 All right, if everybody wants to get situated, we'll get started here in just a second. All right, thank you all for being here with us today. My name is Ted Long. I'm a primary care doctor at New York City Health and Hospitals, and I'm our senior vice president that's helping to lead our emergency humanitarian centers in New York City. Today, I'm excited to be here because we're going to talk about the most important thing in the world today, our children. I want to start with a story, though. I remember where I was. I was staying outside of the Roe Hotel when we opened our first humanitarian center. I welcomed the first family of asylum seekers into our new site. I welcomed the first children into our new site. And what sticks with me, and I'll never forget, was the children as they were walking in looked sad, scared, beaten down, and depressed. And of course they did. They'd been through hell to get here. Their journey was almost, they saw almost unspeakable things. But what I took away from that was that here in New York City, we really have an opportunity to truly help. And thank you to the constant support and national leadership of Mayor Adams and Deputy Mayor Williams Isom. In New York City, we've done things that really have changed the lives of all of these children. We early on realized that a lot of them hadn't received normal life-saving vaccines. We've administered 7,000 vaccines to children alone in our humanitarian centers. We've enrolled thousands of children in our centers, into schools, into our DOE public school system in New York City. And we've connected thousands of children to health insurance. Now if you want to think of, if you wanted to have one of the most powerful experiences you can have, I'll tell you what the effect of all that has been. If you come to this building at 7 a.m. tomorrow, stand right outside there, or go to the Roe Hotel at 7 a.m. tomorrow, and stand right outside there, when the kids go to the school buses, they have smiles wrapped around their faces. Those are different children than the ones that I welcomed into the Roe Hotel the first day. Their lives have been changed and they can't hide it. In New York City, we've stepped up to help the asylum seekers coming to our city, our newest New Yorkers. And today we have a bright light that we've been able to shine onto our efforts in terms of how New Yorkers can continue to step up. I want to thank the Brodsky family for being with us today and for their generous donation of 2,600 books in English and Spanish that our children here and at two other sites will read, will enjoy, and it'll compliment their world-class New York City education. I want to also say a special thank you to Council Member Botcher, who still puts up with me. We talk very regularly. Council Member Botcher has had unwavering support for our city and our asylum seekers throughout, and he's made our response so much stronger. So with that, I'm very happy to be here today as the father of a two-year-old and a three-year-old. Nothing in this world is more important to me than my children. And I'm going to pass it over to Mayor Adams. Thank you. Thank you so much. Really, really, I think we could just do what the children say. We could just drop the mic right now because you just laid it out. And you know, you have to ask the question of why in New York do we have families like the Brotsky family? Why do we have people like Council Member Botcher? Because, you know, I know it was lost on us, but Lady Liberty sits in our harbor. New York City is the welcoming map for the entire globe. And if you trace back any family of what was just talked about is something every family in this city and country can identify with. As we celebrate St. Patrick's Day in a few days, go read the story of the early Irish and how organizations came together. We had Brotsky families of that generation that dedicated and donated items to help them during the difficult times. Our early Italians that came here and what they went through, living in different environments that were not suitable to raise families, but they found ways to do so. The Caribbean diaspora, South Central America, you go family by family. I say all the time, if you look under the fingernails of every ethnic group in this country, you'll see the dirt and grime of climbing up the mountain of opportunity, one hand at a time to participate in an American dream. That is what makes us great. The UN is in New York. Diversity is our signature and our secret and most potent weapon. And we're asking people to do what the Brotsky family is doing. Just do a little, just do a little. When you add those little things together, 2,500 books with 10 families also doing 2,500 books go from 2,500 to 2,500,000. We have 8.5 million people in this city. If we just dedicate one hour a week or do one action, we will solve many of the problems that we are facing. And then if we just become just like our councilman, instead of saying, no, not here, we should be saying, yes, here. This is where we're going to make sure that we're the most benevolent part of the city. You have been amazing, councilman. It has been a real challenge as we opened over 100 emergency shelters, nine herks, over 50,000 people added onto the over 35,000 we had already. In one year, we go across the country, no one is doing it like New York. No one, not only are we meeting our moral and legal responsibility of making sure people have a place to sleep, we're making sure they have health care. Their children are in school. We're making sure they get receiving mental health support. And we're around the clock. You see the deputy mayor on the subway system inside the herks visiting places 24 hours of the day because we know how important this is as a woman who family came from Trinidad. She knows what it is to come to the foreign soil and hope that you are received with the level of dignity and humanity that you deserve. This is all of our story. These young people who we are using these books for today would be standing in front of a podium one day telling their story just like the commissioner of the mayor's office of immigrant affairs who's a dreamer came here from Mexico with his mother. Hoping one day to participate in government. Now he's in charge of how we treat our immigrants. That's the American story. That's the American narrative. So I'm happy to be here today and thank the Braske families. They are representatives of families all across this city that are volunteering and stepping up like these volunteers here. They're here to help out their fellow New Yorkers. So I say to you and everyone who's out there, I like the person that sat down for a portrait and he had a scar on his face and he told the artist, I know I have a scar but I have a face. Let's not focus on the scar of New York. Let's focus on the faces. And those faces overwhelm the scar. That is our story. And so to your family, thank you so much for really being the spirit of who we are as a country. These books are going to go to the young people. And if we don't remember anything today, we should remember what you stated. We saw busloads of children that were traumatized, have frowns that were robbed of the innocence of childhood. Now they board school buses with smiles on their faces, doing things that children do. I'm always told that I'm a perpetual third grader. And those children are living out the dream of being children after coming from a place of despair and trauma, New York is here to heal them. Thank you, the entire team, thank you. And as we're here now, as you can hear in the background, you can hear children laughing outside. Just before we started here, a little girl came up to me and asked if she could take one of the books on the table here. She gave me the brightest smile, it made her day, made my day too. So with that, the people responsible for all of this, the Brodsky family. And I think, Estralita, I'm going to introduce you first. Thank you. Actually, I wrote my talk in Spanish, but I see that los niños están afuera, para que se aporten bien, pero quería decirles primeramente bienvenidos. And my story is very much as the mayor described, my parents came from Venezuela and Uruguay, had basic education, didn't speak English, I grew up speaking Spanish at home. And when I got to public school, PS87, I only spoke Spanish, but learned English from the school and from cartoons, sorry. But in effect, they came here looking for a better life for their daughters, and they succeeded. And to a point that they gave us each a fantastic education. And I think the importance of books in particular is that it allows us to share those emotions, to grow as people and to imagine who we can be. That when we read a book, such as the ones that we have here by Lingwall, I know these kids will be reading the English part much more quickly than their parents, because us old folks don't learn languages as quickly. But I think through hard work and the education that New York City can provide and it's openness to international communities that they will succeed. They'll be able to follow their dreams, but they have to work hard. And that's where I'm a tough mother and grandmother. But anyway, so thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Thank you, Councilman. And thank you for everybody here. And what they're helping there, thank you for your help. Thank you. Thank you. The books, I just, I was thinking that Estra Leader with our kids, we always had to read a book before they went to sleep. And then she tells our children, with our grandchildren, you have to read a book to them. And some of those books, you know, you've read them over so many times, you memorize them. They become wonderful books that you still remember, you talk to your children about and your grandchildren about. So books are great, but we wanted to thank Mayor Adams, Councilmember Boucher and Dr. Long of New York City, Dr. Long of New York City Health and Hospitals for the city's outstanding effort in caring for the families who were seeking asylum in our country. Our nation and our city have always been improved by immigrants who bring boundless energy, motivation, and fresh ideas to this enduring land of opportunity. And my grandparents came here in the early 20th century. Is for that very reason that we must do better. Our leaders at the federal level need to act and make it a priority to ensure our immigration system works better for these families, for the cities, and for the collective future of our country. As a lifelong New Yorker and my wife Estra Leader are proud that our city continues to be a beacon of hope for people facing challenges all over the world. The children and the families now in the city's care are our newest neighbors and we welcome them. Providing these books is one very small way our family felt it could honor the promise enshrined in the base of the Statue of Liberty. It is our wish that these books will provide moments of healing and inspiration as these families work to establish new lives in our new land. Estra Leader and I also wanted to thank the Barnes and Nobles who helped put together all of these books in a very short time. So thank you. And finally, I want to introduce Councilmember Butcher. When the history books are written about this time, they're gonna tell the story of a people, of a city, who opened their arms and welcomed waves of immigrants fleeing violence and persecution and the way that the city has welcomed them is, it's more than just giving them the bare necessities. I can say having seen all the amazing work that's being done, we're treating these children as if they are our own. And that's because of the work of Mayor Adams, Deputy Mayor Dr. Long and Mr. and Mrs. Brotsky. Thank you so much for everything that you've done. This started, this effort started with a phone call just a couple months ago. Michelle called and said, how can the Brotsky's help? So we brainstormed on the phone and talked about how I'd been in a number of these herks and hotels in our council district. We have many thousands of asylum seekers. We have three large herks, each with like a thousand rooms. And we've got a couple hotels and we've got more coming. And one thing I observed in the shelters and in the herks was a lot of incredible work being done. But with this many children, they should really have libraries in the building. They should have books in the building. We want to keep them away from screens. That's what we want to do with kids now. So now they're gonna have so many incredible books right here in the building. In our district, in council district three, I am so proud of what our community has done to welcome these families. We have taken many, many of them in our schools. Many hundreds of new students and the families in those schools have launched supply drives, supply drives. Our elementary schools have big supply closets that are continually filling up with Amazon wish list items in our council office. We've had coat drives, school supply drives, toiletry drives. We funded puppet shows for the kids. And this is what we do in New York. We come together when times are tough, just like we have throughout history. Whenever we are, our back is against the wall. And we welcome the people who are fleeing their homeland to find a better life. Just like our ancestors did. I think about my grandmother's grandmother. My grandmother died a few years ago at the age of 104. Her grandmother came from Ireland all by herself as a young woman with a seamstress at Macy's. How terrifying that must have been for her to come to a new country all by herself. But we're continuing the tradition as New Yorkers. It's not easy and it might even get more difficult, but we've got to figure it out. It's a tradition that's being continued by this administration, by the Brodsky family, by so many others who are coming together during this time. Thank you. I just want to finally say it's amazing being here today. Thank you so much again to the Brodsky family. This is why New York City is the greatest city in the world and that concludes our program.