Your guide to NYC's public proceedings.
TESTIMONY
Testimony by Kimberly Cruz on history, education, unity, and civic engagement
2:28:51
·
3 min
Kimberly Cruz, a young resident from Flushing, Queens, delivers a passionate plea for greater focus on education, history, and unity in civic life. She expresses concern about political division, historical erasure, and a perceived decline in New York City's spirit, urging leaders and citizens to remember founding principles and engage constructively to strengthen democracy.
- Emphasizes the importance of history and education in civic discourse.
- Expresses concern about political polarization and lack of unity.
- Calls for a return to core democratic principles and greater civic engagement.
Kimberly Cruz
2:28:51
Hello.
2:28:52
My name is Cruz, and I'm from Flushing, Queens, New York.
2:28:56
So historically and I'm so grateful to be in an intergenerational conversation.
2:29:01
We can see the line of history just sitting here.
2:29:03
So if anyone can really take a picture in 2025 of what it means to have identity and representation and what Thomas Jefferson wrote, which the city council removed his statute.
2:29:16
And it shows the the unity is not a factor that's leading our representation.
2:29:22
If they're removing the person who wrote our declaration of independence, that is our fight, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
2:29:29
So when we're talking about these things, we put education in the center.
2:29:33
So I came here grateful for the leaders that have put before me, the civic leaders, the ones that are here sitting after how many experts who've had a lot of face time with our government all the time, have money after Citizens United all the time.
2:29:49
And I am 26 years old.
2:29:51
I just turned 26 on George Washington's birthday yesterday on Saturday.
2:29:56
And I'm just here.
2:29:57
I can't believe we're removing these books.
2:30:00
I can't believe Adam Winkler, professor and law enforcement officer, talking about corporate rights and what Citizens United did in a very way is not in everyone's bookshop.
2:30:11
I don't know why the premonition of Michael Lewis is not there when he's talking about the evaluation of the Trump administration and everyone else who knew about pandemics.
2:30:23
I went to Yale University.
2:30:24
I went to Bronx Science.
2:30:25
I am grateful for Flushing, Queens.
2:30:27
I am grateful for the library, but I am seeing us deteriorate in the things that made our New York City spirit strong.
2:30:35
This charter is valuable.
2:30:37
This charter comes from 1624, the Dutch who came here and touched on the indigenous people who were protecting this land for thousands of years.
2:30:47
We don't know Pangaea when it started, when it ended, but history is important.
2:30:51
Our human species is important, and we are all the same species.
2:30:55
And we have animals of all the other different species that we're trying to protect, and we can't communicate about education.
2:31:03
It is baffling.
2:31:04
Old thought leaders that do not know that progress is in front of them.
2:31:09
Old thought leaders that in Staten Island, they're showing that the house speaker states do not let one voter be miscounted.
2:31:17
Every vote counts.
2:31:19
And last year in 2024, New York congressional '6 district of New York, the Sixth Congressional District Of New York, that the HUD reports as the most diverse district of this whole nation of The United States Of America.
2:31:32
That's called N Y 6.
2:31:34
If you don't know it, search it up.
2:31:36
It is my home.
2:31:37
But it is not okay that it was diluted, and New York knows about it, but they do not tell the people of New York.
2:31:46
Our New York City spirit is dying.
2:31:48
The big apple that never forgot 09/11, I grew up with that.
2:31:54
I saw new hope when I was nine years old, but we are forgetting, and you're allowing the federal government to defund nine eleven victims.
2:32:02
You are forgetting that the seven train line that connects all international communities that speak 800 spoken languages and dialects from the North Of Queens, the South Of Queens, the East Of Queens, and the West.
2:32:15
And I know my time is up, but we do not have the time to silence us.
2:32:21
I walked miles, and I've never seen any of our leaders talk about the things that I've spoken about, and I genuinely I know this is too much, but hindsight is twenty twenty.
2:32:32
We are the tree and key to democracy, and I am baffled.
2:32:37
I know I'm an American patriot.
2:32:39
I'm a purple patriot.
2:32:41
I I don't know what else we're gonna change.
Richard R. Buery Jr.
2:32:43
I know.
2:32:43
But it is Thank you so much.