Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks At Somos El Futuro Labor Breakfast

March 22, 2014

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Buenos dias a todos.

Audience: Buenos dias.

Mayor: Very impressive. I just want to say Sonia Ivany gave my entire speech. It's been great seeing you –

[Laughter]

Stole all my material – let's go back to tale of two cities now, something. Sonia, I have to tell you. It doesn't matter what day, what year, how early in the morning – Sonia has this passion for progressive social change that comes through every time. Let's thank her for that passion, for that leadership.

[Applause]

And I have to tell you, it is an honor to be with leaders who believe in working people. We all see it as our responsible – our responsibility to uplift working people. That has not been in vogue in a lot of our national debate, but we believe in it. And we believe that this is the idea whose time has come – to respect working people, to use all the tools of government to uplift them.

So I want to thank everyone in this room at the outset. Before I think the dignitaries, I want to thank everyone – every activist, every worker, every labor official, everyone who believes in helping those who work.

[Applause]

I said when we signed the paid sick leave bill – we want a city, we want a state, we want a country that values not just wealth, but values work, and rewards work, and honors working people. So let me talk about the great people who are here. I know our Labor Commissioner Peter Rivera is here. Thank you, Peter. Some of the great progressive leaders of the city – let me just say something about Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, without whom we would not have been able to pass the paid sick leave bill. You know, some people criticized me, a few months back, because I believed that Melissa Mark-Viverito was the right leader for our city council. I believed she was a great leader for our city, a true progressive voice. I also thought, besides all of her personal strains and her ideology, I thought it was time for a citywide Latino official in New York City.

[Applause]

And it has made a huge difference in the focus, in the policies of the City Council. It has made a huge difference for over two million of our fellow New Yorkers to hear someone in leadership speak in their own language. It made a huge difference after the tragedy in East Harlem, that there was a leader on the ground embracing everyone in need, including those who happened not to be documented, with equal love and equal embrace. Let us thank speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.

[Applause]

And I could not be more honored to have progressives working side by side in our city government, including our Public Advocate Tish James, our Comptroller Scott Stringer. There's so many other leaders – of course Conference Chair Felix Ortiz, thank you; Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., thank you; the chair of our state Assembly Labor Committee, Carl Heastie, thank you. To all my brothers and sister from the labor movement, thank you for all you are doing today.

I am told that the history of the SOMOS Conference, and particularly this labor breakfast, as such – that the last two mayors did not make it a focal point on their itinerary. It wasn't a high-scheduling priority, apparently.

Yes I am el primero en viente años, I believe.

[Applause]

That’s something we called Spanglish. I don't know if you've heard about that. I am here today without my better half, but I have to tell you, Chirlane and I have spent many times over many years at this conference in Albany, at the incredible conference in Puerto Rico, and we have felt a real fellowship with so many people in this room. And it's been 20 years since you've had a mayor, it’s 20 years too long, but I am honored to be here, and I'm honored to be a part of this.

[Applause]

We want a City Hall that works with all communities, that listens to all communities, that stays in touch with the grass roots. We want a City Hall where the doors are bien abiertas. Thank you, professora.

And that compels us to focus on what working people are going through, and everyone in this room knows it. You don't need to read a study, you don't need to go to a symposium. You know it. You feel it. Working people are struggling. Last year, I did talk about the tale of two cities. Last year, I talked about the shocking figure from a city government study that 46 percent of New Yorkers were at or near the poverty level. We saw it. We felt it growing through the economic prices, through the changes in our economy. We saw the middle class pushed down. We saw wages pushed down, benefits pushed down, efforts to organize people fought viciously.

All of us have experienced, in our time as leaders, as activists, a very concerted effort to reduce the rights of working people. And somehow, there are people in our society who thought was good for our future – or maybe for their futures – and they didn't think about the larger future of our city, or our state, or our nation. But I can tell you, we have to turn that tide and we have the power to do so. On Wednesday – sorry, on Thursday, we signed the paid sick leave bill, so that a half a million more people could have paid sick leave rights.

It only took the stroke of the pen, because elections matter, because we elected a progressive City Council. We elected a progressive speaker. I have the honor being a progressive mayor. And once you put those pieces together with the backing of the people, suddenly these changes become a lot easier. I spoke to my Law Department, I spoke to my Corporation Counsel Zach Carter, who's an extraordinary public servant. We talked about the lawsuit that Mayor Bloomberg had brought against the living wage bill. We talked about the lawsuit he had brought against prevailing wage bill. And we knew it was wrong. We did not want the city of New York standing in the way of people getting decent wages and benefits. And so, Zach Carter said, what do you want to do? I said, I think we have to reverse course, and reach out, and help working people. And he said, fine, let's do it.

And then he was in the paper the other day, and I said, what did it take? He said, it's very simple – we do what our client tells us to do, and in the last few months, the client has changed.

[Laughter]

[Applause]

And I'm saying that to remind us. I can tell you one thing –having been a progressive, having been an activist, having worked on side of laboring people – I know that sometimes it feels, we feel, the weight. Sometimes it feels hard to keep moving forward. We feel the weight of all the oppositional forces out there. We felt that decline of people's rights. Sometimes it starts to feel a bit inevitable. But I'm here to tell you actually what is inevitable is that the voices of the people will win the day in the end. That's truly what's inevitable. You can't have millions and millions of people working so hard and not getting enough return on that hard work, and expect that to go on for very long. Eventually, common sense prevails. Eventually decency prevails. And it's our job simply to tap into the voices of our people, because they know if they're working as hard – in fact longer hours than ever – and they can't make ends meet, they know that's not an acceptable state of affairs. They're telling us what it's our job to do. Now, we just have to step up and do it.
So we've already resolved the paid sick leave issue. We've already shown that we can reverse course on living wage and on prevailing wage. We're saying to companies that we expect, if they're subsidized, that they're paying a living wage. We're going to say that's the way it has to be for the good of the city, and the good of the state, the good of this country. And if you set the expectation the right way, things change. By the way, when you think about the totality of our city, 8.4 million people, almost a half million of whom are undocumented – we want to change the attitude towards people who are fellow New Yorkers, who just happen not to be documented. We want a municipal ID that gives them a lot of the same rights as every other New Yorker. \

[Applause]

And we know the same concept applies when it comes to the DREAM Act.  It's a simple act of compassion. It's a simple statement of morality to reach out to your young people who are so much of our future. We can't care where they were born. We only care what's born in them, what they are about, what they have to offer all of us. And I have to tell you – I want to thank so many leaders who are here today, who have been fighting for DREAM Act with such energy –members of the senate, members of the assembly. It is not an easy fight. To change societal norms is never easy. But because they kept coming back and coming back, it's now on the front pages where it belongs. I know they will prevail. Let's thank all of them for what they're doing.

I won't take up much time. I just have to talk about one other thing. I appear to have a button on here. I don't know how it got there. It says UPKNYC. It's very sporty and stylish, I'd like to note. The – I also have to take a moment to say, as we're fighting to change the basic approach we take to our young people, is working now from the assumption that every young person needs that support early. Every young person needs opportunity.

You know the facts that a child that is not on grade level, by third grade – if they're not reading on grade level, not able to perform on grade level by third grade – has very little chance of recovering from that. Our precious moments to reach our children are when they're youngest. We know what full-day pre-k can do.

Again, the facts our obvious, the studies are in. We don't need to re-litigate that. We need to have the resolve to get something done. We know every parent, everyone who's been around a child, knows what it does for a child if you keep them in school longer. That’s why I believe so much in afterschool. If they're safe and secure after school, if they're getting extra tutoring, if they're getting enrichment – we can see with our own eyes what that does for a child. And by the way, in all that we do to invest in pre-K, to invest in afterschool, we're also sending a very powerful message – we believe in our children. We believe in their futures, because we're investing in them. You can tell when someone is for real when they’re investing. That's what the society should be doing.

There are a lot of members of the state senate and a lot of members of the assembly who have made this a profound priority. They have fought through thick and thin. They have made pre-k and afterschool front and center on the agenda. Let us thank them too – please, a round of applause to all our colleagues from the legislation.

And I'll finish with this. We do not let conventional wisdom stand in our way. That's my core message through all of this. The things we're doing already were things that weren't supposed to be possible. The reason it is possible is because people believe in making change and they're ready to do something about it. I think that says so much about what all of us who care about working people need to think about in these coming months and years ahead. When you have the majority with you, everything else should be easy. If I asked everyone in this room, if I took a poll of everyone in this room, and I talked about the things we're talking about today, do you think the people are with us?

Audience: Yes.

Mayor: Do you think we have a majority?

Audience: Yes.

Mayor: Let's turn that majority into action.

Audience: Yes.

Mayor: And that's how we make progressive change. Thank you. God bless you.