Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good evening, familia! ¡Qué lo qué! It is an honor to welcome our Dominican community in New York City right here to the people's house of Gracie Mansion. Thank you for being here today.
Before we begin, I want to take a moment to remember Dr. Johanna Fernandez, a Bronx-born daughter of Dominican immigrants who became one of our city's greatest historians and who devoted her life to telling stories of Latino resistance in New York. She is deeply missed. She is deeply missed.
And I am here alongside so many leaders, inside and outside of our city administration. I want to take a moment to acknowledge a number of them. We have partners from the City Council, like City Council Member Carmen De La Rosa, who's here with us. We just had Council Member Christopher Marte, who is here with us. We have our Democratic nominee, Darializa Avila Chevalier, who's here with us. I want to acknowledge, as we heard earlier, our Deputy Mayor Helen Arteaga was here with us. And we heard from our Small Business Commissioner, Kenny Minaya. Apparently, we got the same shirt from the same place. We have our Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, Rafael Espinal. We have the Executive Director of the Office of Nightlife, Jeffrey Garcia, who's here with us. We just heard from our Executive Director, Annie Minguez, from the Mayor's Office of Nonprofit Services. I want to also acknowledge Siddhartha Sanchez, the Executive Director of the Mayor's Office of Food Policy. We have Odetty Tineo, who is here in the back, from Intergovernmental Affairs. And if we're going to talk about Intergovernmental Affairs, we have to acknowledge Jahmila Edwards, who's right there hiding behind the pillar.
So, even before New York City was New York City, there was a Dominican presence on these shores. In 1613, more than a decade before Dutch colonists founded New Amsterdam, a trader named Juan Rodriguez arrived on a Dutch ship and stepped onto this island. He was from Santo Domingo, and he was the first non-indigenous person to ever call this place home. Since then, Dominicans have worked tirelessly to help build this city into what it is now. In the 1960s and '70s, Dominicans came here by the thousands. They came after a dictatorship fell, and they came looking for opportunity and eager to work - in garment factories, on assembly lines, in kitchens and in stock rooms.
Walk through the Heights on any given day, and you can feel that legacy in the air. It starts in the morning with la greca on the stove and mangú in the pan, filling kitchens on 181st Street. It carries through the afternoon as Dominicans help keep this city running one shift at a time, from the hallways of hospitals to the driver's seat of a cab, all the way to City Hall. And it stays with you into the night over a steaming pot of sancocho, or over bachata from the Bronx's very own Aventura.
But if we're going to speak about bachata, we have to also acknowledge that it took a long road for bachata to fill a room like this one. Long before it had a name, the guitar music that would become bachata was the sound of the Dominican countryside. It was mocked and dismissed by the elite as music for the poor. But working people kept playing anyway. And when Dominicans left everything else behind to build a life on these shores, they carried their music with them. Here in New York, Dominican artists took that sound and made it their own, giving bachata new instruments, new rhythms, and a new global audience. Today, it is recognized by UNESCO as a part of humanity's cultural heritage. And here, across the five boroughs, it is the soundtrack to domino games, graduation parties, and dance studios.
That resilience didn't only live on the dance floor, though. It is how Dominicans have built a home in this city, in neighborhoods that didn't always welcome them. Dominicans opened bodegas and barbershops, became teachers and public servants, and turned neighborhoods like Inwood and Mott Haven into enclaves where Dominican New Yorkers could build something lasting, could build something true. And Dominicans did all of this oftentimes without support from City Hall, finding their way.
Now, our City Hall is determined to chart a different course and to support Dominican New Yorkers whether they be the leaders in our administration or if it means I'm calling into [Mornings] with Mero - shout out to you. Whether you are a parent, a tenant, a bus driver or a small business owner, our administration is committed to delivering what every New Yorker needs to live a dignified life. We have put our city on the path to universal childcare. We're delivering the strongest tenant protections anywhere in the country through our Block by Block historic housing plan. We're delivering faster buses across these five boroughs. And we are cutting more than 50 regulations for small businesses, making it easier for bodega owners to sell fruit and flowers on the sidewalk, for restaurants and cafés to sell ice cream on a hot summer day, and for barbers to give you the best fade that money can buy.
For 400 years, generation after generation of Dominicans have taken this city as it was and left it better than they found it. Juan Rodriguez was the first to call this island home. Tonight, we honor every Dominican New Yorker who has called it home since. And I want to also say thank you to the Dominican community, because to grow up as a New Yorker in this city is also to grow in debt to the Dominican community. More than one in eight New Yorkers have Dominican heritage. Whether or not you are Dominican, there is something Dominican in your life because you're a New Yorker. I'll tell you, if it wasn't for the Dominican community, I would have never learned the word, "watagatapitusberry." But that's what it means to grow up in New York City. That's what it means for me to look at one of my friends and say, "you spaguetti?"
So, with all of that being said, ¡Que viva la comunidad dominicana! ¡Que viva New York! And thank you all for coming to your home, the people's home, Gracie Mansion.
