Rescinding DACA “is just feeding the beast of bigotry red meat”

Earlier today at an event at Riverbank State Park, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo addressed President Trump’s decision to rescind DACA.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h264 format) here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks about DACA is available below.

That’s the lesson of David Dinkins and Charlie Rangel and Mario Cuomo and Denny Farrell: you take on the tough ones.

And we have tough ones all around us today that we still have to address. The issue of public education, and the truth is we have two education systems still: not public-private, but one for the rich and one for the poor. One for minorities and one for the whites. That is true. We have a duality in our criminal justice system – we have Rikers Island – where if you’re poor and you’re a minority, you have one reality in the criminal justice system, and if you’re rich and you can make bail, you have another reality. We have a federal government that is antithetical to everything we believe as New Yorkers. They have declared war on immigrants. By the way, their war on immigrants isn’t against all immigrants. It’s not against the white immigrants; it’s against the black and the brown immigrants. Their toleration of the ignorance of the Ku Klux Klan, believe it or not, the KKK, talking about real Americans, “we’re the real Americans.” You’re the real Americans? Unless you’re a Navajo or a Sioux or an Apache, you’re not a real American.

President Trump is talking about DACA and rescinding DACA, which is just feeding the beast of bigotry red meat. That’s all this is about. And Denny’s example and my father’s example says you stand up and you fight this fight not because it’s easy, but because it’s tough. You want to talk about North Korea as a threat? And it is. I’ll tell you another threat: it’s racism. Because racism is a cancer in the body politic. It turns one cell against the other, and it starts the battle from within. And only Americans can defeat America. And these lines and these divisions and this racism and this bigotry is the greatest threat this country faces. And New York’s example is the exact opposite. We believe in diversity. We believe in welcoming people from all over the globe because we’re not one religion, we’re not one race – we’re one idea. If you come here and you work with us, you join the family of New York. E pluribus unum, out of many, one.