Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks at the 30th Annual Brooklyn Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 16, 2017

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Happy King Day, everyone.

[Applause]

I want to thank everyone for being here in solidarity and in strength together. I want to start by thanking my wife for all she is doing for this city.

[Applause]

Because remember any change in this world [inaudible]. Dr. King went at so many taboos, so many stigmas, so many [inaudible]. Dr. King understood that the way the world was given to us was not the way it had to be.

I have to say in our time, in our city, I appreciate it deeply that our First Lady does not want to stand back and watch people suffer with mental health. She believes that stigma has to end and everyone who has a mental health challenge deserves help and support and solidarity. And that’s what ThriveNYC is all about.

[Applause]

We gather in [inaudible] because we’re all feeling so much. And gathering is good. Nurturing our spirits is good. Preparing ourselves for battle is good. This gathering takes on a different meaning each year, depending on the time in history. Doesn’t it feel in some way that this year’s gathering takes us back sharply to the time of Dr. King and the struggles he faced?

[Applause]

It’s a sad statement on one level that we might be able to have a small window into some of the challenges he faced, some of the magnitude of the problem he challenged. It’s nowhere near as much as what Dr. King faced – maybe in these last weeks, we’ve been given a glimpse [inaudible] that should inspire us. It should inspire us to borrow [inaudible] example, learn from his ways – the ways of his movement, how to comport ourselves in this time.

And I want to say, as I begin, BAM has done a great service to Brooklyn, to this whole city in so many ways, but this tribute every year is a high point, is it? Let’s thank BAM –

[Applause]

I want to thank Katy Clark and Adam Max of BAM, and also I want to thank Opal Tometi, one of the Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter and Executive Director of the Black Alliance [inaudible] all they’ve done to make this program happen.

[Applause]

Thank you as well – powerful words of Senator Schumer. I know you’re [inaudible] especially that extraordinary fight for justice and for the safety of all people who also happens to be our Brooklyn Borough President. Let’s thank Eric Adams again.

[Applause]

Now, I want to take you back to 1968 and I want you to remember in 1968, a year of extraordinary torment and confusion and pain, and at the same time a year that culminated so many things that were moving forward, so many movements that were starting to take full life – a roiling, intense time that Dr. King had shown us by that point how to succeed, how to build a movement that’s changed hearts and minds, how to transform.

And we all dwell on the day we lost him, but think right up to the day before when he was there to support those sanitation workers in [inaudible]. Dr. King was building his movement to be larger, more inclusive of all people and working people. He did not believe the Civil Rights Movement was winding down. He believed it was just getting started.  And civil rights had to be looked at it through the prism of economic rights, had to be looked at through the prism of ending the war in Vietnam. Dr. King’s vision was expansive.

And just before we lost him, he was putting us all on a path. He was not telling us to believe we could ever conclude the chapter and go home and go about our lives in leisure. He was telling us to get ready for larger fights but fights that would reach so many more people and make us an even better society.

He was pointing us on a path, but, remember, it was never in his view about what he would do as a great leader, it was about what we would do. He saw himself as someone who would light a path for the people then to act.

I want to read you this very simple quote. Because he saw so much hardship, he understood personally what it was like to be set back and have to come back. He said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience – but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

We have been handed a moment lacking in comfort and convenience in this time. We’re, right now, living in a moment the vast majority of us did not expect to be living in and it will be filled with challenge and struggle, but someone has already walked the path for us, taught us how to think, and how to be in that moment.

Dr. King has given us all the example we ever needed. When we celebrate today, I hope we are learning and watching his example and giving ourselves that strength to walk the same walk he did.

And in case we fall into the trap of thinking it was so long ago that somehow it could not be relevant, just remember that one of his greatest lieutenants still walks among us and is fighting to the day – John Lewis.

[Applause]

I say this respectfully because today should be filled with respect and high-mindedness. What I hope the President-elect remembers is that 50 years before he ever got involved in public life, John Lewis was already an American hero.

[Applause]

And John Lewis never slowed down, never changed his mind, never leveled off. His desire to fight is as great today as it was when he marched in Selma, isn’t it?

[Applause]

So, that tells us something. That tells us something about [inaudible] for the next fight. Chirlane’s point was so essential. No one ever says freedom is won and you check the box and call it a day. The people who stood in the way of freedom, they never gave up, sadly. The same negative influences exist.

It’s our jobs to fight it in our time. We are the inheritors of the noble struggle and we need to see that as a badge of honor, not a weight. We’ve been deputized by history.

We’re the next generation. We find it in ourselves, now, to fight our generation’s struggle.

Now, again, it’s not unnatural to feel that we don’t know the exact path forward. We don’t have the perfect map or game plan.

Brothers and sisters, imagine what April 5th, 1968 must have felt like – the day after. Some of you may remember. Imagine that your leader was gunned down and the movement felt stopped dead in its tracks. Imagine how people could have given up at that moment. And there was pain – endless pain. And then with great purpose, people got back on their feet and remembered all they had fought for – regrouped and went on to end the war in Vietnam, went on to move forward with the Civil Rights agenda, went on to fight for economic justice for working people.

One victory after [inaudible] you got to remember what it felt like to be laid low and then to find our strength again.

This moment presents a bigger danger because some may feel powerless, some may feel renounced, but they forget those bigger [inaudible] in history never went anywhere. Those victories in the 1950s and the 1960s live with us. The movements that regroup time and time again are alive today. They take new forms in each generation and they are equally alive today.

And if you think I’m only referring to something in recent history, let me offer you a passage from scripture from Corinthians. I heard it the other day and I thought it could have been written on November 9th. It says, “We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down but not destroyed.” Doesn’t that say it all?

[Applause]

So, we never succumb. We never forget our own strength and purpose. As they used to say in the labor movement, don’t mourn, organize. Stand up.

And I want to urge you all, this Thursday night, the last night of the Obama administration. Let us remember the good that Barack Obama did for this country –

[Applause]

So, join us – join with us on the last night of the Barack Obama administration. Join with us as we prepare for a great battle of the soul of our nation. Join with us Thursday night at six o’clock in Columbus Circle as we send a message that we’re not going to let all of our freedoms and our gains go. We will fight for them.

[Applause]

That you can’t set back a country unless the people go along willingly. And we are not going along willingly.

[Applause]

And finally, I want to remind you – we as New Yorkers, we have a special role to play and I would say we have a special responsibility. We’ve come a long way in this city. This is a city that in a very troubled world reminds people that every one of us can actually live together.

That we can work a lot of things out, that we can find some – some of the harmony that Dr. King dreamed of.

So, we have an example to offer but we also have an opportunity to be an antidote because here we’re going to embrace our immigrant brothers and sisters, and uplift them.

[Applause]

We are not going to allow our police officers to be turned into immigration enforcers.

[Applause]

There will be no religious registry for our Muslim brothers and sisters.

[Applause]

And, no, we are not going back to the era of stop-and-frisk.

[Applause]

So, remember, here, in New York City we make our own decisions. That allows us to be our own example to our nation.

So, today, take strength. Take strength in all that this city represents. Take strength in the movements that have won time again even when set back, they come back stronger. Take strength in the man we celebrate.

He would be 88 years old and he would still be in the struggle today [inaudible] –

[Applause]

But he would also tell us that this setback is one we can surely overcome because he did it time and time again.

[Applause]

So, take strength, brothers and sisters, and I’ll see you on Thursday night.

God bless you all.