Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Joins Rev. Al Sharpton, Senator Brian Benjamin and National Action Network at Action Rally and Live Broadcast

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul joined Rev. Al Sharpton, Senator Brian Benjamin and the National Action Network at an Action Rally and Live Broadcast.

AUDIO of today's remarks is available here.

PHOTOS are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Thank you, my friends. Thank you. To be induced in such a way by a legendary individual who's had a profound difference in how we view the Black community, how we view racial and social justice, how we even view democracy in terms of voting rights. Reverend Al, you are a great person, and your words are truly humbling to me to know that you'll be a partner of mine as we navigate some turbulent waters, but with you on my side and the individuals who are here today, uh, I feel emboldened and empowered, because God has put us here. God has brought us to this point. And I feel every morning when I wake up, I've got God on one shoulder telling me what to do, and my beloved mother in heaven, who I lost a few years ago, telling me what to do as well. So I feel empowered to be a voice for all of you, but not just a voice of fighter, because I like a good fight.

And we have a lot of fights ahead of us, my friends, but when I have people like Governor David Paterson as well, David Paterson, who has been an ally and a friend, and he's given me so much advice, and I'm going to continue to rely on him and empower him to do even more. Let's give a great applause to our great friend, David Paterson as well. And I take inspiration from so many people. Bishop Daughtry, you coming here, 90 years old, getting up and literally jogging down the hallway here. I mean, what a man this is, what an inspiration he is. Let's give him another round of applause as well.

But also, my friends, I'm a mom. And when something happens to children, our own children, even if they're adults, It's a searing pain to know that we've lost so many, some people's children, they're their babies. And I look at Gwen Carr and the courage that she has mustered to stand up and fight for justice in her son's name and lead a national movement. Let's give a round of applause to Gwen Carr as well. Thank you, my friend.

So here we are in the house of justice. I love the sound of that. I love the sound of that. And my husband was a fighter for justice. He worked for the Department of Justice, and he made sure that the Department of Justice executed justice fairly, and he earned the respect of so many people. And President Obama, elevating him to that position was one of the highest honors our family could have ever been bestowed upon. I want to thank him for being my life partner, my source of support, my rock for 37 years, and we signed up for another 37, so you're going to see him around for a long time. I love this man.

But we're here today to make a wonderful announcement. And let me give you a little context. People say, yes, you've only been in office for 12 days, you're dealing with a pandemic, which continues to rage. And I'll be speaking Inez Dickens shortly. I didn't want to wake her up too early in the morning. I hope she's feeling okay, but she's been a dear friend. It's affecting people that we care about and it continues, but we have to fight back. We also have to get our kids back in schools safely, because too many children, black and brown children in particular, have fallen by the wayside. And as I said, I'm a mom and I can't let that happen. That is too painful to think that all the hours of education and nurturing and caring they lost last year has affected them so deeply. We have to help our kids get back to school. I'm making sure that happens as well.

And then on top of it all, we have people because of the pandemic who are at risk of being literally thrown out of their homes, evicted. Now they lost their jobs not because they didn't look for a job, they lost because the pandemic ended their job. People weren't going back to work. The hotels, the restaurants, the offices, so many people lost their jobs and the jobs aren't back. And they couldn't make their payments for the rents and their mortgage. And because of the Supreme Court, they were just about to be thrown out on the street. My friends, we already have a huge homeless problem. I'm not going to take any steps to add more people to their ranks. We have to solve that problem, and take care of the people who deserve the dignity of a good home.

So we changed and I brought back an extraordinary session, they called it, I made everybody come back to Albany. Sorry about that, everybody, but it was important. It was important that you be there to do the work of the people. And you extended the moratorium. You made sure that we could do that importantly, but also you did something that had been long delayed unnecessarily, and that was to establish the framework for going forth with the cannabis industry, because so many communities have been hit hard by indiscriminate incarceration for generations. Those communities deserve to have the resources flowing back to them, and it was all jammed up for some reason I can't even explain.

Now I unleashed that power. We're going to have a robust industry and people will benefit from this, so let's get that job done. It started this past week as well.

But on top of all that, Mother Nature must not like me very much because you've really seen that when all of a sudden the heavens open up, and I live near Niagara Falls, my friends, and I know what a lot of water looks like. Niagara Falls came out of the heavens and rushed into our subways and our basements and devastated people's homes and I saw this firsthand as I walked the streets and wept with people and held their hands as they were on the ground trying to find if they could feel a little picture of their baby pictures or their wedding pictures that were just ruined by the rain. It is heartbreaking, and I feel things deeply.

If you know, one thing I learned from my mom was empathy, feeling other people's pain. But it's not just feeling the pain; it's also offering them hope and by showing up you give them hope, but hope is also just not enough, my friends. You give them hope and you give them help. You reach out and you give them the resources they need to rebuild and that's what I'm doing. That's what we're focused on.

We're also going to be dealing with gun violence because it has ripped apart too many lives, people feel preyed upon in their own neighborhoods, other individuals who need an alternative, they need to know there is a better life for them with good paying jobs and training and I'm going to focus on all those.

So that's just a quick snapshot of our first week in office, but I'm finding out I can't do this alone. I can't do this alone. I need a partner because extraordinary times call for extraordinary leaders, and my friends, I found that person right here in Harlem, one of our own, and following the great footsteps of David Paterson, I know talent, I know people who have courage, I know people who have heart, people who are decent human beings, a good family man, a wonderful father to Caroline and his soon to be born baby right around election day, great timing there. This is a real person. This is a person who understands what people are going through and he was able to lift himself up, getting a fantastic degree at Brown University and a master's degree in business at Harvard University.

This is one smart man and I want him as my partner so I'm going to charge him with a lot of responsibilities, making sure that our NYCHA housing is restored to the way it should be for people because they deserve the dignity of having heat on in the wintertime and air conditioning in the summer time and elevators that work and no more mold in their homes, my friends. This is America. We can do better than this and I'm charging Brian Benjamin to work with me and my team to work on elevating people's lives and giving them better homes and I'm also going to get him working on something else that he cares very passionately about and that is restoring trust, dealing with the criminal justice system, and saying we can do better. Yes, we need our police and we respect them for protecting us in our homes and in our houses and our businesses. We need that partnership. But when people cross the line, there has to be much more accountability and a message that things will happen to you if you do something to someone else that's not appropriate.

Let's rebuild here, and I feel confident in Brian Benjamin's abilities, again to partner with me to get that done. I'm not going to throw out promises because I don't trust politicians to make promises. I never have and never will. You judge me at the end of our terms, and notice the word "terms," okay?

You judge us at the end, but as we go through this journey together, you are part of our army. God is with us. God is guiding us, but I need the people on the ground. As Reverend Al mentioned, the people who aren't in the headlines but the people who can make profound change in people's lives. That's who we're here for.

My mother's favorite saying, and I'll close with this, and she had this on our refrigerator: go into the world and do well, but more importantly, go into the world and do good. My friends, we're going to do good for the people of this state with Brian Benjamin at my side. We're going to do great things for the people of the state. Let's welcome our lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin.