Transcript of Erika's remarks after receiving the California Preservation Foundation's President Award.
Good evening.
Thank you California Preservation Foundation, we are humbled by this recognition of our collaborative efforts.
We are grateful for the opportunity to support the work of the San Francisco Planning Department SF Survey team. With humility and effectiveness, this team is creating a citywide scaffolding to hold important conversations on how to navigate change while keeping what is meaningful to communities. Because this team understands that acknowledging the past and planning for our shared futures go hand in hand, this scaffolding is being assembled to include more voices, more communities, more timelines
San Francisco is my adoptive home and the place that inspires my own exploration of belonging. I am privileged to work in a place a that is so culturally rich and dynamic. It is also a privilege to be doing this work in a context where equity centered policy is in conversation with a cultural empowerment movement that has been taking shape for decades. We'd like to thank our community partners for welcoming us into their spaces and venues and for their guidance and partnership. We learn so much from you all.
I often think of the field of historic preservation as a field that in essence is about caring. When we center communities in this culture of care, the most meaningful relationships between people, place, and culture come to the foreground. Engaging communities in this field involves bringing people together not only to ensure that knowledge of what is meaningful to communities guides the work of decision-making agencies, but to create much needed moments of authentic connection that extend our shared sense belonging. Creating opportunities to celebrate, to remember, to see each other and learn from our intersecting stories and experiences.