 When my parents immigrated to the United States with just $300 and a suitcase, they never would have imagined that I'd be standing here as your State Assemblywoman. Today, South Asian and Indo-Caribbean families like mine all over this city have made incredible contributions. And today, I am proud to say our time has come. The time has come to recognize over 200,000 New Yorkers of the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, and Jain faiths who celebrate Dawali, the Festival of Lights. That is why today I stand with New York City Mayor Eric Adams and our Schools Chancellor, David Banks, to light the way forward, to make Dawali once and for all a school holiday in the city of New York. This week, I introduced legislation in our state capital that makes room for Dawali in our school calendar. My legislation removes anniversary day, an obscure and antiquated day created in the 1800s so that it can be replaced with Dawali, celebrated by a growing number of New Yorkers. When this is done, the New York City Department of Education will be able to institute the Dawali holiday on the school calendar. People have said that there is simply not enough room in the New York City school calendar to have a Dawali school holiday. Well, my legislation makes the room. In the words of the great Shirley Chisholm, if they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair. I have bought this bill to the table so that all South Asian and Indo-Caribbean New Yorkers will have a seat at the table. State Education Law Section 3604 mandates that there be a minimum of 180 days of school instruction. If we're going to meet this 180-day minimum requirement, we cannot institute any more holidays. But in removing the antiquated anniversary day school holiday that is observed by no one, my legislation makes the room for Dawali to be a school holiday while also meeting the 180-day minimum requirement for days of school instruction. I am so proud to have the mayor's support. Through our city-state partnership, we will finally realize the goal of Dawali becoming a school holiday in New York City. This is the first time in the history of our city a mayor has committed to making Dawali a school holiday. And for that, I thank you, Mayor Adams. For over two decades, South Asians and Indo-Caribbeans in New York have been fighting for the Dawali school holiday. I stand on the shoulders of those advocates. And now we are finally going to realize that goal. We have a mayor that supports us and has committed to making it happen. On the streets, they actually call him the Hindu mayor. He does it all. The plant-based diet, meditation, he truly fits the bill. To New Yorkers from India, Guyana, Trinidad, the Indo-Caribbean, Nepal, Bangladesh, and across the South Asia diaspora, we see you. Next week, we will celebrate Dawali, a celebration of good over evil, light over darkness, of the human ability to overcome exemplified by Ram's defeat of evil. We will celebrate the Hindu principles of interfaith harmony, love, and tolerance for all New Yorkers, the same Hindu principles that inspired the great American civil rights hero, Mark Luther King. We will celebrate our culture's place in the great civil rights tradition of our country. The sky is the limit for our community. Today, I am proud to say that New York City will soon join jurisdictions across the country and institute the Dawali school holiday. Thank you and happy Dawali to everyone in New York and all across the world. I believe there were two things that stood out for me in what the assembly women don't sip, don't drink my drink. The two things that stood out, number one, the story of a mother and family coming here as a child and seeing the beauty of the American dream of being able to not only come to find a life here in this country as we're watching thousands of people doing so now, but to become the first South Asian to be elected as a state elected official. It's just a significant moment for us and when you are there you use your powers and authority to right the wrongs that have impacted not only your community specifically, but in general throughout the entire state of New York and it's going to impact over the entire country. But second, her quotation of two African American leaders, number one of one of mine, Shirley Chisholm, who clearly stated, bring your own seat if there's not a seat for you at the table. And that is just important because the words of an African American leader, a Hindu leader, a Jain leader, those words are not unique just to a specific group. It is empowering for every group that's attempting to move their country, their city, and their state forward. I'm proud to be here today standing with an amazing assembly woman, a real visionary around how do we run our state better. And when we talked about this on the campaign trail, I learned so much about the Diwali holiday, what it means, the festival of lights, as we deal with so much darkness that is around us, we fail to realize the overwhelming amount of light that is around us. And when we take this period to acknowledge Diwali, we're acknowledging the light that is within us, the light that clearly can push away darkness. And that is why this is so significant. We found a way to do it. We put our heads together. The goal is not saying get stuff done when it's easy to do, but get stuff done to think about moonshots, thinking about beyond what's in front of us. And that's what we did. Chancellor Banks and his team sat down, looked at the requirement of school days. Instead of looking from a place of deficit, we looked from a place of surplus. And because of that, we were able to identify a way of using legislation, partnering with the assembly woman to identify the days that we can use, a day that we can use to have this important holiday, a Diwali holiday. Without our young people missing days of school in the process. We've already taken a step previously on canceling alternate side of the street parking on during Diwali, but we wanted to go further. We wanted to send a loud and clear message to the countless number of people who acknowledged this period of time of celebration. And my involvement with the communities that will be directly impacted is clear. I spent a lot of time in these communities. They're hardworking New Yorkers. They contribute to our society. They believe in family. They believe in public safety. Some of the highest educational achievements is among this community. The highest almost middle class living standards among this community. This is a solid community, not only in our city, but throughout our entire country. So I'm proud to be here with the assembly woman and the chancellor of the city of New York, understand that the importance of education, but at the same time, this is an educational moment. Because when we acknowledge Diwali, we are going to encourage children to learn about what is Diwali. We're going to have them start talking about what it is to celebrate the festival of light and how do you turn the light on within yourself. There's too many children in our Department of Education that believe their lives is one dark moment after a dark moment. The more and more we come together to show them the lightness in education as the chancellor has stated over and over again, education must be a place where we develop the full personhood of our children. Not only to make them academically smart, but emotionally intelligent. And that intelligence comes from acknowledging and seeing each other. We've done this before of identifying holidays. We've done it with Eid. We've done it with Lunar New Years. We do it with so many other days and so many other cultures that we acknowledge. It is long overdue to say to our Hindus, Sikh, Jain, and Buddhist students and communities that we see you. We acknowledge you. The inclusiveness of this city is extremely significant and this is our opportunity to say that in a loud way. So I thank you, Assemblywoman, for your tenacity, your vision, your determination. And we can get this done during this legislative session. So next year we can say as the city of New York that Diwali is a holiday school holiday. Thank you very much. Thank you Chancellor. Good morning, everyone. I want to, first of all, before we even talk about this, I do want to recognize also that today is in fact national domestic violence awareness day. And the reason that the mayor and I both have our purple on is in recognition of that. And so if there's anybody that you know who is a victim of domestic violence, we are here. The city has a whole range of supports. You do not have to suffer alone. And it's very important that we state that on this day. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm thrilled that the mayor, first of all, had made this promise that we would recognize Diwali when he was campaigning to become the mayor. And we are well along on this road now to a promise made and a promise kept. And that he has a great partner and our assembly member here who is going to drive it forward with her leadership. And it's important not only for the young people who celebrate and who honor the Diwali, but it's important for all students. When we talk about the education of New York City students, we have to recognize the whole world lives here. It's the reason why this is the greatest city in the world. Because the whole world actually lives here. And they all go to school here. And it is important that we honor and we recognize all of our young people. And so the recognition of Diwali is yet another opportunity for us to begin to celebrate, to uplift, and to honor those young people, their family, their faith. The celebration of light, the triumph of light over darkness is critically important. The only challenge that we faced here was that by state law, we are mandated to have 180 school days. We call them edible days. No matter what, we must make sure that we have 180 school days. And we've really got about another day that we could adjust to. And that's the reason why we made this decision that this day that we've always known traditionally as I came up in the school system as Brooklyn Queens Day. Those who've been in the system for a long time will remember it as such. Now it's anniversary day. Is in many ways, it's an obscure day. It's a day that's been on the calendar for a long time. I think it's the perfect example, assembly member, of a day that we could substitute that for something much more meaningful, much more purposeful, and something that I think will have a great deal of relevance for all of our young people as we move forward. So I simply want to say that I'm happy to join the mayor, to join the assembly member, and to join the others who will be, in fact, part of this as we go forward from this day, to lift up the best of what New York City is really all about, and to make sure that we're ensuring that all of our young people, that we are raising their consciousness about the multicultural city that they live in, that I'm proud to lead as a school's chancellor. Thank you so very, very much.