Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks at State Innovation Exchange Conference Reception

October 2, 2015

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Raj has an interesting way of [inaudible] feeling good about – like, you feel good about life – reminding me of all those months I spent in fourth place. 

[Laughter]

And we’ve all been there brothers and sisters, right? We’ve all spent some time not at the top of the polls. But what I would say about Raj Goyle is when I was in fourth place and fifth place, and offering a progressive vision that wasn’t quite catching fire yet, Raj was one of the people who said we can make this happen, and he put himself into it, heart and soul. So, New York City’s very glad we got to adopt you and welcome you. And – but I did – he very accurately portrayed what my response was when I first met him – his response to any progressive who is out there, particularly in a place like Kansas, fighting the fight, is that we have to feel a deep sense of honor for folks who are holding up a progressive banner even where it’s not easy, and reminding all of us that there are people listening if there’s someone there to annunciate the message. There’s always someone listening, there’s someone ready to be organized and to believe if there are leaders willing to put the message forward. So, let’s thank Raj for being one of those people –

[Applause]

I want to thank Nick Rathod, and I want to thank Mike Lux for their great leadership. I’m thrilled that you are all together here because as progressives we know we need to learn from each other, we need to build upon each other’s successes, we need the fire and the energy that comes from being together. We need to be reminded – I don’t think I should say we need to be reminded we’re on the right side of history, we know we’re on the right side of history – but we need to be reminded it actually can be done. It can be achieved. It can be reached. And each and every one of you by your very election proved what was possible. And so many of you are achieving it through legislation, and changes of policy, and changes in the public debate, and the way people are thinking, and the way people are organizing. So, I want to thank you.

I was very excited to speak to you remotely last year because I could tell something important was happening here. And I’m much more excited to be here in person with you. This is how this country changes – progressives building upon our victory, finding each other, supporting each other, showing each other the tools and what works, and reaching people more and more. I’ve never doubted – I’ve never doubted there is a progressive majority out there, waiting to be tapped. 

[Applause]

And I think we need to show it and we can show it in each and every state. And I appreciate all that you’re doing to make that happen. I take a lot of inspiration from history and sometimes when people tell you what can’t be done, or they tell you that, you know, certain policies or ideas can’t be achieved in certain places – a little moment of looking at history tends to dispel that negative stereotype, because if you look in all 50 states, there have been focal points of progressive action over the decades. And if you look at the people who have hailed certain offices, you can look back and find extraordinary examples that remind us what it’s supposed to be. 

I’m blessed as a New Yorker. I never had to wonder could there be a progressive mayor, and could that progressive mayor have a big and lasting impact, because I was brought up on the legend of Fiorello LaGuardia. And when I say legend, I’m not saying mythology – it all actually happened. It was a legend based in fact. Fiorello LaGuardia changed the reality of New York City. We feel his influence to this day – an authentic progressive, well ahead of his time on a host of issues, who believed in multi-racial coalitions before most people even could conceptualize that idea; who believed in the fundamental role of government in making progressive changes; and one of the people who helped foster the New Deal, and did it – and this is crucially important for all of us – Fiorello LaGuardia, and a lot of other local leaders, did audacious things in the 1930s, like formed – for one thing, they formed the U.S. Conference of Mayors. No one had thought to organize local officials in such a meaningful way before, but there was a realization that change could happen form the grassroots, and that the grassroots leadership understood what was happening in a way that never could be the same in Washington DC. So, they organized together. They organized in a time that was much less perspicuous with that kind of organizing. 

But the New Deal – I think a lot of us would say the New Deal epitomizes so much of what we believe and what was our grounding in our political philosophy and our activism. The New Deal was largely created based on the idea of local leaders knitted together into a national policy. And there was lots of experimentation, and I know there were [inaudible] and things that worked, and things that didn’t. But the common thread was local leaders said they would do something audacious, they would change the paradigm before your very eyes, create new ideas and make them work. And those started to gain currency through success, which immediately brings us to the work that everyone in this room is doing, because you’re showing in your towns, and your cities, your states that similar success can be achieved today. 

I want to tell you, we look at a national context with the Congress and we become a little too used to the paralysis, the gridlock, the disfunction. It’s something we say as a commonplace. But I think the people actually interpret it a little bit differently than all of us who are involved in public life. I think the people are pretty sharp to see that what’s become of Washington DC is not acceptable. It’s not what [inaudible] aspire to, but what they do connect with is local leaders who make fundamental change and tangible change. And so, I wish we didn’t have the juxtaposition with Washington. I wish every one of us were trying to do our best to create progressive change, and trying to keep up with Washington DC. But the fact is what you’re doing now stands as a very stark contrast, and your people can see it. And I would argue it’s amplifying the value of your work. It’s showing people something they yearn for, which makes them want to elect more people like you, which makes them want to support more of the ideas you’re putting forward, which makes them want to agree to more of the organizing drives that you’re creating. You are creating the antidote to what’s wrong in Washington.

Now, look – look around the country. And I always find it so powerful that what you see locally defies the conventional wisdom over and over again. In Connecticut, they passed paid sick leave and they raised taxes on the wealthy.

[Applause]

And on that platform, Governor Malloy got reelected with a larger victory margin than he did when he was first elected.

[Applause]

So, that’s a fact – it is a fact that the state of Nebraska – not one of our bluer states – passed a referendum to raise the minimum wage. The people of Nebraska wanted to raise the minimum wage. 

[Applause]

We see examples all over the country – things that we’re told in the conventional wisdom aren’t possible, but they’re happening all the time. Remember not so long ago around this country we talked about raising the minimum wage? There was a huge backlash from the business community [inaudible] who said look at all the devastating economic impact. Do you realize that the movement – the Fight for $15 movement, and so many other movements, so many other leaders in this room, and in labor, and beyond have changed that discussion around the country so that now the knee-jerk response is not look at all the negatives of raising minimum wage. The knee-jerk response is how quickly can we raise the minimum wage?

[Applause]

Look at the fight for paid sick leave. This is one of the things I campaigned on our city. I’m very proud to say, when I came into office, we extended paid sick leave to a million more New Yorkers who didn’t have that coverage. 

[Applause]

I remember a few years ago, you talked about paid sick leave, and the answer to that was how debilitating it would be to small businesses. Until you listen to the majority of people who either didn’t have paid sick leave, regarded as a fundamental right, and desperately wanted it so they could protect their health and their families health – and they never listened to their family members, their neighbors, all the people who could see through their eyes that not having that meant how society was just not fair enough. So, again, it’s something that used to be a no-fly zone. If you brought it up, somehow you were discordant with economic reality – quickly became something that a majority embraced and saw as necessary. That is happening all over this country. 

We are in the midst of an extraordinary moment, and just in the last year alone you see it. The discussion of income inequality in this country has gone from the back burner to decidedly the front burner. People are talking overtly about the crisis of income inequality and what it means and how it’s holding us back as a nation. People are conceptualizing clearly that a society that doesn’t provide opportunity can’t succeed. People understand that if our wages and benefits are stuck, our families won’t have a viable future. These ideas are now right in the front of the minds of the people. And you see even the presidential discussion now changing, and candidates who aren’t discussing income inequality are out of touch with the electorate. Who would’ve believed that just a few years ago? But that happened on the ground and worked its way up to the national level – and that’s why we’re finally having the debate we should be having in this country. And we have to sustain it. 

So here’s my exhortation to everyone in this room – we sustain that progress by going up time and again, even when it’s not easy – and I know there’s a lot of strong people in this room who’ve fought a lot of fights – but we keep going up to bat over and over again. That is the way forward, because what’s happening is with every time progressives push the spectrum, it is having an impact. Even the battles we don’t win in the first instance are having an impact. The battles lost in one state set up a victory in another state. But it’s about continually pressing our advantage. 

I borrow a different sports analogy or sports quote, I should say, from the hockey great Wayne Gretzky. This is very profound – he said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” 

[Laughter]

[Applause]

So every time that we don’t put that piece of legislation into the legislative session, every time we don’t try and get that referendum on the ballot, or every time we don’t do that organizing drive, we miss an opportunity to see if, in fact, there might be a victory there, or there might be a table-setter for some greater victory up ahead. It’s our obligation to keep pushing farther, to see how much is there to be attained, because more and more the people want us to – they believe we should.

Now, quick personal report to try and make this very tangible. I came into office – yes, I was a long-shot. We ran a populist campaign, we ran a grassroots campaign – we believed it could be done – 

[Applause]

– and then, brothers and sisters, comes that part when you raise your right hand, you get inaugurated – many of you have been through it – many of you will continue to get inaugurated to higher and higher office – and when you do, there’s just challenge – the famous question that came at the end of the movie The Candidate – 1972, Robert Redford, for those of you who aren’t political junkies – the final quote, “What do we do now?”

So, I came into office, and I can tell you it was a kinder, gentler time 21 months ago. I did not have as much grey hair – that is a literal truth. But we said, look, we’re going to actually try and do these things. We believe they can be done. We believe the people demand it. 

When we say full-day high-quality pre-k for every child, that was not an abstraction. We had 20,000 kids in pre-k full-day when I came into office. We said we’re going to give ourselves two years to bring that up to 65,000 kids a year, and we did it – 65,000 kids.

[Applause]

We said we should have the most ambitious affordable housing plan of any city in the history of the country. We put together a plan for 200,000 units of affordable housing – enough for half-a-million people over the next ten years – and we are on pace to achieve that plan. We aimed high and we’re reaching it. 

[Applause]

Raj mentioned municipal ID – this is something so important. We have hundreds of thousands of people in New York City who are undocumented. We wanted them to know they’re our brothers and sisters too. Undocumented or not, they’re our brothers and sisters, they’re our neighbors, they’re a part of our society. We want them to thrive, we want them to be respected. We created IDNYC, our municipal ID card, to say something simple – everyone’s acknowledged, everyone’s respected, everyone should be able to get a lease – they can sign a lease, they can get a bank account, they can get a library card. The basics of life should not be out of reach for someone simply because our federal government has not yet recognized their personhood. 

[Applause]

We now have over half-a-million people who have those ID cards [inaudible]. 

[Applause]

And I will not – I will not go on and on and on. I will say this – these real changes were attainable. 

I can’t tell you how many times the conventional wisdom said they weren’t. But they were – they were all along.

I can’t tell you how many times at how many campaign stops or forums or debates I said we have to bring police and community back together, because there was a rift, and we had to end what was a broken policy in New York City of stop-and-frisk. And every time I said that someone would say, but crime will go up. And I said no – bringing police and community together is how you drive crime down. 

[Applause]

And we’re two years in and guess what, brothers and sisters, crime has gone down in New York City while fairness has gone up. 

[Applause]

So you get where I’m coming from. 

Let me – let me just give you a quick – a quick idea of how I think we can move forward together – and I want to thank everyone who’s a part of this gathering, because in unity there is strength, in numbers there is strength. It is so important that people are here together strengthening each other, sharing the best ideas, and moving forward. 

I am trying to help progressives to do that nationally through our effort, The Progressive Agenda. I want everyone, please, do me a favor, go to progressiveagenda.us when you have a chance, and take a look at what we’re doing. 

The progressive agenda is an effort to bring together progressives – elected officials, legislators, mayors, members of Congress, issue activists, labor leaders, you name it, faith leaders from around the country around a common set of principles about how we address income inequality. 14 simple points about how we end the scourge of income inequality in this country, how we raise wages and benefits, how we support working families with fundamental concepts like paid sick leave and full-day pre-k for all our children, and – the thing that opens up the doors to so many other changes – progressive taxation. Close the carried interest loophole, implement the Buffet Rule, ask the wealthy to pay their fair share. 

[Applause]

So the progressive agenda shows that it is simple, it is straightforward. We can explain to the people of this country literally on a single page what it would take to address income inequality, to create opportunity, to create fairness. We need your help to do it. 

I want to ask everybody in this room, please join us. Sign up as a member of this coalition. Join the progressive agenda. The executive director for our progressive agenda, Jerry Prado, is here in the room. Our political director Hayley Prim is here – there they are in the corner. Wave vigorously, please. Give them a round of applause.

[Applause]

But you can help us. We’re trying in New York City to do so much for our 8.5 million people – 8.5 million people, 46 percent of whom are living at or near the poverty level right now. We are trying to lift them up. We are trying to show the changes that can be made. But we know – everyone in this room knows – as good as our efforts are locally, as much impact as you make with the legislation you pass in your city or your state, we cannot reach enough people, we cannot create enough opportunity without a federal government that’s actually our partner. 

[Applause]

We cannot fix our infrastructure without a federal government involved. We can’t have enough affordable housing without a strong federal partnership. We can’t make our schools all they should be for our children. There’s so much we could do to address income inequality and to create opportunity if the federal government were a part of this discussion again, if they were actors in this drama, but that only happens by changing the political debate in this country. 

It’s starting to happen all over the country, but we need to take it to the next level. So continue all that you’re doing locally, but help us to crystalize this national demand, this core set of ideas that should be basic concepts of fairness in this country, because if we can change the national debate, if we can get Washington to be a place again that supports our localities and lifts up our people, we can create the just and equal society that we believe in and that a majority of Americans believe in.

Thank you and God bless you all [inaudible]. 

[Applause]

[Cheers]