Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good evening, everyone! It is an honor to welcome you to Gracie Mansion as we celebrate our Caribbean community right here in New York City.
And I would like to just take a moment to acknowledge a number of the leaders we have here with us inside and outside of our administration. We have our Deputy Mayor for Community Safety, Renita Francois, who is here with us. You have heard from Chancellor Kamar Samuels, who is here with us. We also have Edwin Raymond, the sheriff of New York City. New sheriff in town.
We got Peter White, the Director of the Office of Deed Theft, who is here with us. We have heard from our Public Advocate, Jumaane Williams. We also have our New York State Senator Jabari Brisport, who is here with us. I think he may be Guyanese, but - I think, I'm not sure.
We have so many leaders who are here, and it's a pleasure to join all of you because any night that I can walk out to Sean Paul is a good night.
Now, I've met people who have wondered for years why Sean Paul has spent so much of his career opening every song by singing "Sean De Paul." And those people are clearly not from the West Indies or the Caribbean, because if you were, you would know that Sean Paul's actually shouting out a man who is a hero to many. And that is Shivnarine Chanderpaul, one of the greatest batsmen of his time.
And I can say that because I'm wearing a West Indies 2007 World Cup jersey. And even for me, as someone who grew up in tropical Morningside Heights, it was obvious why you would want to invoke Shivnarine Chanderpaul. Because he was evidence of the greatness that is the Caribbean.
And as something - one of the earliest things I learned about the Caribbean was that greatness. Because I grew up learning about the West Indies cricket team. I grew up being told stories of the '80s and players like Clive Lloyd from Guyana, players like Viv Richards and Curtly Ambrose from Antigua, players like Michael Holding from Jamaica, Malcolm Marshall from Barbados.
You know, the consul general was just here and he said, "I'm going to have to send a photo of this to Daren Sammy," and I couldn't even believe that someone I know knows Daren Sammy.
Because what the story also tells us is a story of solidarity. Alone, it may have been a tall order for any of these islands to compete against teams as strong as England or Australia or India, but together as the West Indies, this was a team that went 15 years without losing to any of them.
And in 2007, the Caribbean hosted the Cricket World Cup, and I went with my family. And it was such a joy to sit there at Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, named for the same man who had terrified cricket players a decade before, surrounded by people full of pride and full of expectation.
When I came back to New York City, I went on to co-found my school's first cricket team. And each time that we played at Ferry Point Park, alongside so many kids from across the Caribbean diaspora, we sought to imitate those West Indies legends as best as we could. Sometimes I would pretend that I was Chris Gayle out on the pitch in Van Cortlandt Park. I was not.
But that legacy of Caribbean greatness has stayed with me because we know that it's a legacy that is not limited to cricket. It is a greatness that you can find everywhere you look in New York City. You see it today across the five boroughs, in the neighborhoods where Caribbean New Yorkers show up for one another, where they help make this the joyous, beautiful, hopeful city that it is. In Flatbush and Wakefield, where a beef patty and cocoa bread will run you less than $5 and still stands up, if you look for it, to every fine dining reservation in the city. In Canarsie, in Rosedale, where three-day cricket matches are somehow shorter than the argument about who won. And in Richmond Hill and Crown Heights, where bouyon - I'll say it again, in Richmond Hill and Crown Heights - where bouyon can mean a rhythm to one neighbor and a recipe to the next.
And yet we know that the bonds of this resilient and tight-knit community, they are being tested right now. They are being tested because the federal government's revocation of our Haitian neighbors' Temporary Protected Status has plunged many Caribbean New Yorkers' lives into fear. In the face of this kind of a sudden and immense instability, of this kind of cruelty, what the Caribbean community has done has been what the Caribbean has done for decades in this city: founding benevolent associations to look after one another, supporting each other when there is nowhere else to turn and no one else to turn to.
Volunteers are leading Know Your Rights sessions in Haitian Creole. Neighbors are helping each other fill out critical paperwork. And translators, unpaid, are giving their precious free time to ensure that no one has to face this uncertainty alone.
And it is not just Haitian New Yorkers helping other Haitian New Yorkers. It is Caribbean New Yorkers, no matter which island they think is the best, helping one another out.
And this community has that legacy in this city. And City Hall is looking to learn from that legacy and be a part of it, too - whether through sanctuary city policies, whether through the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, whether through its hotline, its clinics or the work that it's doing with so many New Yorkers, because we also know this isn't just a commitment to our city continuing to be what it has been. It is also, for many in City Hall, deeply personal work, because the same winds of solidarity and service that carried Caribbean New Yorkers across an ocean to our city carried so many public servants into our City Hall as well.
And, you know, we heard from our chancellor, who spoke about coming here from Kingston, teaching in Bronx classrooms, and now running a school system of nearly a million students. Think of our sheriff, Edwin Raymond, who grew up in East Flatbush - you know, we heard a lot about Crown Heights, but if I say Flatbush, I just wanted to give you an opportunity - who not only is our new sheriff, but is also the first Haitian New Yorker to ever lead a major law enforcement office in our city's history.
And as we heard from our public advocate, whose advice I will heed of not engaging in the island wars - I asked him, I was like, "Isn't Manhattan an island?" He was like, "Don't say that." But as we heard from him, over Labor Day, our City Hall is also going to be showing up on Eastern Parkway as well, celebrating the West Indian Day Parade alongside everyone in this room and ensuring that it is joyful and it is safe. Because tonight, what we come together to honor is what so many will come together to honor on that day: This community, the greatness that it has given this city, and the Caribbean New Yorkers that have helped to make this place what it is.
And we also know that in doing so, we celebrate the fact that none of us are as strong as we are together. That was true on the cricket pitch when Brian Lara played across Courtney Walsh. It is true in this room tonight, and it is true because we know that greatness comes from each other, not just from ourselves.
So thank you for having taught me as a young child what that could mean, and thank you for having given so much to this city, oftentimes without anything in return, in the knowledge that you, too, are participating in that legacy.
Now, with all of that being said, I want to also take one final introduction to ask everyone here to join me in please welcoming the talented Sir Halo on the steel pan. Give it up for Sir Halo!
