Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul delivered remarks at the Puerto Rican Day Parade Breakfast.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of the event is available here.
PHOTOS will be available on the Governor’s Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:
Gracias, gracias, buenos días. Good morning. Thank you for the warm welcome. But with Puerto Rico involved, how can it not be warm? It’s always warm in Puerto Rico.
I want thank first of all, there are people who reminded us of God in our presence. I thought that was almost a comedy team, Bishop Nancy and Angelo Rosario. I want to thank you for reminding us of the presence of God in our lives and our commitment to each other and our moral obligation to try to seek pause, to try to find peace in a turbulent world today. So thank you for your beautiful words and reflections.
Jessica Hernandez that had to be the most beautiful rendition of both anthems I have ever heard. The passion in your voice was just extraordinary. And I thank you for sharing your talents with us here today.
And when I asked Robert Rodriguez to be the Secretary of State, I think he thought that sounds great I’ll be traveling around the globe. I’ll be going to Europe to China and the Secretary of State goes all over.
No, you’re going to Oswego and Jamestown and Watertown and far-reaching in Nassau. You’re going all over. But he has been a great ambassador for me and I am so proud of what he has done.
Thank you. And also I have an incredible partner. You need to get to know him very well if you don’t. That is an extraordinary individual who spent quite a bit of time playing basketball in Puerto Rico. And that is my Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado. Please stand up Antonio, please.
I also spent a little time in Congress and developed a deep relationship with one of our great leaders, a champion for Puerto Rico in every sense of the word, whatever their needs are. You have a voice in Nydia Velázquez. I want to thank her Congresswoman.
And the energy of Congressman Richie Torres. He is boundless. He is so deeply passionate about the needs of his people. It is extraordinarily mentioning in a couple minutes, something that we’re working on together.
We are also fortunate to have the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rafael Hernández is here from Puerto Rico. Thank you for joining us here as well as the President of the Senate of Puerto Rico, Jose Luis Dalmau is here. He’s here as well.
Let’s see, I don’t see him. And you saw the opportunity to meet if you don’t know them already, the incredible dream team I have in state government, some have experienced from the past.
Some are new to the mission, but if they could all stand up, every member of my administration who are here this morning, please rise and take a round of applause. Thank you.
And one more person that I probably see less of than all of you and that would be my husband, Bill, but he has been at my side since we were interns in the New York State Assembly Office in Buffalo, a life partner, married 38 years. He lifts me up every single day. Let’s give round applause to New York’s first first gentleman.
And I really like the shirt, honey. It fits you well.
Somos Uno, yes, we are one. And we celebrate and make up for the lost experience of not being able to March down fifth avenue and showing our solidarity and our pride and our joy at having such an incredible connection to the people, our hermosos and hermosas in Puerto Rico. And I thank you all for holding together this organization through the tough times of virtual parades and everything else we managed.
But here we are in person and a little bit of rain is not going to stop us. It’s good for the crops back home, right? It’s all right. We’re okay with some rain and to have the 65th parade just about to step off in a few moments is quite extraordinary. And I’m really, really proud to be part of this.
My connection to Puerto Rico goes back further than most of you would think because I come from a family of individuals who left great poverty. My grandparents left a, a very small little island. Very green island, not a very warm island known as Ireland. And they found their way to a place called Lackawanna, New York.
Why Lackawanna New York? It’s a gritty steel town. The pollution filled the skies. The water was contaminated, but the homes were inexpensive. You could live in a trailer park like my parents did and not have to spend a lot of money, but the basic word was steel. People came there for the jobs in steel, as did thousands and thousands of Puerto Ricans in search of the middle class dream that you could find working with your hands, building the steel that graces our skyscrapers today. So I, as a child had a connection to this community because my grandfather, my father worked among them and my parents were social justice Catholics.
They didn’t have much, but they always knew there were people who needed more. And many people came from Puerto Rico to this part of our state to not just work in the steel plants, but also to work in the fields. So there’s a lot of agriculture, corn, strawberries, lettuce. So people came to be part of this economy.
My mother and father working with a Puerto Rican priest who relocated to this area, realized that there were children who didn’t have parents to be with them during the summertime.
So we literally started a day camp. It wasn’t beautiful. It was in the basement of a rundown building and the steel plant was right there, but we gathered and we brought together the resources and the people to give these young children whose parents knew no English, but this was the next generation that we invest in them and showed them the love of a community.
They could rise up and become. The business leaders, the individuals who are leading the elected officials, and I’m proud to say a woman, I literally a month ago I made the first Latina court of claims judge from that area, Betty Calvo-Torres. So we lift people up. We lift people up, we all start in the same place, but my job as Governor, and I believe this to my core because those values I was taught at a child are with me every single day. It is our moral responsibility to help the children of God wherever they are.
And this community has been so strong and so vibrant. But sometimes, Mother Nature knocks our beloved island back a little bit, and we’ve had to endure earthquake after earthquake. And then, upon that, with the rebuilding going on, to have an earthquake. Rossana Rosado and I were literally there, trying to lift people up from the hurricanes and the earthquakes, and to figure out a new way to reimagine power on this island so it’s no longer being battered and battered, and people are left without power, and literally left in darkness for weeks and weeks and weeks without refrigerated food. It was devastating what the communities throughout Puerto Rico went through. But if we figured out, if we can use the technology that we’re working on here in New York State and bring in the smartest and best people from SUNY and CUNY, and I thank our chancellor for helping lead this, we can help the island become energy resilient as well.
That’s how we empower people, we train the people there. The people are still investing. And I know many people have come here and live here, and forget about Orlando. I mean, really? You want that for your Governor? I just want to get that out there. Couldn’t help it, couldn’t help it. Come to New York where we celebrate you, we honor you, but also let’s not abandon the island. The island is where our grandparents, aunts and uncles. We will never abandon the work we started there. And I want to reaffirm that commitment. I’m reaffirming that commitment here today. That whatever the needs are, and I’ll continue to work with Nydia Velázquez, and Richie Torres, and our other leaders to identify the challenges, and make sure we help. Because this is part of our familia.
And one thing we’re going to work on with Congressman Torres, and we’re working with the government of Puerto Rico, we understand that 2017, there was a Government Resources Office, there’s a lot of government documents that are shared, and it shut down. Don’t know why, but it’s been closed for a long time and people have had to struggle. They shouldn’t have to travel hundreds of miles to go back and forth to get records they need for schools and jobs and other activities. So why is it such a hassle? Why isn’t that in New York State again? Well, Congressman Richie Torres recognized this, and I want to thank him for working toward a solution. We are working together with Governor Pierluisi and we are going to be announcing something very soon on that. So, we’re going to work on that. We’ve got some more announcements coming. Thank you.
And I’ll close with this. New York would not be New York if it wasn’t for the courageous individuals who left the security and knowledge of their home, and traveled here in search of what they thought was the American Dream. I say, the Puerto Ricans who found their way to this community have now created what we call the New York Dream. The New York Dream is even better. It celebrates diversity. It understand when there’s language barriers, we break them down. When there’s education barriers, we break them down. When there’s job school barriers, we break them down. We solve problems together, and I am so proud to be Governor of a state with the largest, let’s keep it the largest, Puerto Rican population in the nation, because that is who we are. Because we are Somos Uno. Thank you everybody, enjoy the parade, look forward to seeing everybody out there
