Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks at Christian Cultural Center

April 2, 2017

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Grace and peace, CCC.

Audience: Grace and peace!

Mayor: Thank you for having me here. Before anything else, I want to give honor to God because without him this day would not be possible.

[Applause]

This extraordinary place is singular in our city – The Christian Cultural Center is the largest house of worship in New York City. It is also one on of the tightest knit communities in New York City.

[Applause]

So, you prove that even in a big place humanity can come first; faith can come first, brotherhood and sisterhood could come first. You do that here and you do that because this place was built the right way – the right idea was in place from the very beginning. And we have Pastor A.R. Bernard to thank for that leadership, for that vision.

[Applause]

And what happens here is an example to our whole city that we should never give up on the work of creating a community; of creating something better. And let’s be clear, for years and years in this city there were assumptions that held us back. There were assumptions about the people of our city. There were assumptions about our young people. There were assumptions about class and race that held us back. We suffered because of it. We suffered division and we saw generations of people go through a pain they didn’t need to go through. And you could summarize that in one way by looking at the thing I want to talk to you about for just a moment today – the crisis of mass incarceration.

Generations of young people, in particular, and young men of color in particular whose lives were ahead of them; who had endless potential, but were deemed by this society not to have the value that they deserved. And so instead of saying here is a person – maybe a person who had some trouble or encountered a challenge, but a person, a human being, good and worthy and God’s sight it became too convenient over decades to just end them away – just send them away and not be overly concerned about what happened next. Mass incarceration meant that lives were cheapened. People were robbed of their humanity. And then we all paid a price. If anyone once upon a time thought there was no price to sending people away, guess what? There was a vast human cost. To those who were hurt and degraded and held back – and in some cases good people who had no intention of criminal life who were turned into criminals because of mass incarceration. But what about the families left behind? What about the neighbors? What about the hole in our hearts – the hole in our society created by this phenomenon? My friends, over the last few years in our nation we finally started to look in the face of what we did. And we said it was time for a change. We had to understand that everything that was done in the past was filled with an implicit racism, with an implicit lack of value given to people of color in general and to African-Americans in particular. We had to look it in the eye – we had to be honest about the diagnosis to cure the disease, right?

[Applause]

In this city, in these years, and with great participation of so many people who have been active in their communities – and I know one thing the CCC believes in is people being invested and active in their communities. And there’s a room full of people here – a church full of people who do good every single day. We had to come to the realization, we not only saw that things were wrong, but we would do them differently. By the way, if you’re going to defeat mass incarceration you better know the root causes. You better know [inaudible].

[Applause]

You have to go [inaudible] educate our children right.

[Applause]

You have to go at the fact that people didn’t have a decent place to live. You can’t expect people to grow [inaudible] struggling with poverty every day.

[Applause]

Let’s be honest. This doesn’t come from nowhere.

[Applause]

And we had to be honest about 400 years of history that still hangs in the air. It still hangs in the air. And [inaudible] staring it in the face and staring it down, and turning the tide. We also have to be honest, if you want to keep people away from mass incarceration – if you want to keep a young man or woman of promise out of jail, well then let’s drive down crime to begin with so they never have to go to jail.

[Applause]

If we want to tell our young people we value them – we value them; we want to believe in them, they are our future leaders; they are the core of all our city will be then you have to treat them like they matter.

[Applause]

So just a few years ago if you were a good young man of color in this city on your way to school, on your way to work you too often got stopped by a police officer and treated like you were probably a criminal. What does that say? Does that inspire or encourage? No, it holds people back.

So, here is how it all wraps together – and the news I want to talk about today. We have to change the entire equation and it began with valuing our young people and it began with bringing down crime. And guess what? Those two pieces went together because safety and fairness actually go together.

[Applause]

The last three years in this city we have reduced stop-and-frisks by 93 percent.

[Applause]

And crime has gone down for three years in a row at the same time –

[Applause]

– which suggested that all along we had to try to respect.

[Applause]

And it is working, and crime is going down steadily and that ow has opened up the missing link we needed because mass incarceration can be ended. It can be ended if we keep driving down crime; if we have the right approach we can end it. And I want to tell you something about mass incarceration, it didn’t begin here in New York City, but it will end here in New York City.

[Applause]

I announced on Friday that we are intending, over these next years, to drive our jail population down and down and down. That will allow us once and for all to close the jail on Rikers Island.

[Applause]

We can make a clean break from the past, have a city where we use every tool at our disposal to keep anyone – and particularly our young people from ever seeing the inside of jail cell.

[Applause]

Just two more points I want to make. We understand that people will make mistakes. Right? Even if we do everything right, some people will still make mistakes. But they call it the Department of Correction for a reason –

[Applause]

You can call is the Department of Rehabilitation. You can call it the Department of Redemption. I think we don’t need to know anymore than that which we read in Scripture to tell us that people are redeemable.

Audience: Amen!

[Applause]

Mayor: If people are redeemable, then it’s our mission, God forbid they ever do see the inside of the jail cell we only want them to see it one time and never again.

[Applause]

Which means the minute someone does enter into that situation, treat them like it was the exception to the rule. We have now announced as well that anybody who ever ends up in our jail system, from the first day they walk in the door, will start to get those rehabilitative efforts. They will be told from day one, “We’re going to talk about how you get out of here and never come back.”

[Applause]

We are going to provide people with the things they needed all along – education and job training so they can move ahead.

[Applause]

Until we make our schools right, we’re not going to punish someone who made a mistake by withholding the things that would actually help them get back on their feet.

[Applause]

We’re going to give them those tools. And the day they’re about to leave jail, we have a simple guarantee. Every single one of the people who have been sentenced for a crime and end up serving time on Rikers will be guaranteed upon leaving the door that there will be a transitional job waiting for them.

[Applause]

And I will tell you one of our local tabloid newspapers, I won’t tell you which one –

[Laughter]

But the name rhymes with toast –

[Laughter]

Trying to respect the House of the Lord, here.

[Laughter]

One of our tabloid newspapers said, “Aha, jobs for criminals.” And I said, “No, jobs for people who went astray so we can help them never go astray again.”

[Applause]

The last thing I want to say to you – yesterday, I had the honor of providing remarks at the funeral of a good man named Timothy Caughman. A good man who we were told to think about a certain way but it turned out not to be the whole truth. This was a man some of you heard who was minding his own business, an older gentleman who had a good heart, never bothered anyone, and a racist killer came from Maryland to New York City seeking to kill a black man – and this tragically was his victim.

I said very clearly it was a racist crime. It was an act of domestic terror. Period.

[Applause]

And some reports about this man tried to portray him as – Timothy Caughman – tried to portray him as someone whose life maybe didn’t matter, and thought maybe he was homeless. Maybe he had had trouble with the law at some point in his life.

This man was an innocent victim of a racist attack and yet efforts to degrade and devalue him were right out there in the open.

Let’s think about how wrong that is. And if the shoe were on the other foot –

[Applause]

If instead of an older gentleman who made a living by redeeming bottles and cans, he were a banker or a lawyer or even more if he were a celebrity, how much his life would have been valued.

If God forbid anyone who had hatred in their heart sought to kill another but now imagine a black man who comes here looking for a white person to kill. Well it’d be front page news to this day. All of these pieces go together.

[Applause]

And I conclude with the point that’s so simple and clear. If we are going to value each and every life, it all goes together – if you value a life, you praise and uplift that person. If you value a life, you invest that person.

[Applause]

If someone goes astray, you help them redeem themselves.

[Applause]

If we’re going to break this cycle it means we never again allow people to be devalued and sent away because they are not part of our human community because brothers and sisters they are our fellow human beings and there before the grace of God [inaudible].

[Applause]

But let’s break that cycle here in this city, in this time.

God bless you, and thank you all.

[Applause]