horror of the city. This is part of my inheritance. Chicago, the windy city, was my mother's city until there was a conference in Seattle. And at this conference, she met my father, a pastel blue pants wearing Chicano from the Bay Area. And in this emerald city begins their love story, an eventual decision to make a life in San Francisco, my city. San Francisco has the lowest percentage of children in any US city, coupled out with news of it having some of the highest rents in the nation. And it's not hard to see why middle-class families are leaving. Statistics like these encourage fleeing. And this fleeing encourages us to turn our backs in San Francisco, but let's be clear. It's not just those in the highest income bracket that are left to make up San Francisco. There have always been working class and poor people living alongside the middle class and owning class. There have been immigrants and laborers, queers and artists and outcasts, activists and war veterans, the marginally housed and more alongside industry and business. There have been mothers and fathers and grandparents dedicated to the upbringing of young people and to the right of a comfortable old age. There are individuals and families that don't have the luxury of easily living or that don't want to leave, despite the threat of being pushed out. I'm talking about the girls and boys growing up here in their families. I was once a little girl in a working class family in San Francisco, and now I'm a woman still complexly in love with her city. It's with this love and commitment that I speak to the currency of closeness and kindness. Call it barter or trade, far before the city of San Francisco, the native people of the land traded abalone, salt, feathers, obsidian, and more. The currency of relationships relies on human elements, trust, and friendship, and ingenuity. Like many, I learned firsthand the currency of relationships, and it's what's allowed my family to stay in San Francisco. I was born to my city at the very side of the 80s at San Francisco General Hospital, shortly after my birth, we moved to Hayward. But right before my 10th birthday, my dad had brief success in the computer world, bringing in more money than my family had ever seen. So my parents jumped on the opportunity to move back to San Francisco from Hayward. My dad lost his job shortly after moving, but my parents were determined to raise their five daughters here. Their main source of income was a sewing business. They filled orders for a furniture shop in the city. My dad designed, measured, and cut the orders, and my mom, a talented seamstress, completed the sewing. She used these same skills to update our wardrobes with shirts and skirts made of fabric of our choosing. There was never much money for eating out or buying brand-named or packaged goods so they'd cook food from scratch, vegetables and lean meats. For many years, we shared a garden with my dad's best friend's family. Noticing a neighbor's empty, locked and dilapidated stairs, my dad and Dan offered a trade. They'd rebuild the stairway in exchange for use of the backyard to plant a garden. My parents couldn't afford a car in San Francisco. We rode the bus to the grocery store, and if we weren't packing the bags light and sharing the load between the six or seven of us would pile into a cab. It wasn't out of question for my mom to arrive home with pizza after walking into a pizza delivery spot and asking the question, if I order a pizza for delivery, can you take me with it? She really did that many times. On one occasion, she announced me catching a ride to school in a diaper delivery truck. Bouncing my butt on a pile of fabric diapers, I watched my mom and the driver share stories. For extra money, my dad painted houses, set tile or rebuilt staircases. Art and community organizing was at the center of my father's heart and important work to him. This was often unpaid work. It not only enriched our lives, but taught us about social justice and gave us access to artists and to politics. But it also taught us a larger lesson about being intricately connected to others and how relationships are key to helping us remember our own value and worth outside dollars and cents. My father died on the warehouse floor of Cole Hardware where he eventually worked. I was 17 years old and my mom was a widow with five daughters. There was no savings or life insurance or means to move to any other place. Still, we had our own form of currency. The Cole Hardware store owner extended a discount to us that still works to this day. At the neighborhood market, my mom negotiated a tab she could pay off over time so we could always get chips or fruit after school. We all worked, some of us including myself, at the hardware store. My sisters were involved in after-school programs and free art classes and other parents gave us rides from school dances or sports games and for each monetary thing we couldn't give, we gave other things. Our ideas, our friendship, our home. Some time ago, my mom moved into a new home. The house was built 100 years ago by the landlord's grandfather. Our landlord recalls the days of dirt roads and chickens, fairgrounds along the Great Highway and crossing below red arches the day the Golden Gate Bridge was unveiled. His parents lived and died in the house she now rents from him and he's the last of his family. When we moved in the house, it was carpeted, cigarette stained and stale. Since then, we pulled up the carpet to expose hardware floor, filled it with our large family, our Dia de los Muertos and Dia de los Orellas, Mexican traditions and the ordinary things of daily life. He's become Uncle Bill. My mom can't afford to live in this home at market rate but Uncle Bill's made it quite clear we've brought something invaluable to his life, closeness. Call it luck or social assets. I know there are many barriers and not everyone has the chance to negotiate as we have but ask around, you'll be surprised to find more stories like this. This is for those who believe in relationships above all, my mother and father, my friends and their parents, to the queers and the artists and the organizers, the landlord with the dwindled family, to the diaper truck driver, the delivery man and more. The currency of closeness doesn't erase a crippled economy, racism, underfunded public schools and overused prison system. Still I call for another kind of currency for people to stand up for each other, for a new type of investment in relationships, for all young people growing up in San Francisco and for all those to come and the fleeing and the turning away from your cities. Thank you.