Governor Cuomo: "It's a testament to the people of the State of New York. That is who did this. People who stayed tough and smart and united during the most difficult challenge of our lives. And most of all, most of all, the essential workers who came forward and whose effort and courage brought us through this day and they are our heroes."
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today presented awards to essential workers who carried New York State through the COVID-19 pandemic.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of the event is available here.
PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks are available below:
It's a testament to the people of the State of New York. That is who did this. People who stayed tough and smart and united during the most difficult challenge of our lives. And most of all, most of all, the essential workers who came forward and whose effort and courage brought us through this day and they are our heroes.
We can't say enough. We've said thank you, but we want to say thank you again. On behalf of all the people of the State of New York, for what has been done and we want to acknowledge them here today. What they did says who they are. It's not that they weren't scared. It's not that we weren't scared. I was scared. I was scared every day, but FDR, another great New Yorker, said it. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that says there's something more important than me feeling that fear and succumbing to that fear and rising above. And they did. And we want to present a small token of our appreciation today to our first responders.
And we'll ask them to come up. And receive a plaque and stay here, please, so that we can recognize you as a group.
Announcer: Representing the building service workers, Kyle Bragg, president of 32BJ SEIU.
Representing the men and women of the National Guard, Major General Raymond Shields, Adjutant General of New York and Commander of the New York National Guard.
Representing the food and hospitality workers, Richard Maroko, President of the New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council.
Representing the store employees, Stuart Appelbaum, President of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
Representing the sanitation workers, Harry Nespoli, President of the IBT Teamsters Local 831: The Uniformed Sanitation Men's Association.
Representing the transportation workers, Earl Phillips, Secretary Treasurer for the Transportation Workers Union Local 100.
Representing the delivery workers, Thomas Gesualdi, President of the Teamsters Joint Council 16.
Representing the hospital staff, Maria Castaneda, Secretary Treasurer of 1199 SEIU.
Representing the teachers, Colleen Chiauzzi, 4th grade teacher at P.S. 295 in Queens and member of the UFT.
Representing the corrections officers, Benny Boscio, President of the Correction Officers' Benevolent Association.
Representing the government employees, Lester Crockett, Regional President of the Civil Service Employees Association Region 2.
Representing the EMT and ambulance workers, Oren Barzilay, President of the Uniformed EMT's, Paramedics & Fire Inspectors F.D.N.Y Local 2507.
Representing the utility workers, Darryl Taylor, Senior Business Agent for the Utility Workers Union Local 1-2.
Representing the construction and manufacturing workers, Santos Rodriguez, Director of Community Affairs & Strategic Initiatives for the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater NY.
Representing the police officers, Thomas Mungeer, President of the New York State Troopers Police Benevolent Association.
Representing the firefighters, James McCarthy, Executive Board Member for the Uniformed Fire Officers Association.
Representing the doctors, Dr. Arthur Cooper, former chair of the Medical Society of the State of New York's Committee on Emergency Preparedness and President of the NY County Medical Society.
And finally, representing the nurses, Pat Kane, Executive Director of the New York State Nurses Association.
Governor Cuomo: We clapped for you every night. We thank you every day. One final round of applause. We thank you. Let's stand up.
Thank you. That is as heartfelt and as sincere as it gets. We applaud you. We thank you to celebrate and honor tonight, we're going to light all the state assets. Empire State Building and blue and gold. And we're going to have fireworks all across the state of New York tonight to celebrate and honor the essential workers.
It's our way of saying thank you all across the state, the essential workers to celebrate our reopening. Our re-imagining. And to remind all New Yorkers, join the success. Join the success. You want to honor essential workers? I'll tell you how. You want or essential workers, you get vaccinated so you don't need the essential workers again. And literally they're going to be displayed all across the state. So wherever you are, there'll be in your community and you can be part of the celebration tonight.
This is not to say that our journey is over because it's not over. We still have to manage COVID. As the health professionals will tell you, we're still watching these variants of interest. We still have to be careful. And as in any disease, you then have to move to recovery from the disease. We have to recover from COVID and recovery is not going to be spontaneous and it's not going to be automatic. The recovery itself is going to be challenging and it's going to take time.
But in the same moment, there is opportunity in this recovery period. And it's an opportunity that we have to seize. Because it's not just New York that is recovering. It's every state in the United States of America is in the same moment that we are in. I'm the chairman of the National Governor's Association today. I talked to all the governors. Every state is now trying to figure out how do I recover? How do I come back? Every city is trying to figure out how do I recover? How do I come back. Internationally, every city, every country, how do I recover? And how do I come back? We are in that international competition to see who recovers first and who recovers best. And there is an opportunity for us in this moment.
People ask me all the time. Well, what's New York going to be like post-COVID. There was no roadmap. Our future is not predestined or predetermined. Our future is going to be what we make it. You tell me what we do, and I will tell you what we will be. It is going to be up to us. What do we build? How quickly do we recover? How many lessons have we learned? And it is going to be our contribution to this city, this state, this country, as our generation. Our most important work lies ahead. What do we do in this moment when it is up to us? Winston Churchill: There will be a moment in time when you're tapped on the shoulder and you have the opportunity to do something very special.
That is the moment for us. And what a tragedy would be if we miss this moment. And if we don't capitalize on this moment. It has to be a moment where we say, as a united people, we're going to bring back New York and we're going to make New York better than it has ever been.
Now you're listen to cities and states across the country. They talk about reopening. I say we're not reopening. That is not our goal. Reopening suggest we're going to go back to where we were the day before COVID. We're going to reopen. We closed for COVID and now we're going to reopen, post-COVID. No, I don't want to go back to where we were last year.
Life is not about going back to where you were. Life is best going forward. We've learned a lot over this past year. We've accomplished a lot over this past year. Our challenge has to be to re-imagine New York and say, we're going to make a New York that's better than it's ever been before. We have to capitalize on this moment and seize this moment of transformation to remake New York.
Let's be honest: There were a lot of things that we should have been doing all along as a country. As a society. There are improvements that we should have been making and now is the moment to do it. This is an opportunity for us. There are things that we should have been building. How do we get to a place in this nation where you have airports all around the world that are building and developing and you'll fly into countries and you see these magnificent airports. And then you fly into LaGuardia and you say what happened?
What happened to the New York ambition? The American ambition? We're now going to have a new LaGuardia Airport, the first new area in 25 years in this nation and the new JFK Airport and new airports in upstate New York. Let's start rebuilding Manhattan, not what it was, but better than ever before. A new Moynihan Train Hall, a magnificent structure that when you go there and fills your soul with pride and you are proud to be a New Yorker and you see us building out of that pride and out of that optimism. New Pier 76, a new Penn Station to welcome people to New York, a new Port Authority Terminal that you're proud of. Extend that subway into Harlem, so all New Yorkers can participate in New York. A new Belmont arena on Long Island. Go Islanders, we say.
Our cities in upstate New York who have never really shared in the full economic turnaround now maximizing those urban potentials by reconnecting with a waterfront. And doing it in Rochester and Albany all at once. Recognizing that we have been talking for years about the green economy and we have to stop using fossil fuels and carbon, and the future lies with the next green economy. And it happens here in New York with the largest green transition in the nation. Broadband accessibility and affordable to everyone, rich and poor and black and white and New York leads the way.
A new public health system that says we're going to learn from COVID the way we should have learned from MERS and from SARS and from a ebola and from dengue and from Zika. And we shouldn't have been caught surprised, and we'll never be caught surprised again. We're going to have the best public health system in this nation, and we'll be ready for the next pandemic because there will be a next pandemic.
We're going to maximize remote learning, so we make sure we don't leave any child behind because of income or color of skin or race or ethnicity. Maximize telemedicine and the innovation. And restore public safety to the streets of this city, because we have nothing, unless we have public safety and that is job one. And we have to help the homeless because we are embarrassed by the society we now see, and the condition we now see where we have human beings living on the street and we say, that's the best we can do.