July 16, 2006 / CONTACT: David Chauvin
(516) 410-8832
"Respect"
Remarks by Thomas R. SuozziGrace Baptist ChurchSunday, July 16, 2006
Good Morning.Glory and Praise to our God!
Who alone gives light to our days.
Many are the blessings He bears.
To those who trust in His ways.
Pastor Underwood, thank you for that wonderful introduction. I know that this is Grace’s Anniversary, so Happy Anniversary! Thank you to everyone in the Grace family for all that you have done for the past 44 years to make your community and our world a better place.
Today you offer an awesome manifestation of God’s presence. I am so grateful for the invitation to worship with you today, and to you Pastor for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you. Pastor told me that here at Grace, I must follow the five “B’s” – be brief brother, be brief. But Pastor said I can spend fifteen minutes with you – and I am so very grateful for the opportunity.
There is an old expression our grandfather used to use at our family weddings: “non che sono rose senza le spine” which means “you can’t have the roses without the thorns.”
He meant that you can’t have the beautiful things in life without the thorns as well. You can’t appreciate the good things and the good times in life without the hard times and the tough times, as well.
On a day like today, we celebrate the roses of life – the best part of life, when we come together as a community to praise God and to celebrate the Anniversary of over four decades of trying to do God’s work here on Earth.
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I come to you today from St. Rocco’s Church in Glen Cove. Several weeks ago, we shared in one of our readings, Psalm 118: “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.” That’s especially true for politicians! People don’t really trust politicians that much these days – do they?
When I first became mayor of my hometown I sent out a questionnaire and it said, people don’t really like politicians anymore – why? Untruthful, greedy or ambitious? And people checked – all of the above. So I know that I start at a little bit of a deficit in speaking to you today, as does everyone else in my profession.
My grandfather had another saying – “guarda le mani, non ascoltare la boca,” which means “watch the hands, don’t listen to the mouth.”
It doesn’t matter what you say – it matters what you do. All politicians will say I am going to do this and I am going to do that. Well do not take my word for it. Instead look to what I have done – the work of my hands – to see if I will do what I say I am going to do.
But before I tell you about what I have done and what I want to do – I want to tell you where I have come from.
Throughout my life I have learned that there are certain universal values and beliefs that transcend differences in culture, community and religion. We know as people of faith –regardless of denomination or creed, that we are all children of a loving God. And that regardless of color or national origin, we are all equal in the eyes of our Creator.
We share the big fundamental questions of who loves me, and who do I love – and what’s right and what’s wrong. We all wonder – how am I going to educate and take care of my children? We all worry – how am I going to pay my bills and how am I going to make my family and community better? We all think and live these same big questions every single day.
We grew up being taught to “love thy neighbor.” We have been challenged to accept that we are our “brother’s and sister’s keepers.” We share that, and I hope we share a fundamental belief in the goodness of all people, and in their desire to do good and in their inherent worth and dignity. Our individual attributes and beliefs may be different, but we are all worthy of RESPECT.
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But each of us in this room knows that racism is real.
I didn’t always “get it.” My father and mother were very loving and very strict. My father would not tolerate any ethnic references, or a racist comment. Even if they were in a joke, they were never allowed.
So I was raised to be progressive, to be open minded – but I grew up mostly with white kids in white schools. Don’t get me wrong, my hometown is one of the most diverse communities on Long Island, with every religion and every race and every income group, but most of my time was spent with people who looked like me, so the reality is that I really didn’t know anything about reality.
Then I went away to college, and met more people – and my eyes were opened a little, but only a little.
After college, I joined an international accounting firm. I was a CPA, and they sent me to Trinidad and Tobago for three months, where I audited a Texaco refinery. For the first time in my life, I was a minority, and I felt a little of what it is like to be the one who stands out, because you look different from the rest. I also learned to live among other people and to enjoy their food, their music, their songs and their culture.
But I still didn’t really get it.
When I came back from Trinidad, I did a pro-bono case – the audit of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Housing Project. For three months, I rode the A train out to Nostrand Avenue, many times the only white guy on the train. As we got closer to Nostrand Avenue, and farther away from Manhattan, I stood out more and more.
It was the 80’s, when crack and gangs were destroying communities and taking too many lives, but I learned – first-hand – that there were so many good people in these communities, fighting to make their neighborhoods better, to protect their families and striving to overcome the fear of the streets.
I was just starting to get it.
A few years later I ran for Mayor of my hometown, Glen Cove. I built relationships with the Black people in my community, many of whom were poor, but we also had a lot of people who were doing well. I hired a diverse staff; I made sure my government looked like the people it represented.
One of my high school contemporaries – we went to different schools, but we knew each other – was Dr. Al Granger. He was a third-generation dentist in Glen Cove, and I appointed him to the City Council – the first African American in the history of Glen Cove’s Government.
He brought me into contact and introduced me to many people – both professionals and working class people – he helped me learn that there are all kinds of stories to be told and lessons to be learned – that we share the same issues, and same struggles, and the same dreams.
And then I ran for Nassau County Executive in 2001. In that race, as now, I was way behind, and all of the insiders were with my opponent. In the African American community, I ran a door-to-door and relationship-based campaign, where I went to barbecues and house parties, to the middle class neighborhoods and the housing projects, and to the churches.
Again, I met people from all walks of life, who were worried about the same issues – our property taxes were too high, the roads weren’t paved, the schools were struggling – the very same issues that I was worried about.
And when you see that, when you spend time in someone’s home, you eat their food, share their stories, laugh at their jokes, you realize there is so much more that unites us than divides us – and that the caricatures we see in the media about Black people are mostly based on stereotypes and racism – and have nothing to do with reality.
That’s how I “got it.” I learned by living. I learned that racism is a very real thing, and that people, mostly white people, just don’t have a clue – not because they are malicious, but because they want to believe that racism is something from the bad old days, that slavery was so long ago that racism’s just not real any more. If only that were true.
To me, believing that racism exists is like believing in God. If you believe, I don’t have to explain it to you. If you do not, there is nothing I can do to explain it to you. And the sad reality is that too many people simply don’t believe that racism even exists.
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So the question is how do we take these lessons, and apply them to our lives, to the work of our hands? And while we all agree that there are big problems, how can we tell when a politician really will do what they say?
Normally, a Democratic politician would come to you and talk about how your community keeps getting shortchanged – about the public schools being cheated of their fair share of funding, about the cost of health care being way too high, about the lack of good jobs, safe streets and affordable housing.
And then we’d blame the Republicans, who have been mostly in control of Albany for the last 12 years, for ignoring these problems.
But you know that story. You have heard it over and over again from Democratic politicians.
I am not saying it doesn’t deserve to be told. The Republicans in Albany have done nothing on these issues. They’ve done nothing to fix our dysfunctional state government. And they’ve done nothing to earn your trust.
But here’s the other half of the story that deserves to be told, too. And it’s that the Democratic Party, my party and I suspect most of yours too, has not delivered either.
Instead, both parties get distracted by hollow fights over divisive issues like gay marriage and abortion, and ignore the very real structural problems that government should address and that would actually make our communities stronger.
We talk a good game, especially around election time. We come into your neighborhoods and your houses of worship. We quote scripture and invoke the civil rights movement to express our sympathy and solidarity. We condemn the outrages of inequity and poverty. We offer plenty of big promises. And then after Election Day we disappear.
Not everyone. Not all the time. There are plenty of honorable exceptions. But if you look at the party leadership in Albany and the bulk of what they do, more often than not they take your labor, they take your votes, they certainly take your taxes, and they take you for granted.
I want to be clear – I am a proud Democrat, and I love the principles the Democratic Party was founded on, but I love this state and its people more. But these things have to be said. The stakes are too high for me to stand by or to be silent. I am not running against the Democratic Party, I am running against the leaders of both parties who have failed to address the real problems of our state and of your community.
We Democrats have our excuses: We can’t do it because the Republicans won’t let us. We are not getting enough help from Washington. We don’t have the room in the budget.
But let me tell you something. This isn’t about us as Democrats being out of power or out of money. It’s about being out of ideas, out of commitment, and out of touch.
Let me ask you, what have we done to make turning around our failing public schools a top priority?
Where’s the sense of urgency to shake up a school system that year after year is denying hundreds of thousands of poor children a fair chance at a better life?
Where is the organizing, the marching, the relationship building, and the protests?
Let me ask you, what have we done to make creating economic opportunity in communities of color a top priority?
Where is the sense of urgency to break the vicious cycle of joblessness, disconnection, and despair that is destroying another generation of African-American men?
Let me ask you, what have we done to make getting illegal guns off the streets a top priority?
Where is the sense of urgency to stop innocent children from getting killed outside their homes and schools by random shootouts?
If you ask me, our party, the party that claims to be the party of tolerance and inclusion, needs to get a lot more intolerant.
Intolerant, that is, of the reality that twelfth grade black students are reading at the same level as eighth grade white students and that half of all black men don’t finish high school.
Intolerant of the reality that 72 percent of those dropouts can’t find jobs, or that 6 out of 10 of them spend time in prison by the time they reach their mid-30s.
Intolerant of the reality that another child is killed because the adults in government won’t do what needs to be done to get guns out of the hands of criminals.
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Now, I know you are sick and tired of being sick and tired; of being disappointed and disrespected by politicians. But the truth is that you have the power to change everything – right now. You have to have a clear choice on where our party and where our state should go.
I wouldn’t be here preaching with all my heart about this if I didn’t believe it. You have a choice: for a new direction for our state, for our communities, for new leadership. And I am standing before you offering to serve as that choice.
I don’t want people to vote for me because I say I will create more jobs and more affordable housing for people; or because I say I will reduce property taxes, or because I say I will protect your children and improve New York City’s schools.
Don’t just take my word for it – watch my hands, don’t listen to my mouth.
Look at the work that I have done throughout my career as a public servant to try to make peoples’ lives better – to try to make my government look like the people that I represent, to try to address problems like healthcare disparities, economic justice and access to capital. These are problems that I have addressed with the work of my hands. In this campaign I tell people that when it comes to what I am promising and fighting for – that I can do it because I’ve done it!
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Now, the experts have written me off before you’ve even had time to think about the Democratic Primary. They’re all saying: Tom Suozzi is a great guy, but he hasn’t got a prayer. But I’ll tell you something: It doesn’t matter what they say – it matters what you say – I am running because I believe that together we can do better.
I believe that the best way for me to help people is for me to run for this job.
I believe that everything I have done in my professional life has prepared me for this particular job at this particular time.
And I believe that with God’s blessing and your help I will win.
It’s not a question of fate or destiny. It is about fighting for what’s right, and having the determination to get it done.
To really change New York, I need people who don’t normally vote to get involved and to take responsibility for changing it.
We need a new Joshua generation that can take us to the Promised Land.
Remember the story – how God led the Israelites out of Egypt, and when Moses was praying on Mount Sinai, the Israelites built the golden calf. God made the Israelites wander in the wilderness for 40 years.
Moses only got to the mountaintop to see the Promised Land, but he didn’t get to cross the River Jordan.
It was Joshua who led God’s people into the Promised Land.
Almost 40 years ago Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke in Memphis, and talked about the mountaintop. His struggle for human dignity, for an overarching sense of justice and love can never end, but to me, it seems that at times the movement he and others started has been lost in the wilderness.
The right to vote, the responsibility to vote, for which he and many others worked, were beaten, imprisoned and even killed, is now something that many people of all colors, faiths and incomes take for granted.
Here in New York, less than 14% of the registered voters actually vote in a Democratic primary. In election after election fewer and fewer people vote, while year after year more and more of your money is spent on things you never asked for or thought you would ever need – while the things you really want fixed are not addressed.
We look at each other and wonder “where did we go wrong”?
Well, the time for the Joshua Generation has arrived. It is time for us to cross that river together, and to fight for our inalienable rights, for simple justice – for better schools and for safer streets.
I am not asking you to join me in some religious or spiritual quest. I am asking you to join me in politics and government to try and improve the quality of life for our fellow human beings – in a way that is consistent with our shared values, and based on the belief that as John F. Kennedy once said “here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own.”
If we can do these things, if we fight the good fight, if we stay the course as St. Paul taught us, we can one day sit together at the welcome table, in peace, because we worked for justice - together.
I am here today to show you my respect and I hope to earn your respect. I hope that over the next nine weeks you will watch the hands, and not just listen to the mouths. The choices before you are real, and important. Together we can do the things we know need to be done – I know we can do it, because we have done it.
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