(students chattering)
- Hello everyone and welcome to the sixth annual
UCSF Last Lecture.
Thank you all so much for coming and turning out
for this amazing speech we're about to hear.
Please take a moment to ensure that your phones
are on silent before we begin tonight's program.
So we began the process of tonight's Last Lecture
months ago, when the student governments from each school
were asked to help put together a nominee list.
From this list, hundreds of students
from all of the UCSF programs voted.
The winner of that vote is our speaker tonight,
Dr. Howard Pinderhughes.
(applause)
Dr. Howard Pinderhughes is an associate professor
and chair of the social and behavioral sciences department
in the school of nursing.
He first came to UCSF as a post doc
at the Institute for Health Policies Studies
and has since been committed to helping UCSF
improve as a community and as an anchor for social change.
His work focuses on health inequalities and disparities,
with a core concentration on violence as a health issue
and the impacts of violence on youth in urban communities,
and has evolved to examine and address individual
and community experiences of trauma.
As a long-standing member and former co-chair
of the Diversity in Action Committee
in the School of Nursing, known as DIVA,
he has worked with other faculty to address issues
of diversity, inclusion, racism, and sexism
and to create a more multicultural community,
both in the School of Nursing
and in the broader UCSF community.
In addition, he is also a founding member
and former co-chair of the University Community
Partnership Council, which is now
the Center for Community Engagement.
(applause)
He has also been engaged in National Policy Work
as a lead partner in Unity, Urban Networks
to Increase Thriving Youth, which is a CDC-funded
national initiative for comprehensive violence Prevention
in the nation's largest cities.
He is the author of the book Race In The Hood:
Conflict and Violence among Urban Youth
and a forth coming book Dealing with Danger.
How inner city youth cope with the violence
that surrounds them.
His career is an exemplary for students
who are interested in combining their scholarly
academic work with issues of social justice to work
in diverse settings and have a lasting, positive impact
on both the local and national scale.
And so on behalf of the UCSF student body,
I ask Dr. Pinderhughes is you had one lecture to give.
What would you say?
(applause)
- How's everybody doing?
(laughs)
I'm doing pretty good.
First of all, thank you Gia for the beautiful
and wonderful introduction.
I wanna thank the students for
allowing me to spend a little
bit of your time talking about some important things.
Hopefully I will validate your faith in me in terms of
thoughts that I was gonna impart some wisdom.
That's the intention and we're gonna get started.
But before I do.
I wanna thank a couple of people.
First of all, my wife, who is my partner.
(applause)
In virtually everything that I do
but most importantly she's my partner
in terms of promoting social change
and doing our community work.
And the work that I do,
I get inspired by the work that she does.
Y'all don't know it but she is fierce.
(laughs)
And you should get to know it more.
I also want to give a shout out to my two children
who could not be here tonight.
(applause)
Samora Pinderhughes is a composer and a pianist.
I'll talk a little bit about Samora in just a second
and Elena Pinderhughes, she's like a light.
Elena is all light and she is a flute player
as you can tell.
She's playing the flute and she brings joy to everybody
that she encounters, both through her music
but also her spirit.
So I wanna thank and dedicate
this talk to the three of you and my mom.
Now Mom, I know you watching.
(laughs)
I love you.
(laughs)
My mother's 94, she wanted to be here but she was unable to,
I told her she's not allowed to get on the plane.
But she's watching and she is along with my father
and my entire family are my inspiration
and a lot of the reasons why I do what I do and how I do it.
And so I'm gonna read my talk.
(laughs)
Just kidding,
I've got a few notes
but I'm probably not gon read it.
The prop for this, everybody knows what it is right?
It's if you had just one last lecture to give
what would you say.
That's a daunting, daunting prop
It's like I get to talk then fade to black.
(laughs)
That's very, very intimidating
and it causes you to become philosophical.
I spent the last couple of weeks thinking about my life.
Thinking about what's my purpose in life
and thinking about why are we here.
What were put on this Earth for?
And what came to me, for me
it's many things
but two proverbs or principles came to mind.
Kuumba which means creativity
but not just creativity in terms of creation
before yourself and expression
but it encourages us to always do as much as we can
and do it the way we possibly can
in order to leave our
communities and our Earth better than we found it.
And that to me is a fundamental principle
we all should live by.
Unfortunately it runs counter
to the core principle of capitalism
which is short term profit.
But this I would urge you to hold tight to
as you think about the work that you do.
And the second is iroquis maxim which is in our very every
deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions
on the next seven generations.
Now when we talk about that.
It places a very, very clear responsibility
and burden on us about what is the impact
of the work we do and how we do it.
And as climate change becomes a reality,
as the Earth is in peril.
This maxim becomes more and more vital for us to start
running our lives, creating our institutions
and shifting and changing and transforming our society
to take this into account.
So I shape this last lecture
from two of my most important teachers.
The first is my father and
my father died in 1998
of a heart attack brought on by the complications
of congestive heart failure and diabetes.
And he was a renowned psychiatrist and psychoanalyst
and he wrote about the psychology of racism.
No surprise, I came out of that right.
(laughs)
In the last year of his life,
he worked feverishly to complete a manuscript.
A manuscript of his life
which was a combination of his memoirs,
his analysis of the history of our family
and his analysis of the history of African Americans
in the United States.
He wrote it for us, for his children and he entitled it,
This is my Baton.
I reread portions of it over the last couple of weeks
and it occurred to me that that's what this is.
This Last Lecture.
If this is my last lecture then this is my baton
that I'm handing off to you.
And he wrote these words to myself and to my siblings
and I'm gonna read a little bit.
Said dear Howie my son,
life is a multi-generational medley relay.
We receive we give we pass on for others
whatever momentarily has been a part of us.
Life processes and restructures the environment
and itself in infinite ways that remain a mystery
to the human consciousness which itself
is only one of life's many products.
It is wonderful that for a while we can be part of it.
As you participate in this saga
where quadrillionths of batons are being received,
carried briefly and then passed on.
I hope and pray that you experience in your life,
the love, the joy and the sense of fulfillment
you would like to receive.
So I wish that on each and everyone of you.
But there's more and part of that is reflected
by the other person who is one of my important teachers.
Where'd he go?
Oh, you've already seen him, that would be my son.
Samora has been an inspiration to me
because of the work that he does
and the way he does his work trying to promote
social change through his art.
He recently completed and released the Transformation Suite
which is his six part jazz suite about the need
for social change and transformation in the US.
The suite is organized in five parts
and this is the five parts that I've organized this talk.
Transformation, history, cycles, momentum
and ascension.
So in terms of transformation,
in thinking about this lecture.
I was thinking about the defining moments of my life
and the experiences in my life that have contributed
to the work that I do.
The wisdom that I would like to pass on to you today.
I'm gonna share with you a few of those experiences.
Can't possibly share all of them, 60 years is a long time
to be walking on the planet.
But these are the experiences that I feel
have shaped who I am.
They've shape my formation and my transformations.
But where to begin?
There's so many stories and so little time.
Well, I guess I should start in the beginning.
(laughs)
Pretty cute, huh?
(laughs)
I was a happy baby.
I was a happy child.
I was born into a middle class black family
and I was, yeah see I was rocking the navarrou back then.
(laughs)
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
This is not the beginning of the story.
We have to go further back.
(laughs)
Further back than that.
We've got to go back to where we come from
so I'm gonna ask you where are you from?
What's the country of your origin?
And I ask that very specifically
and I would like for those of you that know the country
of your background and I'm not talking about Kansas
but the country that your ancestors came from.
Stand up please.
Okay, now sit down.
Those of you who do not know, please stand up.
Now you'll notice that a large number of the folks
who don't know are African American.
There's a reason for that.
The rest of you I'm not sure.
It might be that you were either adopted
or your families did not hand things down
but this is part of the legacy.
And the question to this question has changed
because of DNA testing right.
So folks know where they came from
but that's testing may tell you
who you are related to genetically
but it doesn't tell you who you are.
In order to do that,
you've gotta go back.
(instrumental music)
♫ Ship ahoy, ship ahoy
♫ Ship ahoy, ship ahoy
♫ Ship ahoy yeah
♫ Ship ahoy, ship ahoy
♫ Ship ahoy, ship ahoy
♫ Ship ahoy
♫ As far as your eyes can see
♫ Men, women and babies slaves
♫ coming to the land of liberty
♫ But life's design is already made
♫ So Young and so strong,
♫ They're just waiting to be saved
♫ Oh I'm so tired
♫ And I know you're tired too
♫ Look over the the right
♫ and see the sun shining down on you
♫ Ship ahoy, ship ahoy
♫ Ship ahoy, ship ahoy
♫ Ship ahoy yeah
♫ Ship ahoy, ship ahoy
♫ Ship ahoy, ship ahoy
That's Lettie Clouden, my great great grandmother.
Now my mother went on a search
in 19, when was it mom?
1973, 74
and she was searching for her lineage
and it took her a month of 10 hour days
searching in libraries, post offices etc
and she finally found
the document
of my great great grandmother Lettie.
Where she was listed along with the cattle as property.
This is not the actual document
but this is very similar.
Inventory of Negroes, Cattle and Horses.
And so as you start to learn about slavery.
It's somewhat of an abstraction even for African Americans
when you hear about it but when you find your ancestors
who are in that experience.
It has a whole different meaning
and the concept, in fact the reality
of intergenerational trauma becomes real
and that's part of what shaped the work that I did.
This is my mother's mother,
my grandma Ollie.
As you can see she's very light skinned.
That was as a result of
a doctor in Donaldsonville
named Adolph Bushwa
who had relations with her mother.
Not clear whether it was forced or not
but she was product of it
and became a source of shame in her family.
And was sent away to live in Alabama,
because the family did not want her around.
She married my grandpa Joe
and I just want to tell you one story
about my grandpa Joe that I remember.
He was around '92, no actually it was '89
because he died in '89.
He use to walk around and he would say,
"It's a shame to leave a man without a coat."
I'm like it's not raining outside grandpa.
What's up with that and he kept saying it's a shame to leave
a man without a coat.
And we finally found out what he was saying.
What he was saying and it was because he was going back,
at that time in his dementia.
He was saying, it's a shame to lynch a man without a court.
So that's what as he was growing older
and sinking into dementia,
that's what was his reality that he retained.
So that's one half the family.
The Pinderhughes side has a slightly different narrative.
Right here you have Jenny Pinder, some of you have heard
this story but Jenny Pinder married James Hughes.
That's right.
(laughs)
Put it together and made Pinderhughes,
women before her time.
But it's also, Pinderhughes is an indigenous
African American name.
Virtually all of the folks with the exception
of my white friend there who has Pinderhughes
as their name is African American.
It's a source of pride,
it's important source of bonding for our family
and it highlights the importance of family
on both sides in terms of my mother's history
as well as my father's history.
That's my father on the right, my uncle John.
This is my grandma Gladys and my grandpa Charlie.
Now I put this up because I wanna tell
a little bit of a story about the legacy of struggle
that we have in my family.
Gladys went to Sergeant College in Boston.
In 1916-1920, she was there
and was part of the Afro American Student Society
which worked with William Monroe Trotter
and at that time Birth of a Nation came up.
Y'all know what Birth of a Nation is?
How many people have seen Birth of a Nation.
It's a hard thing to see but you all should all see it.
Birth of a Nation was a film the was made by D.W. Griffiths
to glorify and justify
the Klu Klux Klan in the 1920s.
And it served to elevate them
in the minds and populace
particularly in the South but across the country.
So it was released in Boston.
My grandma Gladys went with her compadres and
Afro-American student society
and they got tickets to the balcony,
they wouldn't let negros in the bottom floor.
In their pockets they had eggs and they had tomatoes.
(laughs)
When the curtain opened up
they rained down with those eggs and tomatoes
they ran out the back and side door,
nobody got caught.
So that was my grandmother.
(laughs)
yeah you clap for my grandma.
(applause)
This is my mother and father.
My father I mentioned was a psychiatrist and psycho analyst
at Boston University and Howard
and my mother ran a family therapy clinic
but they also were very, very active through
freedom house in Roxbury
and during the period in early 60's and mid 60's
they were very very active in terms of
trying to push issues around integration in Boston.
That's my family.
That hair,
(laughs)
was short for me at the time.
It used to be about this big,
serious business
but this was my family.
I came from a middle class black family in Roxbury
and Roxbury is a black section in Boston
and what you need to know about that is we moved there
in 1957 and at that point and time
it was a mixed neighborhood,
mostly middle to upper middle class
with predominantly Jewish and African-American.
As the civil right movement got started,
that was part of my experience as an upbringing.
We to the march on Washington
as a family.
If you look right,
(laughs)
about two thirds all the way up to reflecting pool,
that's us.
We were there, we marched.
Our parents worked at the community
but one of the things that I remember strongest
is when I was eight years old
we were sleeping and was awoken about at 2:30 in the morning
by the phone
and my father answered the phone
and it was a call informing him that
Reverend Reeb who was not the sole pastor of our church
but he had preached at our church and
he was very active in the Roxbury community.
Ha had been murdered in Selma
as part of the efforts to start
the Selma to Montgomery march
over the Edmund Pettus bridge
and I can remember that, that phone call
my father talking to Reverend Reeb's wife
and I remember the feeling I had
of wow this is some deep stuff
if they're killing white people over this.
For weeks when I saw white people
I was scared of them.
I got over it but it was a profound moment.
It was also profound to understand that there are allies
in the struggle,
who are willing to lay their life on the line
for social justice.
- [Narrator] Alleged dissatisfaction with the welfare system
causes riots in the ghetto districts
of Boston Roxbury section.
Stores were smashed burned and looted
in three nights of violence.
An angry mob estimated at 1000 persons
marched through the streets throwing rocks
and bottles at police, setting buildings on fire.
It's Boston's first full scale riot
since the start of national racial tension.
Police were not the only target for hoodlings.
One rooftop sniper wounded a fireman
while he fought the flames.
Over 40 persons were arrested.
They'll be arraigned following a cooling off period.
Boston's mayor Collins called an emergency meeting
with negro leaders.
Uneasy calm followed.
- The video is about the riots
in Roxbury in 1967.
There were riots about three or four blocks from our house
we could not leave the house for about four days
and if you look out the window you could see the glow
of the fire.
You could hear the noise, you could hear the gun shots
and this was one of the riots of hundreds
that happened around the country.
Now unfortunately,
you can give it up.
It's okay.
Unfortunately you can't hear the report
because it's fascinating to hear
the way in which it's constructed.
How they talk about allegedly
people were upset about the way
the welfare office had been treating them.
The reality is that they had physically
abused and intimidated mothers
who were at the welfare office
and that that has precipitated the three days of rioting.
But as a result much of Boston got burned down.
The commercial carter was burned out
and so from that point
until roughly mid 1980's, 85 to 1990,
the only thing that was built of substance in Roxbury
was the juvenile jail.
As you have heard me talk in other lectures
about community trauma
and the elements of structural violence,
that's what I'm talking about.
You had the economic
infrastructure of my community
essentially burned to the ground.
We used to take about seven to 10 minutes to walk
to Augustin station to take the subway to go downtown
or go anywhere around Boston.
In around 1990, 92,
they moved the subway.
It still starts in the same place and ends in the same place
it just goes around Roxbury.
Structural violence.
So I'm telling you this because it informs
how I understand the world.
How I engage the world and why I do the work that I do.
These are the projects.
Which we'll talk a little bit more later
but I talked a little bit about the riots.
I talked a little bit about what was going on.
In 1968 just before he was killed,
Martin Luther King asked a question,
where do we go from here,
chaos or community?
And I would assert to you that that is the question
that is before us today.
Where do you go from here?
Where do we go from here,
Chaos or community?
Now, I went to school.
I was in the medico program.
It was a voluntary busing program from
the inner city to the suburbs.
One way, they didn't send nobody back.
(laughs)
As a part of that,
I got a chance to go from the Boston public school system
which were one of the five worst
school systems in the country.
Death in an Early Age was written by Jonathan Colesaw
about the Boston public schools.
To the Newton schools which was one of the 10 best
school systems in the country.
I had the chance to have a good education.
I have lots of stories to tell but I won't tell all of them.
I want to choose two things
and experiences to talk about.
One was, I was in a singing group.
(laughs)
Yeah, I was in a singing group.
Now, obviously this is not the group,
(laughs)
we don't have any pictures of the group.
(laughs)
This actually is the Jackson Five.
Everybody and I mean everybody wanted to be Michael Jackson.
Reality is, I was Marlon.
(laughs)
We won several talent shows
and I can't resist
so this is dedicated to my daughter.
Elena.
There we go.
(laughs)
(soul music)
♫ I got sunshine
♫ On a cloudy day
♫ When it's cold outside
♫ I got the month of May
♫ I guess you say
♫ What can make me feel this way
♫ My girl
That's right lady, I'm talking to you.
♫ Talking about my girl
(applause)
So Sammy got to be Michael,
he had the high voice
and he was good looking.
Then it was Donnie Frazier and Mark Jefferson,
Kenny Mark and myself.
What happened with them,
Donnie Frazier was murdered,
Mark and Kenny ended up incarcerated
and Sammy overdosed.
What was the difference between them and me?
The heath housing projects that I showed earlier,
that's where Mark Jefferson lived.
Each one of them lived in the housing project.
You saw the house I lived in.
The element of class privilege,
cultural capital, social capital.
They'd insulated me from the same things
that they were victims of.
The other thing that I want to talk to you about
on my medco experience was my second family.
I was essentially adopted by the Aransons.
Through Mark, this is Mark and I
when we were about to go to prom,
he was not my date,
(laughs)
but I was looking good, Mark looks a little stiff.
(laughs)
that's right I'm talking about you Mark.
But he and I were partners on the basketball court
and through life and till this day
probably my dearest friend
and his family essentially took me in
and that had a profound experience of
having another family who was white.
Who also was conscious.
They got it.
Treated me and my family with respect.
So that became a part of who I am.
As the 60's rolled into the 70's
Black Panther Party became an important part
of our community experience and an important part
of my family experience.
My brother Caby became...
I don't know we're gonna be able to do this one either.
But I'm gon try.
I have some dynamite music y'all you just don't know it.
My brother Caby became the Lieutenant of information
in the New Haven
New Haven chapter with the Panther Party.
And it was a time for those of you
who are students and young
it was a time of optimism,
it was a time of struggle,
it was a time belief in the possibility
and the potential of revolution.
♫ This aint heard of
♫ But never had misery
- Didn't happen,
but we came through that struggle
with both of large amounts of trauma
but also with an understanding
of the possibility of potential
that we had as a movement.
And so that I would urge you to
study a little bit and understand
when you look at the 10th point
platform at the Black Panther Party
it's relevant today
and it speaks very much to some of the things
that many of you are trying to do
in the communities that you're doing your work.
How did Denmark get in there?
(laughs)
I went to Denmark and lived there for three years.
First as a student and then I went back
and worked for something called American Pictures
which was a multimedia show and book
about racial class oppression in the United States
and the need for change.
To this day it's probably the most impactful
and powerful presentation on race and racism
that I've ever seen
and it was my privilege to be able to work with Yacob
and the rest of the collective around that.
The money that we raised went to Zimbabwe
to build an orphanage and a school
for young children who were orphaned by the war in Zimbabwe.
So while I was there I traveled to Ireland
and found my true calling.
I preached in pubs.
True story.
But my point being is that, that was part of
understanding the power of the word.
Power of communicating with people about
the issue of race.
So I came back from Denmark,
now I'm gonna be real.
I missed my black people.
I knew every back person in Copenhagen.
(laughs)
I came back and went to UC Berkeley
where I was involved in the creation of
an organization called The United People of Color
which essentially was a look back
at some of the elements of the third world strike
and the multi-racial, multi-cultural coalitions at the time
and we organized on the divestment front
and part of what we did was
force UC to divest.
You can clap for that.
(applause)
We had a feeling of power, a feeling of purpose
and a feeling of success that it was possible.
Now South Africa certainly has its problems
but apartheid is not one of them at this moment and time
and we were part of that.
I say that because as students,
I'm speaking to the students now.
You need to understand the power you have
and I'll speak a little bit about that later.
Went on to do work in New York City on
race and race relations among young people
and racial violence
and that was how I entered into
looking at the issue of youth violence
more broadly defined.
Some of you all know this is like my favorite...
some of y'all know this, right?
Okay then sing it with me.
Ready?
♫ It's like a jungle sometimes
♫ It makes me wonder how I keep
♫ From going under
♫ Ha ha ha ha
(laughs)
It's what I'm talking about.
This to me is an important moment
because it's grand master flash in the furious five
in 1982,
they were talking about trauma.
We didn't have the word for it,
we didn't have the language for it
but that's what they were talking about.
So as I started to do the work on violence
and started to
started to experience the elements of violence and trauma
in San Francisco community this was
on Potrero Hill
which is on the back side
of the San Francisco general hospital.
It became a clear focus to me
about what needed to be addressed
and that was healing people and healing the community.
Now at that time,
my wife and I and our children
went to live in Cuba.
We were there for six months
and I could tell story upon story
upon story but what I really want to press upon you
was the importance of understanding
the value of community
and the value of solidarity.
I went there looking for youth violence
because that's what I worked with
and ultimately what we fond was that they didn't have any.
So we had to ask the question why
and the answer that we came up with was
that the communities are so intact
and so easy
that they're able to handle
the types of problems
the young people and children are subject to.
I'm not saying it's a perfect society
but what I am saying is they got two things right.
Very right.
Education and health
and that's a bed rock for any society, should be
is health equity
and equal education and opportunity.
They got that right.
So where does this bring me?
To ascension.
How are we gonna move forward and upward?
Now part of it is,
continue to do the work in the community with the community
taking leadership from the community
around what needs to happen.
This is a circle of brothers
The Brotherhood of Elders Network
who brought me in and welcomed me into the circle
and the East bay and we do work
on issues, trying to help,
heal and create opportunity
for black boys and young men.
We got a couple of our folks here.
Ray
(applause)
thank you for coming.
I shout out to The Brotherhood of Elders
because this is indicative of they type of healing
of community that we need to do.
Reconnecting inter-generational relationships,
supporting each other in the types of work and activity
that needs to go on and reaching out
and reaching down and pulling up
those who are having trouble and problems
whether it be on the street
or incarceration.
Or in your family, that's part of what we need to do.
You work in the community, you have to do the policy work,
work with the prevention institute
around doing policy on violence prevention,
promoting health equity.
Part of my message to you all is
you got a lot of work.
You cannot just work on one front.
It's gotta be multiple fronts because
we're in some deep stuff y'all, right?
I know three months ago a lot of y'all had a hard time
getting out of bed, right?
Tell the truth.
Some of y'all were under the covers and like
no, I'm not getting out.
I'm gon say something now that
you can reflect on what I've said thus far.
Most of the African-Americana I know,
we got out of bed,
we were like, okay
this is the end of fourth reconstruction.
And after each reconstruction
we got our stuff together and we moved forward
and that's what we want to do.
That's part of it.
Community front, the policy front
but y'all are here at UCSF.
What is it that we need to be thinking about
here at UCFSF to achieve the social change that's necessary
in our society?
How do you be a physician and an activist?
How do you be a scholar and an activist?
How do you work with communities
as a part of the community?
How do you take leadership from the community?
and particularly how do you take leadership from you?
It all comes down to health as far as we are concerned
here at UCSF, right.
What would happen if we started with health for all
as a value, as the value?
Health equity as a fundamental principle
with the core value of health as a human right.
There are certainly nations that do that.
Cuba is one of them.
This requires fundamental change.
Hence the name transformation.
It requires transforming the way in which we think,
they way in which we act and work together
and the daily way in which we relate to each other.
Fundamental change requires that we not only
heal individualized which we're very good at here at UCSF.
I want to give everybody their props.
We heal people
but it requires that we transform the institutions
that we are part of.
If we're really going to heal communities,
heal individuals and heal our society
that means we heal or families,
we heal communities, we heal the workplace
and yes, we have to do work here at our beloved UCSF.
I want to say one thing,
we can do this.
I've been like a broken record around
this for a few years now
and folks who I love, who I respect
who are doing great work
ar like no no,
that's going too far.
Why don't we just do this piece here?
No.
Dare to dream big about what we can do.
Dream as big about our ability to transform
the social elements and determinants of health
as we do about stem cell science.
(applause)
As we do about revolutionizing precision medicine
and finding cures for cancer and Alzheimer's.
We can transform medical practice,
we can prevent disease and promote health
by achieving health equity.
We can do this.
How?
By devoting the awesome resources and power of USCF
toward improving the social determinants of health
of the most undeserved, the most highly impacted,
the most traumatized and the most endangered communities
in San Francisco and the Bay area.
What I learnt as a student in the anti-apartheid movement
in Berkeley is, the power of youth and students
to promote social change
so I'm again speaking to the students among us now.
You have more power than you realize.
Over the last three years, UCSF has embarked upon
important initiatives to improve diversity
in our institution
and I want to recognize the commitment
of Chancellor Hawgood
and our EVC Dan Lowenstein
and the activist of staff and faculty for these efforts.
But I want most of all to thank you students
for waking us up.
If we dream this big,
we can achieve Kuumba.
By transforming the health
of our most vulnerable populations and communities
and making UCSF a national and international model
for how to advance health
by promoting social, economic and environmental justice.
(applause)
Now how cool would it be
for UCSF to receive a Nobel prize for significantly reducing
health disparities in San Francisco?
(applause)
Improving health equity in the Bay area
and preventing diabetes and asthma
and premature cardiovascular disease.
Violence and trauma in the Bayview,
in Hunters Point, in West Oakland,
in East Oakland, in Chinatown
in the Iron triangle and Richmond.
Stockholm, Valeo there's a lot of places
as we've expanded at mission bay.
We've had an impact on that community.
Displacing folks,
that why I include Stockholm and Valeo.
We have a responsibility
to engage this issue head on
and we can do this.
Don't let anybody tell you we can't.
So that's it.
But before I end,
I want to give a shout out to the students
because you clearly did light a fire
under a lot of us here at UCSF.
But that fire needs to be stoked
and built and made
till it's a raging inferno
and black lives matter, yeah.
That is an important movement and concept.
But it doesn't just mean the right for black men
not to get shot,
it means the right for everybody
but black people in particular to have
opportunities to thrive and live healthy lives
and to have jobs that are a living wage.
At UCSF we should not have a single employee
who is not paid a living wage.
(applause)
Advancing health worldwide.
That doesn't say curing disease worldwide which we do
but in advancing health we all know
that what that requires is that 75%
of the variance that comes from
the social determinants of health.
That means if we're serious about advancing health worldwide
we have to impact the housing,
we have to impact the economic opportunities,
we have to impact the built environment,
we have to impact all of the elements that go into
healthy communities
and we know what they are.
Now UCSF is the second largest employer
in the city and county of San Francisco.
We spend billions of dollars
on procuring goods and services.
We could break off a corner of that
and handle some of the problems in Bayview Hunters Point.
As we think about our role,
understand, y'all know where this is?
That's Porterero terrace.
That's up the hill from San Francisco General Hospital.
Has been there for the whole time.
Most of us, for us that was just place to avoid.
Not a place to get in and do the work.
Now the city is stepping up
and starting to replace some of the housing but
we still have areas in Hunters Point
and there's still issues about this placement
in terms of that replacement process.
My point being is we can no longer
scape by because we do good work in the hospital.
It's time for us to get out in the community
and advance health worldwide and across town.
(applause)
UCSF as the anchor to promote
and sustain the social economic environmental health
of poor and working communities in the
San Francisco Bay area.
That could be out tag line.
How about that as our next brand?
(applause)
We can do it.
In closing I just want to say
the Baton is yours,
take it and run with it.
Thank you.
(applause)
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