Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks at Funeral for Timothy Caughman

April 1, 2017

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you so much. Good morning, everybody.

Audience: Good morning.

Mayor: First I want to give honor to God, without him this day would not be possible.

Audience: Amen.

Mayor: I want to thank Pastor for warmly welcoming all of us in this time of difficulty. Pastor, people are feeling a lot of pain, a lot of shock but you are helping to soothe us with your warmth and your compassion.

Let’s thank Pastor for all he does.

[Applause]

We are feeling a lot – members of the family and everyone in this city. And I wanted to be here with you and my wife, Chirlane, our First Lady, wanted to be here with you.

[Applause]

And our Public Advocate, Letitia James, wanted to be here with you.

[Applause]

And we wanted to come together to celebrate a life and a life well lived but we also have to talk about why that life was taken from us. You heard a moment ago the obituary of Timothy Caughman and I was particularly moved by the part that said in the last 15 years of his life he lived in a state of joy. In this city, this complex often tough city, not necessarily a lot of people live in a state of joy. We all have to work hard to try and find the joy sometimes even when it’s staring us in the face.

Timothy understood something that maybe a lot of us don’t understand well enough. He understood what was good around us and he obviously had a love for his fellow human being. That warmth that was described and we’ve seen it in some of the reporting on his life – his ability to meet anyone and strike up a conversation, and in effect find the good in them. That beautiful vignette of a man who saved up his money so he could go to Washington D.C. to see our government in action.

Now, I must say in today’s modern moment, there’s not a lot of people who want to go to Washington D.C.

[Laughter]

To actually watch the government. It could be a frightening sight. But I am struck by it because it reminds me of something perhaps more innocent and something we should aspire to. I can remember, once upon a time, in my own life thinking that that would be a good and noble thing to do, to go and see democracy at work.

And I’ve been to those same cafeterias described in the obituary. And it’s true that people of all backgrounds, the people who were just in front of the cameras, and the people who came to attend to their interests, they’re all together in a cafeteria in an egalitarian place. And anyone can go up to anyone and have a conversation. And perhaps that’s an example of what Timothy was exemplifying in all he did. That he believed everyone should have a conversation. He believed there was good in everyone. He believed everyone had a responsibility. And that’s something to honor. That’s something to appreciate.

I think it’s fair to say that in this busy city and this world sometimes something happens, even something shocking and we kind of drive by it. So, people of this city heard that a crime occurred and then they heard about a life that was lost. And I’m not sure enough of us stopped to think about what that meaning of that life was.

A man who was filled with so much good, had so much interest in everything going on around him cared, wanted to connect with his fellow human beings, sought a way to make an income that didn’t harm anyone, only wanted to do good and be good.

And that ability to talk to anyone and everyone at all times about everything well that makes him a true New Yorker. Don’t you think?

[Applause]

And he grew up in faith and carried that with him. And this church, where his father was minister, this church was part of what gave him those good and warm and positive and faithful attributes.

And then he was taken from us. So, we’re here today. We’re able to have those conversations with each other. We’re able to experience joy. We’re able to see what’s good in life but Timothy doesn’t get to anymore.

He was attacked because of who he was, plain and simple. And don’t think for a moment it was an attack on one stray man because it was an attack on all of us.

Eight-and-a-half million people were attacked that night, and it can’t be seen any other way. It was an attack on New York City. I’m not saying for a moment it wasn’t some other things too.

It was a racist attack. It was an act of domestic terrorism. We have to call it what it is but it was also an attack on all of us because this city stands for something. So, it’s no surprise that evil came calling here.

This individual who perpetrated this crime filled hate chose to come here. He could have gone anywhere. He could have stayed where came from but he chose to come here because somehow he thought an attack here would send a more powerful message. We have to understand that creates for us, an obligation, to reject that message of hate, to stand up to anyone who thinks themselves better than another.

We have to understand that the hatred in that man is not isolated. It runs too much in our society, through our society. We have to understand the forces of hate have been unleashed in recent months. And we can’t for moment think that we can observe, be sad, be angry, be frustrated then move on because we owe it to Timothy to do something more.

We have to actively reject hate. We have to call it what it is. Anytime there is an act of racism and it is not called racism it allows that stain to continue to grow. We don’t weed out the evil of our past if we can’t acknowledge what’s staring us in the face.

And we have to understand this is a good man, not someone who didn’t matter to society because he wasn’t famous or because he was older or because he didn’t have a lot of money. Let’s be careful about that fact. We owe it to him to see him as the full human being he was.

We owe it to his family to remember the fullness of him. And to all the family members, our hearts are with you not only because you lost him but because of the way you lost him.

Now, the hate I talked about, it’s not going to go away of its own accord. Timothy went to Washington D.C. because he believed our democracy could be real. We all have – we’re clear-eyed, we have an understanding of what’s not working in our democracy. We understand the weight of our past and how it’s holding us back. But we need people like Timothy to say wait a minute it’s supposed to be this way we have to make it that way. We have to make it good. We have to live up to those ideals.

And therefore, we can’t ever let hatred go unnoticed. We can’t let it become a commonplace. We can’t see something happen to a human being and let that human being be diminished in the process. The victim can never be diminished and yet there were news reports about this man that somehow dwelled on something that happened to him, that happened to every single one of us in this room which is at something point along the way we made a mistake.

So, why, if he’s a victim – an innocent victim of a racist attack – does any reporter want to talk about a mistake he made along the way? Why is that pertinent? What’s pertinent is he was the victim of a racist attack.

[Applause]

He was a black man killed by a white man whose goal was to find black people and kill them. Period. And it was noted and then quickly the media and our society in general moved onto other topics.

Let me be straight forward. What if it had been a black man who travelled to another city with the sole purpose of killing white people?

[Applause]

Wouldn’t that have been front page news?

Audience: Yes!

Mayor: For day after day?

So, that says there’s still something wrong with how we value humanity in this time, in this society.

What if instead of an older man of modest means he had been a banker or a lawyer or a celebrity, an actor or an actress? Don’t you think that would then still be dominating our attention?

So, is a banker or a lawyer a more important human being? Is there soul more important than the rest of ours? Is that what the Bible says?

So, perhaps Timothy never anticipated that all of the good and noble thoughts in his mind would play out in this manner that his very life would end up being an example of the conversation we still haven’t had, of the democracy we still have not attained. Perhaps he was trying to take us someplace we hadn’t yet figured out how to go. But now we owe it to him to go there. We owe it to him to call it like we see it, to acknowledge what’s really happening and to acknowledge in the year 2017, it’s impossible to say we’re only going forward.

How many times have we said, you know, we’ve come a long way but we still have a long way to go? True statement but sometimes don’t you feel like the road gets blocked?

Audience: Yes!

Mayor: And the forces of hate are getting a renewal? A license to come out into the open? Are we going forward or are we going backward?

But we get to decide and that’s what Timothy would want us to feel – we get to decide. We don’t stand ideally by as hatred tried to grow again, as supremacy tries to take sway again. We don’t stand ideally by. It’s our turn to do something about it.

And we have so many ways we can in everyday life, as Timothy did, being agents of good, calling out and reporting and acting on every act of hate and bias we see and not tolerating it in our midst. And then acting in our communal life, in our public life, in our political life to make the bigger changes we need, and being as focused on where those changes have to happen, as Timothy was himself.

[Applause]

I’ll conclude with a very brief and simple passage from the poem referenced in the obituary. And this poem has inspired people for generations. I can see it’s inspiring this young child.

[Laughter]

Again, Timothy’s favorite poem was called, “If” simply “If’ by Rudyard Kipling. It concludes with these lines –

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it
And – which is more – you’ll be a man, my son!

And Timothy was a man, a man who lived life to fullest, a man who believed in the things that should inspire us all. Let’s carry his legacy forward.

Thank you. And God bless you all.

[Applause]