Video, Audio, Photos and Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces Actions to Prevent Hate Crimes and Protect New Yorkers

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced actions to prevent hate crimes, promote tolerance, and protect New Yorkers. The Governor signed two pieces of legislation to support hate crime prevention and education efforts, building on the administration's efforts to increase funding to protect targets of hate crimes and increase surveillance and protection for communities at risk. The first piece of legislation requires individuals convicted of hate crimes to, in addition to other penalties, undergo mandatory training or counseling in hate crime prevention and education. The second establishes a statewide campaign for the acceptance, inclusion, tolerance, and understanding of diversity, including, but not limited to diversity based on religion, race, color, creed, sex, ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. Governor Hochul also encouraged community-based organizations to apply for $50 million in available funding to strengthen safety measures and protect against hate crimes, and extended the deadline for applications.

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 are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks are available below:

Good morning, everyone. I appreciate everyone coming out today for some important announcements. I want to acknowledge the presence of some individuals who I've come to rely on. My incredible dream team here. We have Commissioner Maria Imperial of the New York State Division of Human Rights, has joined us. You'll be hearing from her briefly in a couple minutes. Also, Commissioner Jackie Bray, Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services. It is really nice not to see you in a winter coat with boots on. We were embedded for five straight days. The same with Acting Superintendent Steve Nigrelli from the State Police. Thank you for your work in so many areas that we talk about, one that's particularly important today. As well as our Senator Anna Kaplan, and I thank her for her leadership in the legislature and sponsoring some important legislation that we'll be talking about today.

I really wish we didn't have to be here today. It's heartbreaking to know that there are acts of violence and hatred that exist throughout our country and within our own city and our own state. Once again, we're having to respond to the presence of hate, and on Saturday morning with assistance from our state police social media monitoring investigators. And I want to thank them. This was a group of individuals that I felt, particularly in the aftermath of the Buffalo shooting, that there's information that's being telegraphed on social media. The data points are out there. People are willing to put forth publicly what their intent is, and we need, as a government, to be conducting robust, continuous surveillance. And so, I took the steps to enhance our operations, adding staff, adding resources, which means money to making sure that we are doing exactly that. And I thank the early warning system that was able to work with our federal partners and get to NYPD and the brave individuals at the transit police, the subway police for all they did for when the MTA at Penn Station were able to help apprehend two armed men. Two armed men who had plans to mount and attack against Jewish people, and we knew that because of the social media posts they had.

And then on Saturday night, Colorado Springs, hours before the Transgender Day of Remembrance. I'm sure that's not a coincidence. An armed individual with again, a heart overflowing with hatred and a gun in his hand took the lives of five people and injured 25 others at Club Q, the only LGBTQ gathering place and nightclub in this particular city. These two incidences are painful reminders that there is a rising tide of hate in our country. And you don't have to go back that far in history. We're not saying you have to go back to the fifties or sixties to talk about what hate looks like. Go back to Charleston in 2015. Go back to Tree of Life in 2018. El Paso in 2019, and my hometown of Buffalo just six months ago, where a white supremacist destroyed the lives of 10 of my neighbors.

But almost as insidious, many communities in New York, particularly here in New York City, are experiencing the day to day instances of harassment and abuse, all because of their diversity. You know, a brick thrown at the window of an LGBTQ bar in Manhattan this weekend. Members of the Sikh community attacked in Queens, the rise in Asian hate across the city and state over the last couple years, where we have white supremacists, right wing extremists, and domestic terrorists trying to stoke fear in the hearts of New Yorkers. They want us to think twice about our safety before we worship, before we get on a subway, before we go dancing with our friends. But we know here in New York it is this very diversity that has made us vulnerable to these attacks, but this is what has made us the most fascinating place on this planet. It's what separates us from the rest. And it's more than something that just we celebrate, it defines us. And yet these recent frightening attacks compromise that very sense of security that every single New Yorker is entitled to as a birth right.

So, it's not only the news catching mass shootings of which there were 600, 600 nationwide already this year involving guns. And we'll be talking about our efforts on guns in a subsequent event, which is forthcoming because we've done a lot on dealing with guns in our state. But it's also the individual physical assaults, the verbal harassment, and these are the hate crimes that seem to be ever escalating. So, I want to be clear that many of these attacks start out as seeds of hatred planted on social media. We've seen it over and over and over again, and they're planted by people in positions of power and authority. And this extremism has real life consequences because they perpetuate harmful stereotypes and they spew hateful rhetoric. And these words reverberate in social media chambers and people latch onto this. They normalize perspectives that should be otherwise viewed as abhorrent and dangerous. And as in the most tragic of circumstances, this hate leaves the virtual world, the social media world, and enters the real world, and that's when innocent people are harmed.

It's not just anecdotal. Last year was the deadliest year on record for transpeople. The Human Rights Campaign reported 44 violent deaths of transgender and non-binary people. Also, the Anti-Defamation League counted 2,717 antisemitic incidents across the country last year - not over a decade, over the last year. That's a 34 percent increase from the previous year, which had also been a high number - highest number since they began tracking in 1979. And according to the ADL, there were over 600 incidents of domestic extremism in 2021, more than half of which were motivated by white supremacy.

So, I'm going to leave it to sociologists to figure out exactly when the filters came off and these forces of evil were unleashed - whether it was the degradation of our political discourse that began in 2016, or was it the pressure cooker of the pandemic that has exploded, the lid blown off, on what was normal, accepted behavior. But we can't ignore that there's been a loss of civility and respect of individuals, and that has been the collateral damage. And these possible sources cannot be accepted as excuses, but here we are. We have the power as individuals, as a government, as society, to pull back and say no more, and never that this is our city, this is our state. And today we reclaim both from the haters, the bigots, the white supremacists. It starts right here, right now, because New York belongs to the good, not those filled with hate in their hearts.

We may not be able to stop them from themselves. But we can stop them from harming others, and that is our imperative. We must protect that diversity and protect individuals against acts of hate and bigotry. Because no Asian woman of any age coming home from work should ever worry about where she stands on a subway platform. No young Jewish boy should ever have to look over his shoulder as he's walking to a yeshiva. No trans man or woman should ever have the fear for their safety or their life walking down their street or when they're in that safe space that they deserve. And no Black New Yorker should ever fear going into a grocery store because of the color of their skin and becoming a target. No Latino man or woman should ever fear stepping foot inside a Walmart or a school as happened in Texas.

So, here's the question for all of us: what kind of New York do you want to be? How do we want to be known going forth this day forward? Today we're here to talk about what we're doing in state government to protect New Yorkers and go after individuals who want to do us harm. But in my opinion, this is also a call to New Yorkers. This is a call to all New Yorkers. Stand up and look out for each other. Stand up and look out for each other. You're seeing things, you're hearing things, you know things. Protect people, even if they're in trouble, if they're a stranger, because here's the bottom line: this is somebody's mother, this is somebody's father, this is somebody that could be a member of your family, and wouldn't you want them to step up like the brave individual did at that nightclub standing up and putting his life on the line?

I'm not saying New Yorkers need to do that. But having that veteran step up and show us what raw, pure courage is all about is exhilarating in the knowledge that there are people out there like that who, in the circumstances they could never foresee in their wildest dream, stand up and do what's right. All of us have that capability in our hearts and in our souls, and I'm calling on all of us to draw upon that, to let people know there's more of us than there are of them. Far more of us than there are of them. This is our defining moment New Yorkers, how we deal with the next day going forward. So, this is emotional for all of us, for all the groups that represent the individuals in this room. And I thank all the representatives here from every community, communities that have been under attack for far too long.

The Jewish community, the LGBTQ community, Black and Brown, the Asian, AAPI communities. None of you deserve this. No one deserves this. We all have a God-given, right to walk the streets, go where we want to worship, be safe in our homes, our subways, and in our clubs. That is a God-given right as a New Yorker, and we're here to protect that. So, here we're putting words in action. This hatred, this violence will not be tolerated, not now, not ever.

Six months ago, after the mass shooting in Buffalo, I issued an Executive Order dedicating an established unit, Domestic Terrorism Unit within our Intelligence Center focused on social media. And again, I talked about this, but just to make sure we have the best-in-the-nation law enforcement surveillance, monitoring websites and chat rooms. This is what law enforcement's doing, but ordinary New Yorkers are out there seeing the same thing. I want them to be part of our team. I want others to come with that early warning system, when they see this, or they hear someone in their school saying something.

This is what red flag laws are also all about. We've talked about this for months. We beefed them up. We made sure that people who hear something can take action. I'd much rather be in the business of preventing crimes and preventing acts of hatred then trying to solve them afterward and dealing with people harmed or lives lost. I want to be in the prevention business. We've seen the results of this work because I mentioned what happened at Penn Station. Again, my gratitude goes out to our law enforcement. The vigilant people who work hard for us every day. Commend the State Police, the MTA. But I'm here to say one thing: Domestic violent extremism is the greatest threat to our homeland security.

I don't know if it's been said that bluntly before, so I'm going to say it again. Domestic violent extremism is the greatest threat to homeland security because it eats away at who we are. It normalizes behavior that's unacceptable. And this is when we say, "No, no more." So, terrorism, local terrorism, and these are acts of terrorism, acts of hate crimes on our streets. Prevention is our highest priority. Last month we announced $9 million in Homeland Security grants for bomb squads, tactical teams, infrastructure protection, local government, cybersecurity, and more. And we're going to continue. We directed $10 million in State grants to support county governments. Again, I came out of local government. I know the limitations on local government. I can talk about how great the State is doing, but the localities don't have the training, the experience, the resources, and we're counting on them as being partners with all of us. So, we're going to be helping them even more, helping local governments develop domestic terrorism prevention plans.

Again, domestic terrorism is not always the mass casualty occurrence. It's not that. What we're witnessing every day is an insidious form of domestic terrorism when people are being assaulted or physically abused or verbally abused because of their identity. That's what I'm talking about here. We also launched the first state-based Domestic Terrorism Prevention Unit in our Homeland Security Division because we're going to continue responding to these events. I directed all counties - I mentioned the counties - all counties now have to submit a domestic terrorism prevention plan to our Department of Homeland Securities by next month. And we're not just leaving them on their own. We're helping them. We're helping them understand what this is all about.

Last Sunday, I asked Superintendent Steve Nigrelli to ramp up our surveillance for communities that are potential targets of crimes, and our Counterintelligence Unit is conducting outreach to LGBTQ communities in particular all across New York, as well as synagogues, other Jewish community spaces. And the work doesn't stop there.

So today, I'm pleased to announce I'm signing two pieces of legislation. I thank our leadership in the Assembly Carl Heastie. I thank Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and their conferences for the work that they've done. And you'll be hearing from Senator Anna Kaplan, but two pieces of legislation that build on our hate crime prevention education efforts. The first bill requires individuals convicted of hate crimes to undergo mandatory training in hate crime prevention. That was sponsored by Senator Toby Stavisky and Assemblymember Rebecca Seawright. And what this was before - it was optional. Optional. The operative word now is mandatory. No discretion. This training will occur.

The second bill establishes a statewide campaign around inclusion, tolerance, and understanding of diversity. Senator Kaplan will be speaking about this and member of Assembly Chuck Lavine. And both bills promote educational awareness, which is key. I do believe that when we talk about this, whether it's the Holocaust education, we want to make sure that people understand that diversity is something uniquely special. It has to be protected, and we all have a responsibility to make sure that those who may be influenced by these forces out there have the knowledge and the understanding through the educational means to understand that this is a path they should not go on. This is what we're trying to do - capture the hearts and minds before people are radicalized on social media and go down a different path. This is how we can work together to keep our communities safe from hate and violence. And again, I want to thank our partners from the legislature for their work on this effort, and we have much more work to do in the next session.

I'm also pleased to announce that we're convening regional listening sessions led by senior members of my administration. We want to hear from all the communities. We don't pretend to have all the answers. We don't. All the organizations represented here today and others across the state have issues that we need to address specific to their communities so this will be the first ever Unity Summit first starting in New York City. We'll bring together community, government stakeholders from around the state to affirm our stand against hate, violent extremism and discrimination, and we will have everybody - government officials, advocates, community leaders, religious leaders, to help share practices because I want this to be a national model.

Why not New York? Why shouldn't we be the place that teaches the rest of the nation how you can do things differently, how you don't have to be passive, you don't have to be victims? This is how we're standing up and taking control of our destiny, and that's my expectation for this state over the next four years. We'll be having participants talk about their efforts to address hate crime and how we can support them as well.

I also remind all the non-profit and community organizations that the Division of Criminal Justice Services, we're seeking proposals we have right now. If you've not applied, what are you waiting for? This is our Securing Communities Against Hate Crimes program. This has strengthened and prevented a lot of our efforts. We've awarded, already, $83 million to over 600 non-profit organizations to date, and right now we have $50 million. $50 million on the table to help organizations right now. Apply for them, these grants are available, and we expect to be able to fund an additional 1000 new projects to enhance security, education, all the avenues that you think you can use this money for to protect the people you represent, and educate the larger community abroad. We're extending that deadline to February 20th so the word can get out. I also said I don't want to delay the grants until February 28th, so we'll make sure that that's done on a rolling basis. So start applying, get information on how to apply for those as well.

So, we have some bills to sign. We want to hear from some more people. But my friends, this is our moment. We'll be defined by how we respond in this moment, for generations to come. Because this can be used and looked back upon through history as the turning point. The turning point when this form of hatred and bigotry was rejected by the larger masses as a whole, where all New Yorkers stood up and said, "We are the same family."

We think a lot about family this week, it's Thanksgiving week. Thanksgiving week. Clearly, I'm not anywhere cooking. It's probably a good thing. But this is what unites us, not just events like a Thanksgiving week where we talk about celebrating family, remembering those who are not with us, especially those we lost during COVID. You think about where we were one year ago, doing COVID briefings, when there was tremendous fear. Omicron hadn't even been named as a variant yet, and we didn't even know what we were in for this time last year. But we were saying, "Get out there, be prepared. Take action to protect yourselves. Get the vaccines, get tested. Take care of your families before you travel."

The messages are the same this year, but look how far we came as a state. We stood up. We can emerge stronger. We know that there's disparities in equities that existed in our healthcare system between black and brown communities, but all this allowed us to stand up and say, "We went through a crisis together. We got through the pandemic together, New Yorkers." This is a crisis. This is a crisis that is eating away at the health of our state. This is a pandemic, and every one of us has the role to play, from this day forward. Ask yourselves, "Did I do something to help spread the love that should be part of who we are as New Yorkers?" And I do believe, I'm optimistic about this state. I truly am. I believe that there's so many people of good will and heart and compassion, who are in positions of authority and power, just like the people in this audience and in government. And that's how I'll be defining and judging my administration as well. Did we meet this moment with the strength, the toughness, the resolve that this moment calls for? But also bouncing it with the heart and passion for others. This is our moment. We are one New York. This is our state. The Statue of Liberty is ours, and I want to make sure when people come to this country and look at that harbor, that it continues to mean something. It continues to mean something as it has for generations.

So, I thank you. We'll go forth with the courage required of this moment, and I'll say one more thing. Anybody raises a hand or causes harm to a single New Yorker, you're picking a fight with 20 million others, starting with your Governor. Thank you. With that, I'd like to call up Senator Anna Kaplan and talk about the importance of the legislation that she had such an important hand in drafting. Thank you, Senator.