Friend,
Earlier today, I went to Buffalo and paid my respects to a community devastated by last week’s deadly hate-fueled mass shooting at a local supermarket.
Joining my friends at True Bethal Baptist Church, we mourned the loss of 10 members of the New York Family and reflected on how we can stop other senseless slaughters at the hands of domestic terrorists acting in the name of white supremacy.
You can watch my address to the Congregation above.
Public officials need to act and they need to produce. We know what must be done and merely trying is no longer good enough.
- We must treat domestic terrorism like foreign-born terrorism and replicate successful joint federal, state and local efforts to monitor and investigate home grown terrorists.
- Congress must crack down and censure members who legitimize and foment this hate and push dangerous rhetoric such as ‘replacement theory.”
- Finally, once and for all, there needs to be a federal ban on assault weapons.
For days, I’ve been thinking about a conversation I had with a Black woman from Buffalo. She asked me a simple question, ‘What do I tell my children? What do I tell my young son, how do I explain to him that Black people were shot because of the color of their skin and how do I explain it so he doesn’t get bitter and angry and afraid of white people?”
I had no good answer at the time, but I’ve thought about it all week.
We tell our children these are evil, scared, sick people. They are threatened by people with a different color skin or a different religion or who come from a different place. But where the weak and fearful see differences, the strong see commonalities. The strong judge by the content of character, not color of skin. The strong see the humanity in all of us. The strong lock arms, get stronger, and take action. And Buffalo is a City of the strong.
We tell our children, our enemies bring hate and we bring love, and love wins every time.
I came to Buffalo to tell the community that I love them. That people all across the state of every religion, every creed, every ideology love them.
And that love can help us heal and can empower us to fight together, to make this the moment of change -- so that the Tops massacre is not just another on a long list, but the tragedy that ends the list.
As always, thank you for your support and your friendship.
Andrew M. Cuomo
The 56th Governor of the State of New York
