After last nights heartbreaking election results, I am looking for inspiration wherever I can find it. I captioned New York Governor Andrew Cuomos victory speech last night. After touting his administrations successes for the past four years, he laid out his vision for the state. That is a future I want to live in. While I am living in the backwater of the State of Kansas, I am comforted in some small way that there is at least one state with a progressive vision of the future I can share. Here is an excerpt from Cuomos speech last night: Were going to raise the minimum wage for working families. Were going to pass a womens equality act, because discrimination and inequality against women stops in New York State. Were going to pass public finance. Were going to pass the Dream Act. Were going to attack property taxes that are strangling New York homeowners. And we will not stop until our education system is the best in the nation, because our children dont deserve second best. My friends, I feel good about what we did and I feel good about how we did it. Our efforts were all about unifying people and growing the state. We said that New York is at its best when it acts like a family, honoring each others rights and responsibilities. We said that what makes New York special is that while others are challenged by diversity, we celebrate it. We look at that Statue of Liberty in the harbor who opens her arms and says, “Come one, come all.” We ask you to join the State of New York. While other states are putting up walls, were inviting people in. And we celebrate, we invite people to join our families. We invite people in and we invite people in to join the family of New York and we say we will invest in you, well invest in public education, and we’ll invest in healthcare. We want you to succeed. We want you to excel, because when you do better, we all do better. We believe the sweetest success is shared success. We believe in our founding motto: E pluribus Unum, Out of Many, One. That is the founding premise. That is the enduring promise that we celebrate our differences and distinctions, but at the end of the day, we are one. We are united and thats what makes us special, that we are, at the end of the day, Upstate and Downstate, but we are one state. We are gay and we are straight, but we are one state. We are black and white and brown, but we are one state. We are rich and we are poor, but we are one state. And that unity has a strength and that strength is unstoppable. And that is the power of the greatest state in the nation, the Great State of New York.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 14:51:30 +0000
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