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Council Member Vickie Paladino Explains Her Vote Against Overriding the Mayor's Vetoes

1:30:41

·

3 min

Council Member Vickie Paladino details her personal history and perspective on the divisive nature of the bills being voted on.

She reflects on her family's struggles, shares anecdotes to argue that the matter should not be reduced to race, and ultimately casts her vote against the mayor's veto.

Speaker 2
1:30:41
Paladino.
Speaker 36
1:30:44
Permission to explain my vote.
Speaker 1
1:30:46
Permission, Vincent.
Speaker 36
1:30:48
This is a very sad, sad day.
1:30:52
It's a sad day because it's no longer about the issue of 586-549.
1:30:59
What it's become is a racial issue.
1:31:02
It's really terrible.
1:31:04
We were talking here about division.
1:31:07
It's constant division.
1:31:09
Division is not what's gonna bring us together.
1:31:12
I sit here as a sixty nine year old white woman.
1:31:17
My mother worked in a factory making buttonholes.
1:31:22
She watched her son at fifteen years old.
1:31:26
Get arrested for stealing a car.
1:31:29
He was then set in Substate New York.
1:31:32
At 16, we were told he went away to college.
1:31:36
My brother was then arrested again because he was a drug addict.
1:31:42
And he was in Bikers Island.
1:31:44
For 3 years.
1:31:47
He got out in 1974.
1:31:50
He served in solitary confinement.
1:31:54
I don't wear anything on my sleeve because I have dignity and I have respect for my mother.
1:32:02
And what we come from.
1:32:04
Please don't make this a racial issue.
1:32:06
It's not.
1:32:09
I'm sorry you feel that I hear you in the background.
1:32:11
That's okay.
1:32:12
But I just want you to know.
1:32:14
Sorry.
1:32:15
Raising raising children of
Speaker 1
1:32:17
Paladino, as I mentioned in the beginning of this meeting, the public shall remain silent.
1:32:20
There will be no interruption.
Speaker 36
1:32:22
Thank you.
1:32:22
Thank you for that.
1:32:24
You know, when I raised 2 children, they're grown men today.
1:32:32
I gave not my forty six year old, but my thirty six year old, the same lecture you've given yours.
1:32:40
Be careful when a cop pulls you over.
1:32:43
Make sure two hands are on the wheel.
1:32:45
See, he could be profiled also.
1:32:48
He likes tattoos.
1:32:50
He likes earrings.
1:32:51
He's a little different than his older brother.
1:32:55
And I too told them, be very careful when they go over to your trunk.
1:32:59
They may drop something in your trunk and you don't know it.
1:33:02
So it's not like I'm blind.
1:33:05
And in any way shape or form to that that fact that there's good and there's bad.
1:33:11
I never judge a person by their color.
1:33:15
I never by judge a person by their religion,
Speaker 1
1:33:17
council member, please remember.
1:33:19
Okay.
1:33:20
And
Speaker 36
1:33:20
then I just wanna say, in that and saying all of what I just said.
1:33:25
The reason behind my vote is because I understand the importance today more than ever.
1:33:32
I don't like profiling, but there is a certain amount amount of things that are happening here today that doesn't involve transparency at all.
1:33:42
It's just about color,
Speaker 1
1:33:43
content relief.
1:33:44
It
Speaker 36
1:33:44
should not be.
1:33:45
So I vote.
1:33:46
No.
1:33:46
I want this veto to dick.
1:33:49
Thank you very much, everybody.
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