Celebrating Dominican Independence Day

Earlier today, Governor Hochul and Representative Adriano Espaillat celebrated Dominican Independence Day in New York City.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

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

Gracias, buenos días a todos. Great to see the children and everyone. As I heard our Congressman listing all the sites, it goes all across the State. We're going to be lighting up even Niagara Falls — it will be lit up with the colors of the Dominican Republic because we're so proud. And I want to thank everyone who's joined us here this morning. It's great to see everyone. But Adriano Espaillat and I have been great friends for a long time, back to my time in Congress. And I cannot think of a greater champion for this community than his voice being lifted up so many times as he fights against what is happening in Washington to try and deliver for the people back home.

And we just talked about the lack of funding that's been cut off for the Second Avenue subway and how the MTA may have to be suing over this. So that's another topic and it's frustrating, but thank God we have you out there fighting for us. It's great to see our Consul General Chu Vásquez, who was joining me on my trip to the Dominican Republic just a few months ago and we had the most wonderful experience — I'll talk about that. And a long time friend of mine as well, our Borough President, Brad Hoylman-Sigal. I want to thank him for joining us and always being here to represent the entire borough. And of course, Laura Acosta, the head of our foundation here.

And I want to see all the children — the ninos and ninas. They're happy to be out of school right now. Although, you got a snow day earlier this week right? You had a snow day? But it has been three months since I left the DR, and I feel like I left my heart there — it was the most beautiful experience. I miss warmth number one, but not just the warmth of the temperature, but the warmth of the people. It was just something I'll never forget. And we celebrated, we danced in the streets in Santiago and Los Pepines. We danced a lot, we gave a lot of hugs and kisses and selfies, and it was just a beautiful experience.

I'm not going to get in the middle of baseball. I have the Mets and the Yankees, I'm not going into the Dominican Republic teams here. I know better than that, I'm a smarter politician than that. When I visited Santa Domingo, the first city of the Americas and home to the oldest cathedral, which I went in, it was just an extraordinary experience. I was invited to be the first Governor in history from any state to address the joint session of the National Congress of the Dominican Republic, and that is an honor I will never forget either.

We met with President Luis Abinader and also we signed the Declaration of Intent and the purpose of this trip was to really strengthen our economic ties and build upon the $1 billion of trade that already exists between New York and the Dominican Republic. And just in a couple of months as a result of this signing of the declaration, representatives from Empire State Development — our economic development arm — will be planning a visit to further enhance our relationship there as well.

We also wanted to establish a relationship between the Dominican Republic and our experience in Homeland Security. And so first responders from the DR are actually coming to New York State now to go to our Emergency Preparedness Training Center. I don't think they need any training in how to deal with the snow, but there's other storms that they certainly deal with. So we're helping them with the use of drones and technology in emergency situations, which if there's a hurricane and we can have drones available, it really can be saving people's lives. So I was also fortunate to be in the Dominican Republic for Constitution Day. This is why I addressed the joint session and took part of many of the really wonderful celebrations to commemorate the establishment of democracy there.

And tomorrow is our Dominican Republic Independence Day and we are very excited about this, and we are ordering the illumination of State landmarks in red, white and blue. Blue, white and red, all the way from here to as I mentioned Niagara Falls. And just to have a visible reminder of how close the ties are. We are so proud to have such a large Dominican population here. Many in this community alone, but all over the state and it's something that we want to honor their contributions and we are the largest Dominican community outside the island. And it is just something we wouldn't be the same state we are without the vibrancy of this community.

To recognize these contributions, we've invested $12.5 million for the new Dominican Center for the Arts and Culture right here in Washington Heights. Thank you for being a champion for that. This will be the first institution dedicated exclusively for Dominican art and history and culture and it's being led by the Dominican Studies Institute at the City College of New York, which we supported with a $1.5 million grant a couple years ago. So we've also designated a new Dominican cultural historic district right here in Dominican Heights. We're trying to find so many ways to remind everybody how significant this community is, which is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

So we just want to maintain that unique character, that slice of home that adds to our vibrancy and the wonderful fabric of just our diversity here. And I want to thank again Congressman Espaillat for everything he does on behalf of all New Yorkers and wish everyone a great Dominican independent state tomorrow.

So thank you and I want to see if our Borough President has anything he wants to say quickly at all.