New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo received the Athenagoras Human Rights Award of the Archons

New York.- New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo received this year’s Athenagoras Human Rights Award presented by the Order of Saint Andrew, Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, at the organization’s annual banquet Saturday, Oct. 15, at the New York Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City.

Governor Cuomo, a strong advocate for religious freedom for the Ecumenical Patriarchate, was the instrumental person in the process of securing an agreement with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey regarding the rebuilding and resurrection of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine at the World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:

Thank you very much. Please be seated. Kalispera to all, and of course, to His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios. It is such a pleasure to be in his company. He is such a gentleman, he is such an inspiration, he is such an advocate – let’s give him a round of applause and all the clergy who are here tonight. To Dr. Limberakis, who is the national commander. Well done sir, thank you very much, thank you for your kind words. To all the Archons, congratulations. Once they turned on the lights I could see you are a good-looking group, and we look forward to your good efforts going forward. A special congratulations to John Catsimatidis and Dennis Mehiel – congratulations to you. Ernie Anastos, who all these years I thought he was Italian, Ernie, but I got up close to him today and he’s too good looking to be Italian, he must be Greek. Let’s give him a round of applause, he has been so good to the Greek community for so many years but he is the quintessential New Yorker and if there is one voice that New Yorkers trust when it comes to giving them the facts and the news, it’s Ernie Anastos, so let’s give him another round of applause. To Patrick Foye, who is the Executive Director of the Port Authority and coincidentally signed the final papers for Saint Nicholas yesterday, it’s good to be with you Patrick Foye.

This is a special honor and a joy for me. As you heard, my relationship with the Greek community goes way back. Growing up in Queens, the Greek communities are literally your neighbors. As an Italian-American, we share many values together but then working with my father from a very young age, one of the most important relationships he had was to the Greek community and that only got stronger and deeper as the years have gone on. One of the proud parts of my legacy is to inherit that relationship and my responsibility is to further that relationship and deepen that relationship. What always seemed most admirable to me about the Greek culture were the values that the GreekS hold dear that they brought to this country. The respect for family and development of family, the belief in education and opportunity for all, the belief and respect for law and order, the belief in fiscal responsibility, the belief in community and the acceptance of others and a tolerance of differences.

My administration and this state government now reflect many of those values and we’re working very hard to incorporate them into the government of this great state. In terms of our investment in education, we just had the largest investment in education in the history of the state of New York. $25 billion in the public education system because we believe in education for all and opportunity for all. But, there’s a new awareness we’re bringing to the state, which is: it’s not just how much money you spend, it’s how you spend the money and what we’re actually accomplishing. You know, government, for many years, is good at spending money. It’s not as good at getting a result for the money. The state of New York pays more for education per pupil than any state in the United States of America and we are right in the middle of the pack in terms of results. So we’re spending more money but we’re also demanding more performance than ever before and testing and getting better results for pupils because that’s what it’s all about.

We respect law and order and we respect the police and at these difficult times there is no doubt that we have to work hard on the relationships between the police and the communities they serve. But there is also no doubt that our police and our first-responders put their life on the line every time they walk out the door of their house and this is a nation of laws and we must support them.

The Greek community was always about fiscal responsibility and economic responsibility and the state of New York has adopted that culture also. We’re working on it, I argue with some of my democratic friends about it on my day job. I then go home and argue with my daughters about economic responsibility. It’s the same basic conversation I have with the legislature and my daughters. The basic concept is the amount of money that comes into the system limits the amount of money that can go out of the system.

My daughters are very smart. They are in college, but for some reason they have a problem with this equation – the inflow must equal the out flow. Somehow, they think they outflow can exceed the outflow. We’re working on that. I’m also working on it with the state legislature, which has the same opinion that the outflow can exceed the inflow.

This state was the highest taxed state in the United States of America – the highest taxed state. And what’s going to happen over time is people are going to leave. People are more mobile, businesses are mobile and if you’re a high tax state they will walk with their feet, they will shop with their feet, they will move to a lower tax environment. I’m very proud to be able to say to you that over the past six years that I’ve served as governor, we have brought down spending every year and we now have historic low levels of state spending – lowest level of state spending in over 50 years. Lower than George Pataki, lower than Nelson Rockefeller, Hugh Carey, lower than my father, but I don’t want to bring him into this argument.

Now that we brought the spending down we can bring taxes down and we have brought taxes down for every New Yorker in this state on every level. And now that taxes are down, jobs are coming up. We just announced 7.9 million jobs in this state. More private sector jobs than have ever existed in the history of the state of New York and that really is saying something special because that’s what this is all about.

At the same time, we have a responsibility to leave this place a better place. Greeks are builders, Italians are builders – every generation left this state better than they found it. If you look at this state now, it is not better than we found it. The degradation and the deterioration of the infrastructure and the transportation system, that is why we just pledged $100 billion to the largest infrastructure program in the United State of America. We’re going to build a New York that New Yorkers deserve.

Vice President Biden, who God Bless him, is sometimes is a tad too candid, made a comment a few months ago and said, ‘if you were blind folded and you landed at La Guardia Airport and they took off your blindfold, you would think you landed in a third world nation.’

Now, Joe Biden, he just sometimes stings from the hip as opposed to the lip. And all the New York politicians blasted the Vice President for saying this about La Guardia Airport. I went the other way and I said I wasn’t sure about the blindfold, but he’s right. La Guardia airport is terrible. That is the truth. And we’re going to build an entirely new airport from the ground up and we’re going to break ground this year. And we’re going to rebuild a new JFK Airport because we deserve the best. We are now rebuilding two new tracks for the Long Island Railroad so you can actually have a mass transit system that works – a new Tappan Zee Bridge, more roads and bridges than ever before. We’re changing, literally over the next year, all the tolling systems in New York will be gone and everything will be automatic tolling. So, when we are done we’re going to make sure we give our children a better New York than we inherited because that’s our responsibility.

One of the most important values to the Greeks is a culture that says we accept others. A culture that speaks to tolerance and the acceptance of differences, and to me that is seminal at this time and at the cusp of so many of our problems – in this country and in other countries. Religious differences, racial differences and what’s happening is we are seeing the differences and not the commonalities. And the rhetoric is getting hotter and hotter and the differences are seemingly larger and larger. You see it in the Middle East, you see it with refugees, you see it with terrorism, you hear it in this country. I told you when I disagree with the Democrats on spending; I disagree with the Republican rhetoric that is trying to divide people in this country. Divide immigrants as a demon class. How can you criticize immigrants as an American? We are all immigrants as an American. If you are not a Native American, you are an immigrant. And when you try to separate and you try to divide you inject a poison into the fabric of society.

Now it certainly doesn’t work in New York, because with our density we are the capital of diversity. And I do come from Italian-Americans and you do come from Greek-Americans and there are black Americans and Asian-Americans etcetera and we understand that we exist as one – and that we are one community, one society, and we understand that you can’t start pitting one against the other. Because it would really be chaos and turmoil. But that is the state of affairs in this nation today, and it is a corrosive poisonous conversation that has to stop.

Now, Archbishop, I was blessed for many years to spend time with two of my heroes Mario Cuomo and Archbishop Iakovos who had a very special relationship and really did love each other and just spending time with them and listening to them, and listening to their jousts was always an education. I remember Archbishop Iakovos talking about Plato and “know thyself” and the concept of knowing your essence and who you are and living your essence and how powerful that was.

I remember him talking to me about Philotimo, essential goodness, the friend of honor. That inside us, humanity is basically good and we have to live that goodness and we have to live that acceptance. That is what the Greek culture was and is at its best and that is what Archbishop Iakovos spoke about. That’s what my father spoke about when he talked about the family of America, the family of New York, the interconnections, the interconnectivity, the fabric of society. Don’t try to divide because we are one – the founding motto of this nation, “E Pluribus Unum” – out of many, one. No black, not brown, not white, not Italian, not Greek, but we are one. Somos uno. Every religion makes the same point.

Judaism says Tikkun Olam – reach out, heal the divide. Protestants talk about perfect love, acceptance of the similarity of the human state. Catholicism talks about Matthew 25 – all making the same point: don’t dwell on the differences, but appreciate the commonalities and find one among people. Because in that unity there is strength and in that division, there is death. That fundamental truth has never changed and it has been taught for decades. We just need to be smart enough to finally heed those words.

When Archbishop Demetrios spoke about Saint Nicholas, I heard Archbishop Iakovos’ voice. I heard my father’s voice. I heard them say, “What better place after 9/11 to have a monument, a sanctuary that says ‘we are all one people, we are all one people and all are invited to one holy place.’”

Saint Nicholas will be the only church on Ground Zero with a beautiful history. It was there since 1916, one of the first places that the Greek immigrants would visit. It was their first touchstone. They would land at Ellis Island. They would take a ferry over and Saint Nicholas was right there downtown and they could step into a church where they felt comfortable and they felt reassured with a piece of home. A beautiful history, but also a beautiful future because the new Saint Nicholas is going to be bigger and better than ever.

It’s going to be a Greek church, but it’s going to be an interfaith church. Saying on the site of 9/11, the site of greatest hate, “I offer you love.” That is what St. Nicholas is going to say, because love is better than hate. I offer you inclusion, because inclusion is better than exclusion. I offer you good because good defeats evil. And I give you a place of holiness and beauty to say we are one. And let us come together and focus on our similarities and let’s disregard our differences. That is Saint Nicholas. That is why Archbishop Demetrios stayed on this project with persistence year after year after year. That is why the state of New York make a terrible mistake for all of those years when they didn’t honor their original agreement, which was to build Saint Nicholas.

As Governor of the state of New York, one of the handful of beautiful accomplishments that I’ll have for the rest of my life is going to be able to visit Saint Nicholas knowing what it stands for, knowing who built it, knowing what it means to the Greeks, and knowing what it means to the world.

I ask for one thing – in one corner – a little picture of two great friends, two great men who always believed we could be better than we are – Archbishop Iakovos and Mario Cuomo.