Transcript: Mayor Adams Delivers Remarks and Holds Reception in Honor of Garifuna Heritage

April 13, 2023

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Thank you. You missed one part of that story. When I became the borough president, I stated that in eight years when I become the mayor, we're going to have the first Garifuna celebration in Gracie Mansion because I knew if I planted the seed, many people don't want to acknowledge. They acknowledge your success in business. They acknowledge your success in civil service. They acknowledge your success in education, but they don't know you have a direct communication with the ancestors. And I planted to seed with you, you made it happen and you created what was to come into existence.

I am just really proud here. Everywhere I go, someone pulls me over. If I'm in an agency, they pull me over and they say, "I'm from Garifuna, I'm Garifunan, I'm Garifunan, I'm Garifunan." If it's someone from St. Vincent, if it's someone from Honduras, if it's someone from Trinidad, if it's someone from Grenada, it doesn't matter where I am, I am around my Garifuna families and I just really appreciate the support that you have shown me. Vilma is my sister. If someone ever said anything negative about me — she put Vaseline on her face, put her hair in a ponytail, kick off her heels and go into fighting gear.

But your strength is so larger than the Bronx. As our assemblyman stated, your population is strong and you are multiplying throughout the city, but you are a powerful force and deep in your ancestry; think about it. And sometimes I think that as time moves forward, we don't really acknowledge who we are. It gets watered down throughout the history. But it's imperative that your young children know your history, that you were free and you freed yourself from slavery.

You were fighters, you were warriors. And when colonial powers attempt to colonize you, you said no and you fought for your freedom. And so you did not fight for your freedom physically to be emotionally and intellectually enslaved here. Time to reach into your history and rise up as the mighty people you are. What does that mean? Every Garifuna who can vote needs to register to vote, use the power of your vote. And we are moving around the city in what we call hiring halls. We have thousands of vacancies in the city. It is time now for you to join the others who are in civil service.

If we know the quality of service we want to provide for our communities, then we need to be part of the providers who are doing that. I see some of my brothers and sisters from the law enforcement community who are in the back: EMT, EMS, Fire Department, DCAS, HRA, all of these services, all of these agencies. The success of a city is determined by its agencies and the success of agencies is determined by the people who are inside those agencies and the quality of goods and services that we provide for the people of the City of New York. No one knows it better than the Garifuna community. I need you to be part of this team the same way you were part of the team that allowed me to get elected. I would not have gotten elected if I didn't have the strong support from your community. Now I need you to help me run this city the way we know this city could be run in the correct way. This is our opportunity.

And so we may come with different dress, different style, but we have one baseball cap and that's the Garifuna cap. [Cheers.] Hey. [inaudible], we are on one team. One team. And so this is the first, but it won't be the last. As long as I am mayor of the City of New York, we will come into this place and acknowledge the rich history of this powerful community, and the real tragedy that I went through my entire educational experience and not one time did we know the history of this powerful community. We need to change that. And I might ask of you is not only to change it in our official settings, but also in what we're doing with Breaking Bread, Building Bonds.

Many of you know about it. We rolled it out when we were the borough president. 1,000 dinners across the city, 10 people at a minimum at each dinner. Every person there coming from a different ethnic culture and religious background, every Breaking Bread, Building Bond dinner we have, someone from the Garifuna community should be there talking about this rich culture that you have. And when we talk about African American history and the Caribbean diaspora and the African diaspora in our schools, that month that we do Black History Month, they need to know about this history.

If you talk to the average child, the average child, they don't know about this history. They don't know about the richness of this culture. I was blessed to have people in my setting that told me about the richness of this community and I want everyone to know that and know what you contributed, not only to America, but to the African diaspora. So I thank you as we acknowledge this moment here in Gracie Mansion. We have a lot to do, a lot to accomplish, but the same energy you brought when you released the shackles off your physical body, let's re-release the shackles off our mental bodies here in this country. Thank you so much. Happy Garifuna.

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