 Welcome the Faith Advisor and Executive Director of the Office of Faith-Based Community Partnership is Pastor Gilman Rose. Good evening to everyone. Good evening again to everyone, good evening again to everyone. As faith leaders of New York City you have to be strong in your response so good evening to everyone. I hope today find you as well as you can be and before I continue with my remarks I would like to do two things. First I would like to have a moment of silence for the victims of the terrorist attack in Israel to recall the mind to the global conflicts around the world and the life lost to these conflicts and wars and then the second thing I would like to join in a collective prayer for all humanity to be able to work towards sustainable peace and so our office the Office of Faith-Based and Community Partnerships that the mayor signed as an executive order a year and a half ago is here to help and to assist with the vigorous dialogue as we face some long days ahead of us. So first we'd like to have a moment of silence and then I'm going to ask all of you to pray collectively for all of the conflicts of our city what we're facing today and for the people who are in this room to carry the burden that God has given you to lead your people in your congregations in your temples your master synagogues wherever you may serve of the task of leading in time of difficulties. Let's have the silence and then let's have the prayer. Let's have a moment of collective prayer together in your tradition. Thank you so much for your prayers. On behalf of Mayor Adams and our administration and the Office of Faith and Community Partnership who is part rent tonight I'm really honored to serve as the faith advisor to the mayor and also the executive director of the Office of Faith and Community Partnership and we really want to take this opportunity to extend to you a heartfelt gratitude of all of the work that you have done. When we think of the difficulties that we are facing in New York City and across the globe, day in and day out you know the mayor of New York City have the burden of the people on his shoulder but I think as faith leaders you have the burden of God and I think that tonight we're pausing in this difficult time in the world to be able to come together in a room of all different backgrounds and faith to really work on this experiment of how do we work to get a lift together in New York City in spite of what is happening in the world and that's important to do tonight and so we want to be an avenue and a vehicle to be able to have those tough discussions in the weeks ahead. It's going to be a long road for us as we even look at the influx of migrants who we are serving in this city the most that is being done by any mayor in the United States of America to be able to give them the dignity of service and the work that you were doing who someone today told me that their housing migrants in their temples are without any support from anyone out of the goodness of your heart so I want to say number one we want to thank you so much for the work that you're going to do and if it is appropriate would you give yourself a round of applause for the work that you are doing in New York City. So this year we're really looking forward to connecting collaborate with your agents with your churches your temples synagogues, masterpieces of worship, good wars, schools, hospital, senior centers, local missions, food pantries, soup kitchens, colleges, universities, homeless shelters, power church ministries, all-fit institutions, foundations, museums, health centers and other non-profit organizations to assist in a massive operation to assure that we are going to support needy New Yorkers during this holiday season that is coming up. We're looking for you to help us with serving dinners to every shelter, domestic shelter, on-house New Yorker shelters, migrant shelters, to donate school supplies to children in all of our shelters, to give a gift to every child under the age of 12 in our communities for winter coats and for socks and for warm clothes and we're also looking for houses of worship to again open up your doors to apply to our fadebed program and our day program to be able to house migrants and again like I said to you before what we're doing in New York City is unprecedented in serving our communities using our fade-based program. So as I mentioned to you before your dedication, your compassion, your spiritual leadership has been a source of inspiration to all of us as we strive to make a positive impact in our communities and today we are here because our theme is being united in New York City. Not saying that we are going to not recognize the difficulty of the conversation that we are going to have we understand it was in Ukraine and issues and situations across the country that divide us on religious grounds but we are confident that you are going to show the world and we are going to show the world that we can truly work together in the midst of chaos so thank you so much for being here today if you look over to your left to your right the front or to the back these are the individual and faith leaders who are walking with us in this administration and we really wanted to bring you here tonight to thank you from the bottom of our hearts. I'm going to now call up the chief advisor, Captain Ingrid Lewis-Martin and then after she speaks then we'll have the mayor of New York City. Thank you again and God bless you. Good evening. I believe in God. I believe in God. We are here to tell you thank you. So many people in this room have been with the mayor and me from inception. When we first started in 2006 you were there. Some of you are new but you have been there with us when we had trying times. They come after the mayor on a regular basis they come after me on a regular basis but we have people in faith and who believe in God. They believe in Allah. They believe in Buddha. They believe in Hashem. They believe in all types of denominations and you pray for us and we thank you. When we need you to step up for us you don't turn away from us. You stand with us and we thank you. Today is a hard day. It's a difficult day as Pastor Monroe said. We know that there are a lot of things that are going on in our society that people of faith who believe in God who believe in the creator would never do. We know that. We see what has happened to our brothers and sisters in Israel but we are God fearing people and we believe in unity and we believe in love. I have my two brothers here with me. I'm going to ask my two brothers to join me on the stage. When I came to speak tonight I didn't plan on saying this but when I saw Mohamed and then I saw Joe, Joe Shammy. I was told to bring them on the stage because I do refer to them as my brothers. I have my Muslim brother to my right, my Jewish brother to my left and they are Mohamed like the Quran, Joe like Joseph like the Bible. Moh has a pantry that he delivers that he serves the community food. All kinds of things clothing. His pantry is a few doors away from the home of Joe Shammy's. They didn't know each other before tonight. I was talking to the two of them and they connected. Joe Shammy is in a situation where he can help Moh and provide him with goods and they made that bond tonight. So we see that no matter what happens across the globe, New York understands that we are one people and that we must work together for the greater and the common good. God is about one thing and that is love. God is about peace. God is about harmony and that is what we promote in our city and that is what our mayor insists upon and we thank you for being with us. We thank you when the naysayers come after us. We thank you for praying for us. There are group of ministers who've been praying for the mayor, praying for me, the commissioner, all of our administration consistently and it was the brainchild of my sister in Christ, Minister Sherani and Bishop Chantel Wright and I thank you for doing that for us. God is about peace and love. We love you. We thank you. Just as you were there for us, I can assure you that our administration will be there for you and I will be remiss. I want to just announce that we have three elected officials in the house with us. We have assembly member Edward Gibbs, assembly member Jennifer Raj Kumar and assembly member David Repprin. They're behind the stage but I would like you to please give them a round of applause and I get the honor to do what I love to do. Anybody who knows me knows that it's my honor for me to present to you a gentleman that I work tirelessly for and I still choose it to this day and it's done with love and from the heart and because of you, your prayers, the fact that your parishioners came out and pulled the lever, we have our second man of African descent to be the 110th mayor of New York City and that is Mayor Eric Adams. So let's show our mayor some love. Some years ago, I was in Gory Island off the coast of Senegal. I went down into the dungeons and you could still feel the energy of the millions of African slaves that were tortured and inside those dungeons women would be raped and babies were killed and they would go to this place where it was called Door of No Return and they would take this long voyage over to America and if you would have looked closely on top of the dungeon was a Christian church, while the torturing was going on, the people inside the Christian church used religion and exploited religion as the purpose to ensure slavery will continue and one could have easily walked away having hatred towards Christianity. One could have easily walked away and felt as though Jesus Christ, the Son of God, did something wrong because of the exploitation of the religion and I raised that today because there was a group called Hamas. Hamas decided to go into southern Israel and they dragged out innocent people, tore their bodies through the streets, beheaded some, raped some, burned down their homes and they hide under disguise the saying that they are Muslims. They don't represent Islam no more than those who were slave owners representing Christianity but if you allow yourself to take your pain and anger and look at what Christianity represented in our Lord and Savior then you would do the same thing to allow Hamas to say they represent what Mohammed stands for. So it's up to us to distinguish between the two. What we saw play out in Israel was not Islam, it was hatred, it was demonism, it was devil worshipers, it was those who are against the light not those who are in the light because you can't walk in the light if you are enslaving people you can't walk in the light if you are raping people you can't walk in the light if you are beheading people you cannot hide behind religion to turn out your devilish deeds for as long as we could remember I gave you two examples but religion has been exploited for as long as we can remember and think man has destroyed religion but man has also used religion for the good that it is. I think of my brother Bahi who's part of this administration he had an organization for years called Muslims giving back they were going to Manhattan and feed the homeless they would use their own money to buy blankets during the winter time I think about those Muslims who walked with me when someone put out a flyer saying kill a Muslim day and they walked with me together as we stated we were staying next to our Muslim brothers and sisters and let me tell you my Muslim brothers and sisters when we walked with those brothers and sisters who were Muslim there was not one Christian that felt as though we were talking about them when we said we were denouncing that hatred towards Muslims there was not one Jewish person that said you are denouncing Judaism because you are standing with those Muslim brothers and sisters so no Muslim in the city no Muslim in this country should believe because we denounce what Hamas has done that we are denouncing Islam because that is not true and we're not buying that rhetoric we are not going to buy that rhetoric being people of faith is being honest and forthright and true and point out when religion is being exploited by anyone that is the job you have to do as a person of faith and that's the job I'm going to do our record is clear we stand side by side with the people of faith in the city in this country I've never been apologetic for saying I believe in God I believe in God and it wasn't by coincidence a few months ago we said no matter what people say it's time to pray it's time to pray we don't see what's taking place and playing out on the stage of our cities we don't see what's happening to our children we don't see that our babies are feeling as though there's no more faith in their lives we're watching a level of total despair among our young people many of them are high with hallucinants and drugs all the time and we don't even see it they ride on the top of subway trains losing their lives and we don't even see it they start their day learning how to steal cars to have criminal records and we don't even see it they get up in the morning and stop at the bodega and buy cannabis and try to sit in the classroom and we don't see it they're being depressed all the time and we don't see it black boys and Latino boys are carving highways of death with nine millimeter bullets throughout community taking other young people and we don't even see it I don't care what anyone says time to pray time to pray and when you pray prayer works prayer works we we we become so modern we become so sophisticated we become so prosperous and pompous but I remember a day a woman got on her knees and say help my son and his dyslexia and she prayed I remember a day when a woman walked into the 103rd precinct with that Bible in her hand and they say give up on him he would never be anything and she says I'm gonna pray I remember a day when a woman thought that her six children would not have a roof over their heads because the uncertainty of being able to hold on but she prayed and it's only because of that woman that you can go from being dyslexic arrested rejected and now I'm being elected to be the mayor of the city of New York I don't care what anyone say it's time to pray time to pray that's what we need to do right now God places us in places when the time is needed this is one of the most significant moments we're having right now here on Gracie mansion this is the most important city on the globe the way goes America goes New York goes America the way goes America goes the globe so if I am the most important mayor on the globe then you are the most important faith leaders on the globe so if you pray it cascades throughout the entire country and it cascades throughout the entire globe it's all on our backs right now saving the globe is going to start under this tent we have to be reignited with our faiths because the time of faith is not when things are going well it's when all things have fallen apart that is when there's a time to faith and then we must become not just worshipers some of us have been professional worshipers we have to be executioners we have to take what we learned in the sterilized environments of our religious institutions and then go executed in the streets you cannot have gun violence of this magnitude in the city with all of these people of faith we can't have homelessness on our streets with all of these people of faith we cannot have the despair of depression and suicide and drug use with all the people of faith in this city I never forget the most significant moment in my life was when I was a little boy we just turned this little small church we call it the church everyone knew your name and everyone was glad you came I tell the story often because we have to remind ourselves we will go during the night during the day take a break and go back at night that break time was when you were supposed to eat mommy were raised was raising six children so we didn't have that moment we would just sing and rejoice and pray during that moment hoping that the hunger pains will go away and then one evening a car caravan of women pulled up to our home they started unloading boxes of groceries and they brought it inside our house and they put it on the countertop and they prayed with us and we sang together that evening when I went down stairs and I looked in the box I saw that the boxes was open half a box of pancakes mix half a box of spaghetti half a jar of mustard and mayonnaise those women could not afford to buy us groceries they went into their cupboards and they gave us half of what they had because they said they wanted to give from their heart tired and offering is more than 10% going back into the plate on Sunday it is our lives need to go back to give it so the reason there's so much to spare because we have decided no longer of giving half of what we got it's time now to look at what we had we have a closet full of coats yet we have children going to school with windbreakers every day give them one of your coats we have children during the winter time wearing slippers because they don't have shoes when we have a closet full of shoes give up some of those shoes we can give more Eric Adams is mayor because those women went into their cupboards and gave me half of what they got how many Eric Adams is are still out there right now waiting for you to give them half of what you got that's what we need to do something has happened to us you didn't come from the Caribbean and go to the homeless shelter you came in and you stayed with auntie until you were able to get on your feet you didn't come from Africa and go into some homeless location you came in and you stayed with the Imam or you stayed with one of your brothers and sisters that came before you and held on you didn't come to the south and had to go and sleep on the street you came and you stayed with your cousin until you were able to sustain yourself I don't care who you are don't get it mixed up and try to recreate your past you know we all needed each other to get to where we are right now so if you needed each other then why don't those who are coming behind us need each other I don't care what anyone say it's time to pray time to pray and prayer works prayer works and I'm clear about seeing your faces you know Pastor Hamathiite I know what you do I'm clear when I see many of you that's here I know I'm preaching to the choir I'm clear on that and many of you many of you you wrote the song this is choir practice because too many people out there are singing off-key they think it's a solo and not a chorus we must have everyone singing in unison as we start the process of healing this land I don't know where I read it but I recall if my people would turn to me and prayer I will heal the land we have a land that needs healing we have a land in Brooklyn that needs healing we have a land in the Bronx that needs healing we have a land in Manhattan that needs healing a land in Queens a land in Staten Island a land in New Jersey a land in Rhode Island land in Los Angeles a land in San Francisco a land in St. Louis a land in Iowa a land in Ohio there's a land that needs to be healed and if we heal the land that's spirituality and that healing will cascade throughout the entire globe starts here I know it could happen you know it could happen you are excited about the possibilities you know the power of prayer and so I'm going to ask you who's in this house who in this house is a pastor of a church come on pastor her mathiac come up here oh you got him here okay they got him here I want I want a pastor of the church to come up here come on Bishop I want an Imam to come up here stay right here I want an Imam that's come up here I want to seek leader to come up here if we have a Catholic faith leader to come up if we have a Buddhist to come up who's a Buddhist I know I saw some of my Buddhist brothers and sisters here we have someone from the Coptic Church to come up who I have back here pastor Yeruba come up come on come on let me help you church of God come on come on up so so okay okay so this is this is who we are this is this is who you are who we are and I keep telling people all the time and I'm gonna keep saying this until it resonates I was at Rochelle Boone's funeral let me tell you something people energy we are made of we are made up of energy we're made up of vibration and energy cannot be created or destroyed it cannot be created or destroyed it can only be transformed that's all it can do and this is this is straight science and I'm saying today as I sit here with these faith leaders I'm asking them to call on the energy of our ancestors call on the energy of those who have transitioned from the physical to the spiritual but they're still with us their energy is all around us and the only way you can feel and see their energy is to acknowledge the existence of it and what we must do right now we must transform ourselves from just readers to believers because anyone can go through the custom of reading a tradition or a faith now we are moving to the point of from being a reader to a believer and when you are a believer then you know that that energy is going to be in you to transform where we are now we are in dog days we're in dog days don't get yourselves these days that we are in a dog when you have 20,000 children walking through the Darien gap and some of them not making it through those are dog days when you have Ukraine watching themselves being bombed and little babies are dying those are dog days when you have families committing mass suicides in their home killing the children and the wives and the husband those are dog days so these dog days could only find a light if we reconnect ourselves with the universal understanding that it is without our faith that we could accomplish that task and so yes people would say well you know you the man your politician don't bring God into the philosophy and concept no you don't bring God in I'm bringing God in God got me here God is going to sustain me God is going to maintain me God is going to make sure we get through this mess that folks are trying to keep us out of and so I'm asking in your own faith I'm asking you to pray I'm asking you not to pray silently in your own faith I want you to allow your words to go out and fill this tent because these are the soldiers that are going to fight the battle because this is spiritual spirit you we're on spiritual warfare right now so we need to we need to ignite the soldiers so let's just right from where you are just pray just pray have your way how we go you never lost the case so God in the name of Jesus head of your spirit let it fall upon this house right now on every person on God gentlemen nor meekness more patience in the name of Jesus give us the food of the spirit have your way oh God in the name of Jesus we put we love you today we adore you we worship you we lift you up and the anointing word of God is going forth in the city in the state to the governor to every country to every state on our South South America on the North Canada to the continent of God portion of God of your spirit of your love or your your kindness in the name of Jesus do a new thing in Jesus name Jesus name thank you God bless you we got the collection we want to thank