Transcript: Mayor Eric Adams Hosts and Delivers Remarks at Lunar New Year Celebration

February 2, 2023

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you so much, Winnie, and all of you and our entire Asian Advisory Council for coming together. It was a real pleasure meeting all of the consul generals that are here and I'm really happy that we are going to give six awards to real heroes in our city. And from the start, I just want to say 'Gung Hay Fat Choy.' Many good things will happen this year. This is the Year of the Rabbit, and for my Vietnamese brothers and sisters, it's the Year of the Cat.

It is about prosperity for all of us. We are so fortunate to live in a city with so much diversity as I see my amazing Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar, raise your hand. And many of you have been friends and supporters for many years so I cannot say to you enough: thank you, thank you. We have so much to do this year and I'm going to need your help. We have one of the largest AAPI communities anywhere in the country so I need your help to fight against the hate crimes that we have seen. And we are going to do many things to stop the hate.

But there's one thing I want all of us to volunteer to do, we call it Breaking Bread, Building Bonds. We want to have 1,000 dinners across the city. Each dinner will have 10 people that come from different groups, different cultures, and different lifestyles and we will sit in a room and talk to each other. We will learn from each other and we will celebrate our diversity. So a Chinese person will sit in a room with a Dominican and a Jewish and a Polish and a Russian and a German and someone from Peru. All of us will sit around and learn from each other. The best way to stop hate is to prevent hate in the first place. So can I get you to promise you will host dinner or attend a dinner?

I thank you for that and I want to thank you for your support. This community has shown me so much support from my days as a senator, as a borough president, and now as the mayor of the city. Thank you so much. 'Xiexie.'

We have a few honorees that we're going to bring up now.

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