Mayor Mamdani Holds Press Conference to Make an Arts and Culture-Related Announcement
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office.
Passages
Good morning, everyone. Or should I say, oh, what a beautiful morning. It is a privilege to be here as the first mayor to have ever played Curly in an eighth grade production of Oklahoma. on the Upper West Side. I want to say thank you to Sam, Tuddy, and the students for that incredible performance. Can we have a round of applause for them again? I'm glad to know that I'm in good company and enjoying a slice of pizza for breakfast. And I want to thank every New Yorker who has worked to make the incredible art and culture of our city accessible to all. And I am so happy to be here alongside leaders both inside and outside of our city government. We have Michael Rosenberg, the President and CEO of New York City Center. Thank you again for kicking us off and for hosting this event. We have TDF Executive Director Deeksha Gore and the members of the Cultural Institutions Group for making today's announcement possible. I want to thank all of the Coalition of Broadway Union and Guilds members here today. I want to thank my partners in government that are here with us. We have Deputy Speaker Dr. Nantasha Williams, the Chair of the Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries, and International Relations. And we have the elected officials who are hosting us in their district. We have Assemblymember Toni Simone and the one and only Councilmember Gail Brewer. And lastly, I want to thank leaders within our administration, our Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice, Julie Hsu, our Commissioner for the Department of Cultural Affairs, Diya Vij, our Chancellor of the New York City Public Schools, Komar Samuels, our Commissioner of the Department of Youth and Community Development, Sandra Escamilla-Davis, and our Commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, Rafael Espinal. Now, New York City has long been synonymous with the lights, music, and spectacle of Broadway. This is where the star to be arrives with three bucks, two bags, and the dream that if they can make it here, they can make it anywhere. We want to keep that opportunity to dream big alive, not just to hopeful out-of-towners, but also to those growing up right here. and across these five boroughs. So to the students behind me and across from me who have taken some time out of their precious summer days to be here with us, I have one more request for you. I was debating whether or not to sing it and I got intimidated by your performance. So I went with the whisper. Thank you to the Ying Yang twins for inspiration. Beginning today, City Hall, in partnership with the Theater Development Fund, is opening a lottery of more than 2,000 free tickets for high schoolers to seven marquee Broadway shows right here in New York, New York. This is justice for the theater kids who have watched City Hall roll out lotteries for major sporting events all summer long and asked, why not me? If you are a high school student anywhere across the five boroughs, you are eligible to enter this lottery. To do so, head to on.nyc.gov slash Broadway. The lottery will remain open from today through next Monday, August 17th at 10 a.m. And every single student who enters, whether or not they win, will automatically receive a free two-month theater development fund membership. This membership will give them access to significantly discounted tickets between $20 and $40 to shows, concerts, and dance performances on Broadway, off Broadway, and across the city. And it will also grant them free admission to some of our city's most iconic cultural institutions, including Carnegie Hall, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York City Ballet, and the New York City Center where we stand today. There are so many kids growing up in our city for whom Broadway feels as if it is a world away, like something that only belongs to other people. We are together today to prove differently, to make it possible for kids from Sheepshead Bay to Morrisania, no matter how much money their parents make, to enter that different world, to experience that magical moment when the lights go down, the curtain goes up, and they're transported on the journey of a lifetime, one they will carry with them for decades to come. From the plays of ancient Greece to the public gardens of Mughal India to Shakespeare's Globe Theater, history teaches us that the best art has always been made accessible to working people. That conviction has long lived in New York City, too. In 1942, city government purchased this building in a foreclosure auction. Instead of selling it to developers, Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia proposed that the city transform it into a center for music, dance, and theater for the working people who call this city home. On New York City Center's opening night in 1943, tickets were sold for just a dollar, as opposed to the Metropolitan Opera's average of $10 per ticket. What a time. We believe, just as Mayor LaGuardia did nearly 85 years ago, that government holds a fundamental responsibility to make people's lives better. We will do so by building new homes, by making groceries cheaper, by keeping people safe on our streets, and by making wonder and joy something that every New Yorker can know. Thank you all so much. Now please join me in welcoming the executive director of TDF, Deeksha Gore.
SPEAKER_16Theater Kid, I think, is subjective. But this is but one example of what is going to be a term-long commitment to the arts, to culture, and to ensuring that every New Yorker sees themselves in arts and culture. And I think it's 2,100 tickets that are free for any high schooler across New York City. But as you've heard all of us say, anyone who applies to this lottery will then get that free membership for the next few months. And that's a membership that can really expand your sense of the city and of the world. I mean, you just heard Deputy Speaker Dr. Natasha Williams speak about the Louis Armstrong Museum. It is an incredible museum. I only saw it after I became the mayor. And this is one of the places where any high school student who applies for this lottery could now go to see for free. And that's what's so exciting is that the arts are also a portal to a world that you never even knew existed, let alone one that you thought had room for you. And we're always going to be speaking to our deputy mayor, to our DCLA commissioner, to our MOAM commissioner, to everyone who helps to lead this work inside city government and all the partners outside as to how we can make it easier for kids to grow up with a sense that Broadway is for them as well. Please.
SPEAKER_16He's coming up. He's coming up. I'll just underline one thing that the deputy mayor said and then pass it over to the chancellor for additional details. We were proud to work with the council to deliver more than $320 million in funding for DCLA and for arts institutions. That's a record amount of funding. And the reason we wanted to do that is even in a moment where we faced a $12 billion fiscal deficit, it is always a moment to invest in the arts. And we also created for the first time a stabilization fund for cultural institutions that were experiencing either unexpected or an emergent need. Because we also know that since the pandemic, especially with the cuts from the federal government, there are a number of cultural institutions that are struggling today. And they need help to just keep their doors open. I'll pass it over to the Chancellor.
SPEAKER_16How about you? I remember seeing In the Heights for the first time and being blown away. because Broadway is something that you typically think of as a portal to another world, and yet when I went to go see In the Heights, it was a world that I knew, but to see it on stage, to see it with the depth, the fluency, the talent, the art, it was incredible. Still sometimes wake up singing 96,000. And I think that I want that experience for every New Yorker. I want them to be able to see a world they didn't know and sometimes to be able to see themselves as well. I mean, I remember also watching Fela, the musical. That was an amazing experience, you know, to see an African icon and his life on stage right here in Midtown. It was a beautiful thing. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_16This is the beginning. And what I mean by that is that we are going to keep asking the question of how we can be working together and how we can ensure that it is oriented towards all of our children. Nobody loses in this lottery because everybody wins this membership. Some also win 2,100 free tickets on top of that. But whether it's this lottery or it's other ways, we are going to continue to both invest time and resources to make the arts something at the fingertips of every New York City student. Thank you.
SPEAKER_16And before you go, if I could also invite Assemblymember Simone, Dr. Natasha Williams, and Councilmember Brewer, if they want to share what the Broadway musical was that made it for them.
SPEAKER_16Do we have Gail Brewer? Oh, well, we lost her. She's off to see a play. Broadway news, please.
SPEAKER_16Just to make clear, you're asking if there's a plan to support commercial theaters beyond the CIGs? Yeah. That's something that we'll bring back to the team. We'll have that conversation. Thank you.
SPEAKER_16I'm a bike angel, I think is the term. Though I haven't won enough points to recoup anything. Sorry, there's a $3 push you were saying? Yeah, price cap was $3. Okay. I mean, we are always interested in making city bike and cycling in general more affordable, but I'll take that back to the team. And then on the first question, I think a lot of this comes back to the fact that the first deputy mayor of the former administration, Randy Mastro, took steps that rendered it nearly impossible to move forward on the fulfillment of a vision of building housing at the Elizabeth Street Garden. And we have a continued commitment to building housing everywhere that we can. And that is also why that as we take steps to resolve this case with the developers of that original site, we are going to be building 180 homes not too far away, as well as more even at 100 Gold Street.
SPEAKER_16Thank you for the question. I had a candid and productive conversation with rabbis representing a wide swath of New York's Jewish communities and affiliations, and I appreciated hearing from them. My door will always be open to every Jewish New Yorker. That is a door that is open not only to a conversation, but also to a commitment of what it actually looks like to deliver on the ideal of a city where not only is everyone safe, but everyone belongs, everyone is made to feel as if this is their home. Our administration has been taking steps over the last many months of enacting that, whether it looks like increasing funding for hate crime prevention programming by more than 800% or expanding our city's office to combat anti-Semitism to its largest ever size while developing a first in the nation municipal response to combating anti-Semitism.
SPEAKER_16Okay, I think I'll leave it to the president to share his own opinions on it. I continue to believe in the importance of a surcharge on secondary homes worth more than $5 million, as well as our ability to implement that surcharge. And just to go back to the importance of it, we're here today talking in some ways about art, but in other ways also about affordability. And the importance of a tax on a secondary home worth more than $5 million is that it raises half a billion dollars. And that is money that makes our streets safer. It makes our schools stronger. It makes the city the world class city that we all love and know as our home. And I'm looking forward to all of the improvements that we can deliver with that revenue. Kelly, the first question, yes, I do support the governor in her reelection, and I will be making that support clear at every opportunity that I have. And I also think there is a very clear choice here between Governor Hochul and Bruce Blakeman. Yesterday, I was standing with Governor Hochul as she announced that she was going to invest more than $7 million in funding to ensure that there are no unaccompanied minors without legal defense in our city. The Trump administration had made a decision that would strip these minors of their legal defense. Now, if a New Yorker looks at what ICE is doing and they want to see more of it, they should vote for Bruce Blakeman, who has created his own militia in Nassau County. If a New Yorker looks at what ICE is doing and is shocked by the inhumanity and the cruelty that is in the very heart of that agency's operation, then they should vote for Governor Kathy Hochul.
SPEAKER_16Yes. I would not have someone serving our city if I was not confident in what they were doing. And I look forward to the release of these findings. Do you know when they are being released? 12 noon. Okay. So then we'll be sure to look over them. And I think I appreciate all of these different initiatives that are all looking towards the same thing, which is how to deliver safety and justice in our city. And that continues to be a focus for us.
SPEAKER_16I have confidence in our administration officials being able to navigate what are often concurrent obligations, both whether it be to a hearing or to an existing lawsuit. I was asked earlier about Elizabeth Street Garden, and I said the other day that there are a few things more certain. in New York City than death taxes and Randy Mastro suing this administration. And that is, again, where that lawsuit is coming from when it comes to the Pietatera lawsuit. And then on your first question, I continue to be confident in NYC REITs, and it is developed with the... real findings of what's been effective across the country in mind. And we know that it is a critical thing that we equip our public school students with. We look forward to being in conversation with the UFT as we look to not only build upon the successes of the last few years, but to go beyond that.
SPEAKER_16
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office, Mayor Mamdani Holds Press Conference to Make an Arts and Culture-Related Announcement.