Audio & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul is a Guest on Open Line on 107.5 WBLS with Fatiyn Muhammad and Jennifer Jones Austin

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul was a guest on Open Line on 107.5 WBLS with Fatiyn Muhammad and Jennifer Jones Austin.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

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

Fatiyn Muhammad: This is her first time on Open Line since becoming the 57th and first female Governor of the state of New York. I'm talking about Governor Kathy Hochul, good morning, Governor Hochul and welcome to Open Line. How are you this morning?

Governor Hochul: I'm doing well. And thank you so much for allowing me the chance to express some of my anger, frustration, sadness over what happened in Buffalo. But also the specter of gun violence in our streets every day is just something that's just a call to action for all of us that I think all of you and I could hear Jennifer's voice as well, our paths have crossed many, many times, and I look forward to continuing work with her.

It's been a tough week. It's been one of the toughest weeks of my entire life because that massacre by a racist, white supremacist, who was radicalized online and took action because he had access to guns is avid in my hometown, but not just my hometown, literally a 10, 11 minute drive from my home. My husband, I live in the city of Buffalo and these were our neighbors and it is just gut wrenching to know that they just got up on an ordinary day to go grocery shopping.

I met the family with their three-year-old son, whose father was slaughtered to simply buying a birthday cake for him on that day. And I was so grateful that President Biden answered my request that he come to Buffalo. He said, I'll do anything for you, Kathy. And I said, Mr. President, we need to see you in Buffalo. This is a community that's been overlooked a long time and to have you come and give us a collective hug would be so powerful. So thank you for putting the spotlight on this issue this morning.

Fatiyn Muhammad: Let me just say this and I'll get Jennifer right into this conversation. I should have started off by saying that we continue to send our prayers and condolences to those family members that suffered the loss of friends, those folks that are traumatized up there.

We thank you for the resources that you are putting into that community to deal with this tragedy. We know that some of the funerals have started this past Friday one funeral yesterday. So Jennifer, I want to get you into this conversation right away.

Jennifer Jones Austin: Governor Hochul it's so great to have you with us. And we look forward to opportunities when we can talk about things that are more upbeat and positive. It's just tragic what's happened here. I'm going to tell you that this feels in some ways different than some of the mass shootings in the past. I wondered if it had anything to do with it being in New York and coming so close to home.

But I think it's because it feels like it's becoming more the norm that it's becoming normalized behavior. And when we appreciate that this gentleman is, you know, he's leaning in to a replacement theory. This notion that Black Americans are trying to disempower white Americans. The work that you're doing to improve gun control, the work that you are doing to address, creating a domestic parents and unit is critical.

It's so important. And I'm glad that you've spoken to that. But what do we do as a society? What do we do as a state, getting the state to address this issue of this information and this notion of a replacement theory that is Black Americans and others try to get ahead that we're disempowering white people?

Governor Hochul: Jennifer, you and your family has been at the forefront of civil rights work for generations. As a child, my parents were involved in civil rights marches in Buffalo, and we tried to integrate neighborhoods where Blacks were not welcome when I was a child. So you and I, you know, we shared his passion for doing something to elevate the voices of Black and brown communities.

But then you have what I describe as the radicalization, where information is being shared about previous mass shootings. For example, there was one in New Zealand and the manifesto written by the person who massacred 51 people there, was almost lifted verbatim in what this shooter in Buffalo had obtained.

So the difference Jennifer is that people now can share this information. There's dark websites. There is actually what they call algorithm, that keeps pushing this content out in front of people, showing interest into it.

And I want the social media companies responsible for this, now there's federal laws that make it difficult, but that's why I asked the Attorney General my great friend, Letitia James, to investigate to find out if there's any culpability there, but you're absolutely right that this is starting to become mainstream. It's not just in the dark corners of the internet. It is talked about by literally members of Congress and on some cable news networks and all of us, and you do the same in the media. You call it out. Leaders have to call it out.

I stood in church at True Bethel Baptist where my husband and I worshiped countless hours with Reverend Darius Pridgen, Bishop Pridgen. Who's also on the Buffalo city council. We stood there last Sunday, this time, last week and said every pastor across this nation, white, Black, brown have to call this out and shame the elected officials who refuse to acknowledge it and refuse to do something about it, but it's also the access to guns. You can have all this hate in your heart and sit in your basement and ferment and think about all these horrible thoughts of what you want to do, but you can't act on it if you don't have access to guns and we need tougher national laws.

We have tough laws in New York, but all this person had to do is drive 10 minutes over the border to Pennsylvania and obtain something that's illegal in New York, high capacity magazine intended for battlefields and add that to the gun he had bought legally and all of a sudden we have that toxic combination.

And one thing that is absolutely chilling and I'll be heading up the churches in Harlem shortly, but I spoke at a church yesterday. I said he targeted this neighborhood in Buffalo because he said it was the closest largest black population from where he lived in this very rural part of our state, along the border of Pennsylvania.

It was about three hours and 10 minute drive. Where I was in Brooklyn yesterday, and it'll be the same when I'm in Harlem, it's about three hours and 20 minute drive, so that target could have just as easily come to our neighborhoods here in New York city as well. And that is why we have a responsibility to monitor the hate speech, be ready to take action and do everything we can to stop the flow of illegal guns coming to our streets.

Not just they don't get into the hands of a mass shooter, a white supremacist, but also the guns that are in our streets that are killing our kids every single day.

Jennifer Jones Austin: Yes.

Fatiyn Muhammad: I'm glad that you brought that up because I think that there needs to be a national appeal to gun violence all over in urban America, mass shootings, the shootings on the trains. We all must speak out of it. We see our front pages, on the news, on a daily basis, we see a lot of our folks dying due to gun violence.

And we just saw a report coming out of the CDC sating that since the pandemic 2020, we saw an increase of gun violence and especially disproportionately in the black community, Governor Hochul as you just stated, we need federal legislation on hate crimes. And because you just say, you can go from one state and if the laws change state to state then one state it may be a hate crime and in another state it's not.

Reverend Sharpton this week said that the President's words were nice, but we need action. In your last budget, you were able to get the state legislature to put hate crimes into the category, those that don't just commit hate crimes, don't just be able to walk back out on the street, they can get bail instituted to them. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Governor Hochul: Yes. And that was so important to me even before this mass killing, because we have had people who been terrorized because of the color of their skin or the religion they practice.

And to think that under passed laws that I knew I needed to fix, now, I'll tell you right now, I understand the fundamental premise behind bail reform, you cannot have two people accused of the same crime. One goes home because their parents have money. They're back in school, they're doing just fine until their trial date. And somebody else is slammed into Rikers because they don't have money. That was unfair. That'll never come back. But what we found is that there were categories of crimes, and some of them were violent gun crimes, as well as hate crimes that had been left out. So people could commit a crime and go back out in the street while they're waiting trial.

And I said, no, there's a certain level of crimes that we have to say, no, this is so serious. And it was important to me as a priority for our state, but also who we are as a people to say, no, you cannot get away with hate crimes in our state. And so yes, we did that. And I also, you mentioned Reverend Al.

I want to thank him for being one of the first phone calls I received after we became aware of the Buffalo shooting. I went up there immediately and he pledged the support of the national action network to help these families. And I know this neighborhood, it's a very low-income neighborhood and they're struggling and we have a lot of money in our budget to help build back the businesses and the small entrepreneurs and help them in every way we can, but we have a lot of work to do there. And he said they would cover cost of the funerals.

So I just took that as just a, really a statement of not just sympathy and prayers, but also a real action item that when I announced it in church it gave people that sense of peace.

And I want to thank everyone involved in that as well.

Jennifer Jones Austin: Absolutely, absolutely. And we appreciate you for, you know, I serve on the board as the Vice Chair of the National Action Network, and it is our aim to be a support network when they go through crises, such as this, and especially when their loved one's lives are taken in such a tragic form and under circumstances, such as, as racist acts. What more is being done?

You talk about the city of Buffalo and the people, they have long lived under dire circumstances, high rates of poverty, the grocery store tops were told this was the only grocery store in that community. They're struggling. They were struggling. They're now more traumatized then they've been before, what is New York state going to do? What can we do as communities outside of New York, outside of Buffalo, to help them in this moment?

Governor Hochul: And I thank you for that offer because yes, this is a community that needs more investment. And to the extent that there's people in New York City that are looking for investment, encourage them to look at some of the ignored communities of upstate New York as well.

I've walked the streets of all over New York City. I know the neighborhoods like my own hometown, but a lot of people don't know upstate and there's places like Buffalo and Rochester and Syracuse that do have high violent crime rates. They have poverty. That seems to be just intractable, but I'm investing record amounts of money.

Literally, we had money in the budget before this happened for the Jefferson Avenue Corridor, the street that this happened on to that to help lift up the entrepreneurs there. To make sure they have the capital so they can invest in a small business to make their dreams become a reality and stabilize this neighborhood.

But this neighborhood was always the heart of the Black community. This is where there were the Black musicians, jazz clubs started. And this is where the underground railroad came through at one time. I just met the pastor of the Michigan Street Baptist church, which is an important part. So I want people to know that history it's powerful, just like in Harlem, we celebrate the Black culture and people gravitate to see the attractions and visit the sites where it all became such a powerful voice.

Places like Buffalo, some of them got left behind, some of these communities. So it's about financial investment from the state, workforce development and continue investing in jobs right there in the community so they don't have to take two buses to go out to the suburbs to get a job training, it has to be right in the neighborhood.

And I am laser focused on lifting up all communities, but I'm especially paying attention to those that have been just forgotten for decades.

Fatiyn Muhammad: Well, Governor Hochul, we want to thank you for your leadership on this and being out in front and having a voice on this and comforting the community on this, because this is such a tragic situation and people are hurting, people are mourning and, your words are comforting at this moment.

I just want to present you with one more question, because since the pandemic our station programs have been out front, dealing with COVID and we see this week that the CDC puts 87% of the New York counties, including the whole city of New York at high COVID risks. Daily cases topping 11,000. The CDC says 54 of New York's 62 counties are now at high risk for community COVID spread that number has more than doubled in the last three weeks. And the state's daily case total just hit a number unseen since January. There has been no changes to the state's and city's mask mandate, as of yet, do you see that possibly changing if these numbers continue to go higher and we see more hospitalization and an uptick in COVID death?

Governor Hochul: You know, you hit exactly on what we look for. We're looking at the rate of infection. Yes. This is spreading. Literally I got my first COVID case two weeks ago, just finished up last week.

So it is spreading, but because we have the availability of vaccines and you can do to continue using your voice, to encourage people to get that vaccine. But also the boosters. Now children can get boosters as well. Everybody has to do that because that is the armor you can wrap around yourself to protect you from not just these waves that we're having now, but also any variants that may come in the future.

So we have something we didn't have before, which is that protection.

I want more people to get vaccinated and boosted, but the masks, we still are using them on public transportation, which is very important. People are pressuring us to lift them off the MTA and the train. I said, no, people are too close together you don't understand. In New York City, people are literally on top of it each other whether it's in their housing, whether it's walking the streets, whether it's taking the subway. So I believe that people should be heavily encouraged, and the Mayor and I worked together on this to tell people to do this.

But we also know that the hospitalizations are nowhere near what they were just a few months ago in January. That's what I watched because it's not as severe of an infection as it had been in the past. Partly because the people who are vaccinated who get it, it it seems like a cold or a flu. So what happens is if we get to a place where we really do see a spike in hospitalizations, and we want people to change their behavior. We still have to have the credibility so they know it's really, really bad now, please go back to that because what I fear, and maybe you feel the same thing because people are just over this. They don't want to wear masks anymore. I mean, some do, but others just, they're not going to do it. And so I have to maintain that if there is a time when we really really need that and we're just not there.

Let me just give you one number to put this in context, as much as it looks like the increase is exponentially higher than it was a few weeks ago. And that is true. Look at what we were in January, you know, almost 400 cases per hundred thousand.

Yesterday in New York City, we had 48 cases per a hundred thousand. That 48 is up from maybe 10, a couple of weeks ago. So it looks like a dramatic increase. So I wanted people to just put this in context. I'm not saying everything is fine, but I also don't want to be an alarmist. So at such time in the future, if things really do rise to a dire situation and we start seeing more people in hospitals and being very sick in hospitals, I want to reserve the right to use other measures such as that.

I really never again want to shut down this community. I don't want to have children have to learn remotely because kids in Black and brown communities suffered the most, they did not have access to the internet. They did not learn during that two-year period and it was devastating. It took an emotional toll on them. So we have to learn from what happened before and make sure we don't make the same mistakes again. So I want everyone to know we're watching it very closely.

Fatiyn Muhammad: Well, we appreciate you taking a little extra time with us to come on and address the community on the Buffalo shooting and also on COVID.

We look forward to having you back as you approach a primary coming up and get a chance to talk with the community. We have the New Jersey Governor come on and talk with our audience, Mayor Eric Adams, and we look forward to having you back to talk with the audience as you approach the upcoming primary coming up for Governor again, folks, we want to thank New York State Governor, Kathy Hochul for sharing a few moments with us this morning.

Again, travel safely, Governor Hochul, and we hope to have you back soon. Okay. Thank you, Governor.