I can't hear you. New York City, we can do better than that.
[Louder cheers]
It is so good to be home.
[Cheers]
And it is especially great to be gathering with you all tonight in Queens, New York, the world's borough, the jewel of America.
Just in this slice of New York City alone, we represent over 100 languages and cultures. We welcome people of all religions, faiths, and creeds. We honor all genders, races, orientations, and status. And here we defend immigrants.
[Cheers]
We are a working people's borough in a working people's city, and all of that makes us a fascist’s worst nightmare.
[Cheers]
Queens, we gather here today at both a perilous moment for our country and on the precipice of hope for our city.
[Cheers]
Because in nine short days, we will work our hearts out to elect Zoran Mamdani as the next mayor of the great city of New York.
[Cheers]
And it is going to take all of us. But to be honest, it always has. That we are all here in this moment during this time is not a coincidence. And it is also not a coincidence that the very forces that Zoran is up against in this race mirrors what we are up against nationally. Both an authoritarian criminal presidency fueled by corruption and bigotry, and an ascendant right-wing extremist movement, and an insufficient eroded bygone political establishment, this time in the form of Andrew Cuomo-
[Boos]
-whose pursuit of power has blinded them from what that power is supposed to be used for in the first place, which is to aid and put the working people of America and New York City first. And Queens. Both of these challenges are fueled and funded by the same billionaire class whose apparent greatest fear is an equitable, affordable, and prosperous nation and city for all, not just the very few.
But we have been here before as a city and a country, and we have won before and we will win again on November 4th.
Because Queens, it has always been in our nation's darkest chapters that our brightest lights emerge. And we, each and every one of us, whether we like it or not, are living history today.
From our nation's beginning, American democracy has always reflected the struggle between humanity's highest and lowest natures, between subjects and citizens, the Confederacy and the Union, freedom and bondage, labor and capital; rights and regimes.
[Cheers]
And it is no different today. The struggle of our time today is the single most unjust concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few, unseen in our nation's history and the world's history. And it is a time such as this demand in which demanding what should be considered the most basic tenets of human dignity that is considered a radical and outlandish act.
It is a time such as today when demanding affordable housing is considered a radical and outlandish act. That we can afford our lives, our groceries, and our transit is considered an outlandish and radical act that we accept our neighbor as ourselves. A radical and outlandish act. But we must remember, in a time such as this, we are not the crazy ones. New York City, we are not the outlandish ones.
New York City they want us to think we are crazy. We are sane.
To demand affordable and decent housing, a decent wage, the right to health care that we pay to care for our people instead of the flattening of Palestinians and oppressed people abroad is not a radical act. It is basic and core humanity. That is why the election of Zoran is as important as our cause today.
Childcare, buses, rent, and our rights. Here in New York City, it is the jewel and the center of all that is possible in America. And on November 4th, we will prove that today. We will prove it to the world. And we will prove it to the nation. And we will send a loud message to President Donald Trump that his authoritarianism is no good here. We will send a message to ICE that secret police do not belong here.
And we will demonstrate the heroism that exists in the everyday people throughout our city. Heroism like that we saw last week.
[Cheers]
A young woman in a polka dot dress standing up to a secret police officer in Canal Street. She is New York City.
[Cheers]
The young man in a white helmet jumping off his bicycle, saying, "Not in my neighborhood. That is New York City."
[Cheers]
The line cooks and the delivery workers, every day serving and making sure that we are clothed and fed and that our children are cared for. That is America, and New York City.
[Cheers]
That is who we fight for. That is what this victory is about. Because New York, America, our freedoms, and our future.
When I think about what is happening throughout our nation today, and what Donald Trump has even done reflected symbolic of so much in his demolition of the White House and the East Wing. We see what he's doing to that. And we must let him know that this injustice, no matter what he's doing, that house doesn't belong to him, New York.
It belongs to us.
It belongs to the people of this country. And I want us all to remember and to know that the future, our future, is not determined by a despot in a house built by enslaved people.
[Cheers]
Our future will be determined not in a house built by slaves, but in a city built by free men, in a city built by unionists and immigrants and suffragists. The bricks laid by working people, past, present, and future. The seamstresses and the unionists who paid for our rights in blood.
This city was built by the Irish escaping famine, Italians fleeing fascism, Jews escaping the Holocaust, black Americans fleeing slavery and Jim Crow, and Latinos then seeking a better life. Native people standing for themselves. Asian Americans coming together in Queens, in Brooklyn, in the Bronx, in Manhattan, in Staten Island, in this country, in a vision to build the freest, toughest, and greatest city on earth. And we will not stop now. New York.
It is no surprise to me, New York, that it is New York and that it is our great city that we, our city, have chosen to adorn ourselves with the nation's greatest monument to freedom, the Statue of Liberty. And she reminds us every day that the central commitment of America is an unconditional freedom. Precisely of the kind that cannot be bought, that is available to the huddled masses yearning to be free.
[Cheers]
This is America, New York City. Don't let them tell you any different. Don't let them tell you that we are the exception.
We are the rule.
We are the standard.
We are the acceptance.
And we set the bar for America. I'm talking to you, Donald Trump.
[Cheers]
There has been a day before his presidency, and there will be a day after, and it belongs to us.
Thank you, New York. I love you, New York.
You have made my life possible, my mother's life possible, and my father's life possible. All of our lives have been made possible by this great city and by our shared contract and bond to one another. And it is my honor tonight to introduce to you all another great born New Yorker from Brooklyn.
[Music]
Senator Sanders and I recently came in. We were in Indiana last night. We both paid a visit to the home of the great Eugene Debs.
[Cheers]
And I had the honor of presenting Senator Sanders last night with the National Eugene Debs Award, in which the foundation and the people who steward Debs's legacy have honored Senator Sanders as the foremost leader and advocate for labor and class struggle in the United States of America.
[Cheers]
And it remains such a great privilege and honor to call him a friend, a mentor, a… a treasured a treasured person that we have.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: And a New Yorker!
And a New Yorker. That's right. And so I know we all love him so dearly. And so let's make sure that we give him the biggest rousing welcome that he receives this year in introducing Senator Bernie Sanders.
Neither the Catt Center nor Iowa State University is affiliated with any individual in the Archives or any political party. Inclusion in the Archives is not an endorsement by the center or the university.