00:00Good night, New York City! How are we doing?
00:07I can't hear you, New York City! We can do better than that!
00:16It is so good to be home.
00:23And it is especially great to be gathering with you all tonight
00:28in Queens, New York, the world's borough!
00:34The jewel of America!
00:37Just in this slice of New York City alone,
00:41we represent over 100 languages and cultures.
00:48We welcome people of all religions, faiths, and creeds.
00:53We honor all genders, races, orientations, and status.
01:00And here, we defend immigrants.
01:04We are a working people's borough in a working people's city.
01:11And all of that makes us a fascist's worst nightmare.
01:26Queens, we gather here today at both a perilous moment for our country,
01:34and on the precipice of hope for our city.
01:43Because in nine short days, we will work our hearts out to elect Zofran Kwame Mamdani
01:52as the next mayor of the great city of New York.
01:59And it is going to take all of us.
02:03But to be honest, it always has.
02:07That we are all here in this moment, during this time, is not a coincidence.
02:15And it is also not a coincidence that the very forces that Zofran is up against in this race
02:25mirrors what we are up against nationally.
02:29Both an authoritarian, criminal presidency fueled by corruption and bigotry,
02:36and an ascendant right-wing extremist movement.
02:45And an insufficient, eroded, bygone political establishment,
02:52this time in the form of Andrew Cuomo,
02:56whose pursuit of power has blinded them
03:02from what that power is supposed to be used for in the first place,
03:08which is to aid and put the working people of America and New York City first.
03:13And Queens, both of these challenges are fueled and funded by the same billionaire class
03:25whose apparent greatest fear is an equitable, affordable, and prosperous nation and city for all,
03:35not just the very few.
03:40But we have been here before as a city and a country,
03:45and we have won before, and we will win again on November 4th.
03:50Because Queens, it has always been in our nation's darkest chapters that our brightest lights emerge.
04:05And we, each and every one of us, whether we like it or not, are living history today.
04:14From our nation's beginning, American democracy has always reflected the struggle between humanity's highest and lowest natures,
04:27between subjects and citizens, the Confederacy and the Union,
04:33freedom and bondage, labor and capital rights and regimes.
04:38And it is no different today. The struggle of our time today is the single most unjust concentration of wealth
04:52in the hands of the very few unseen in our nation's history and the world's history.
04:58And it is a time such as this, in which demanding what should be considered the most basic tenets of human dignity,
05:11that is considered a radical and outlandish act.
05:16It is a time such as today, when demanding affordable housing is considered a radical and outlandish act,
05:24that we can afford our lives, our groceries, our transit, is considered an outlandish and radical act.
05:34That we accept our neighbor as ourselves, a radical and outlandish act.
05:40But we must remember in a time such as this, we are not the crazy ones, New York City.
05:50We are not the outlandish ones, New York City.
05:55They want us to think we are crazy, we are sane.
05:59To demand an affordable and decent housing, a decent wage, the right to health care.
06:10That we pay to care for our people instead of the flattening of Palestinians and oppressed people abroad
06:18is not a radical act, it is basic and core humanity.
06:23That is why the election of Zohran is as important as our cause today.
06:30Childcare, buses, rent and our rights.
06:34Here in New York City, it is the jewel and the center of all that is possible in America.
06:42And on November 4th, we will prove that today.
06:45We will prove it to the world and we will prove it to the nation.
06:47And we will send a loud message to President Donald Trump that his authoritarianism is no good here.
07:04We will send a message to ICE that secret police do not belong here.
07:08And we will demonstrate the heroism that exists in the everyday people throughout our city.
07:20Heroism like that that we saw last week.
07:23A young woman in a polka dot dress standing up to a secret police officer in Canal Street.
07:31She is New York City.
07:32The young man in a white helmet jumping off his bicycle saying not in my neighborhood.
07:40That is New York City.
07:45The line cooks and the delivery workers every day serving and making sure that we are clothed and fed
07:53and that our children are cared for.
07:55That is America, New York City.
07:57That is who we fight for.
07:59That is what this victory is about.
08:04Because New York, America, our freedoms and our future.
08:10When I think about what is happening throughout our nation today,
08:15and what Donald Trump has even done reflected, symbolic of so much,
08:19in his demolition of the White House and the East Wing.
08:27We see what he is doing to that and we must let him know that this injustice,
08:34no matter what he is doing, that house doesn't belong to him, New York.
08:39It belongs to us.
08:41It belongs to the people of this country.
08:43And I want us all to remember and to know that the future, our future,
08:52is not determined by a despot in a house built by enslaved people.
08:58Our future will be determined not in a house built by slaves,
09:03but in a city built by freemen, in a city built by unionists and immigrants and suffragists.
09:12The bricks laid by working people past, present and future,
09:18the seamstresses and the unionists who paid for our rights in blood.
09:22This city was built by the Irish escaping famine,
09:27Italians fleeing fascism, Jews escaping holocaust,
09:32Black Americans fleeing slavery and Jim Crow,
09:36Latinos seeking a better life,
09:40Native people standing for themselves,
09:43Asian Americans coming together in Queens,
09:45in Brooklyn,
09:46in the Bronx,
09:48in Manhattan,
09:50in Staten Island,
09:52in this country,
09:54in a vision to build the freest, toughest and greatest city on earth.
10:01And we will not stop now, New York.
10:03It is no surprise.
10:10AOT! AOT! AOT! AOT! AOT! AOT! AOT!
10:18NYC, baby! NYC!
10:22It is no surprise to me, New York,
10:26that it is New York and that it is our great city,
10:30that we, our city, have chosen to adorn ourselves with the nation's greatest monument to freedom,
10:38the Statue of Liberty.
10:41And she reminds us every day that the central commitment of America is an unconditional freedom,
10:51precisely of the kind that cannot be bought,
10:55that is available to the huddled masses yearning to be free.
11:01This is America, New York City.
11:05Don't let them tell you any different.
11:08Don't let them tell you that we are the exception.
11:11We are the rule.
11:13We are the standard.
11:15We are the acceptance.
11:17And we set the bar for America.
11:20I'm talking to you, Donald Trump.
11:21There has been a day before his presidency, and there will be a day after.
11:37And it belongs to us.
11:40Thank you, New York.
11:43I love you, New York.
11:48You have made my life possible.
11:53My mother's life possible.
11:55My father's life possible.
11:56All of our lives have been made possible by this great city.
12:02And by our shared contract and bond to one another.
12:06And it is my honor tonight to introduce to you all another great born New Yorker.
12:13Senator Sanders and I recently came in, we were in Indiana last night.
12:35We both paid a visit to the home of the great Eugene Debs.
12:46And I had the honor of presenting Senator Sanders last night with the National Eugene Debs Award.
12:56In which the foundation and the people who steward Debs' legacy have honored Senator Sanders as the foremost leader and advocate for labor and class struggle in the United States of America.
13:14And it remains such a great privilege and honor to call him a friend, a mentor, a treasured person that we have and a New Yorker.
13:31That's right.
13:33And so I know we all love him so dearly.
13:36And so let's make sure that we give him the biggest rousing welcome that he receives this year in introducing Senator Bernie Sanders.
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