Thank you to the elected officials, labor and movement leaders here with us tonight. And thank you to New York’s Attorney General Tish James. For years, you have fought the good fight for New Yorkers, and now it’s our time to fight for you.

There is something special in this room tonight. It’s power. It’s the power of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers united. That’s right. Ready to usher in a new day. It is the power of a movement that won the battle over the soul of the Democratic Party. That put Andrew Cuomo’s vision of austerity and smallness firmly where it belongs: on a ballot line no one’s ever heard of.

It is power larger than any single person working together for a New York where dignity is delivered to all.

And it is the power of a campaign that for the second time in five months stands on the precipice of victory. Three weeks from tomorrow, we will win again.

That is only possible because of you. This campaign has built the largest volunteer effort of any in New York City history. There are 3,200 people in this theater tonight. And alongside all of you, there are over 80,000 more across our city in Brownsville, in Parkchester, in Flushing, and right here in Washington Heights.

New Yorkers who have knocked doors, phone banked, and registered voters day after day, week after week, month after month — you have worked this hard for one simple reason: to fundamentally reimagine what is possible in New York City.

Now, there are some who oppose that vision. Billionaires like Bill Ackman and Ronald Lauder have poured millions of dollars into this race because they say that we pose an existential threat.

And I am here to admit something. They are right.

We are an existential threat to billionaires who think their money can buy our democracy.

We are an existential threat to a broken status quo that buries the voices of working people beneath corporations.

And we are an existential threat to a New York where a hard day’s work isn’t enough to earn you a good night’s rest.

And we are absolutely an existential threat to disgraced politicians like Andrew Cuomo, who diminish public trust, harass women, and are unabashed in their desperation to collaborate with Donald Trump and his donors.

Let me be clear. This is not a moment for capitulation. We are in a period of political darkness. Donald Trump and his ICE agents are snatching our immigrant neighbors from our city in broad daylight, right before our eyes. His authoritarian administration is waging a scorched-earth campaign of retribution against any who dared oppose them, against the courts that dare hold them accountable, and against our trans and queer neighbors for simply daring to be themselves.

And again and again, Trump has broken the promise he made to the American people that he would fight for the working class by taking on the cost-of-living crisis. Over the last nine months, we have witnessed the largest wealth transfer from the poor to the rich in history.

Trump is like Andrew Cuomo: beholden to billionaires and oligarchs. And like Cuomo, he has bent to their will.

The decimation left in his wake has been staggering. Tens of millions of Americans, including millions right here in New York, will lose their Medicaid, their Medicare, their SNAP benefits. Because of Trump’s corruption, children will go to sleep hungry. The sick will die. Any way you measure it, our lives have gotten worse.

I think of the pastor I sat with just a few weeks ago in East Flatbush. He told me how in September, a young woman from his congregation approached him after church. She told him she was facing a deportation order. He knew her well, and he knew the work she did with young people with disabilities in this city. She told him she couldn’t afford an attorney and had no one else. She asked if he would go with her to 26 Federal Plaza. He said yes.

Sitting in the courtroom, the judge told her to be ready to leave in the clothes she was wearing. He asked her if she had said goodbye to her family. She began to cry.

And then, in what felt like a miracle, the judge changed his mind. He decided he would put her Temporary Protected Status order before the deportation order. For a minute, it seemed as if the danger had passed.

But the pastor knew that ICE stood outside. They did not care about a court order, because they do not care about the rule of law.

He turned to a few court watchers in the room and asked them to go outside first. He asked another man to hold the elevator. He picked up the young woman under her arms, opened the doors, rushed her past ICE agents into the elevator, and down into a waiting car before speeding off back to Brooklyn.

Through it all, her feet had never even touched the ground. He told me that it felt like the Underground Railroad. And still, he knew she was anything but safe.

We are living in the times that we read about. I know that for many of us when we look back at moments in history that rhyme with today, where tyranny loomed and the state imposed violence with sinister glee, we ask ourselves what we would have done. We need not wonder. That time is now.

And I am proud to look out onto this crowd, at New Yorkers who, amidst this despair, have continued to believe in a world better than this. With every block walked, every petition signature earned, you have refused to normalize a politics of cruelty, of greed, of exploitation. You have asserted your power.

We see that power when nurses and teachers and bus drivers, the hardworking men and women of organized labor, finish their shifts and go straight to a canvass launch.

We see it when the same New Yorkers who walk to work dedicate their weekends to fighting for fast and free buses for strangers they will never meet.

And we see it when grandparents whose children have long grown into adulthood fight on behalf of universal childcare so that a young family they’ve never met on the other side of the city can afford to stay here.

With this much darkness, it takes courage to light a new path. As Thomas Sankara once said, “Fundamental change only comes from the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future.” Together, that is exactly what we have done.

For too long, we have been told to be satisfied with abstractions and strongly worded letters; to be content with a politics built atop a flimsy foundation of only that which we are against, without ever declaring what we are actually for; to accept leaders who would sell us out to the highest bidder.

That is not what this movement is, nor will it ever be. We know what we are for, and we will not cower. A movement by the people and for the people answers only to the people.

So with twenty-two days until the polls close, let us say what we believe loudly and clearly for the world to know. We believe in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world that working people deserve a dignified life.

We believe that buses should be fast and [crowd yells: “free!”]

We believe that housing is far too expensive. We’re going to build hundreds of thousands of affordable homes, take on bad landlords, and freeze the [crowd yells: “rent!”]

And we believe that day care shouldn’t cost as much as a year’s tuition at City College. That’s why we’re going to deliver universal [crowd yells: “childcare!”]

These are not just slogans. These are commitments. We say them not simply to inspire but because it is what we will deliver. We believe in schools that receive the investments they need, infrastructure made resilient to the growing effects of the climate crisis, and a budget that fully funds our parks and libraries.

We believe in public safety that actually delivers safety and justice. We can make this a city where no one is afraid to walk the streets or take the subway. A city where our police officers focus on serious crimes, and it is mental health professionals that address the mental health crisis.

In New York, we believe in standing up for those that we love. Over the last nine months, we have watched the man with the most power in the world expend enormous energy targeting those with the least. Whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall, your struggle is ours too.

Make no mistake, ours is a movement where we know exactly who and what we are fighting for. We are not afraid of our own ideas. For too long, we have tried not to lose. Now, it is time that we win.

I know that since we won on June 24, there have been some who have questioned whether what we aspire towards is possible. Whether the young people they speak of as the future could also be the present. Whether a Left that has critiqued could also be the Left that delivers.

To that, my friends, I have a very simple answer: yes.

And to those who doubt, who cannot quite believe, who share our vision but fear allowing themselves to hope, I ask you: When has dignity ever been given?

The same questions asked of us were asked of organized labor, were asked of the civil rights movement, were asked of any who had the nerve to demand a future they could not yet see: Could they not wait? Could they not see that they were asking too much?

They knew that we do not get to determine the scale of the crisis that we face. We only get to decide how we respond. We know that every great victory must be won because it will never be given.

When organized labor won the weekend, so that working people would have time to rest — that was power won, not given. When those who came before us marched for voting rights and civil rights, they triumphed because they dared to dream, not because they were given permission by a political establishment content with the status quo.

When millions of seniors were lifted from lives of poverty with Social Security, that’s because Americans were sick of a bad deal and wanted a new one instead. And the New York we love was made by those who refuse to settle for less. Great leaders like Fiorella La Guardia taught us that aspiration is something to embrace, not something that we treat as a crime. When we shake loose the shackles of small expectations, our city builds parks and hospitals, and we show the world that ambition and compassion are in fact intertwined.

In an age of darkness, New York can be the light. And we can prove once and for all that the politics we practice need not be one of either fear or mediocrity. That power and principle need not live in conflict in city hall. For we will use our power to transform the principled into the possible.

In twelve days, New Yorkers will begin to cast their ballots. We will vote for our next mayor. But more than that, we will make a very simple choice.

A choice between democracy and oligarchy. A choice between a city you can afford or more of the same. A choice between a mayor who works for those straining to afford groceries or those straining to buy an election. A choice between the hope of a brighter future and a broken past.

For years, in the words of Dr Martin Luther King, we have been asked to wait for a more convenient season. We have been told that change is not yet quite possible, that it’s not yet our turn, that it will come soon enough.

We’ve been told to wait as our friends and neighbors have moved away. Told to wait as our city has only grown harder to afford. Told to wait as a good life has drifted out of reach.

My friends, we are not afforded the luxury of waiting. Because too often to wait is to trust those who delivered us to this point.

We can demand a government that makes our lives better. We can tell billionaires that this city doesn’t just belong to them. We can tell Donald Trump he cannot buy this election. And we can tell Andrew Cuomo that New York City is not for sale.

So on the evening of November 4, when the world learns that we have won again, they will know our answer to the question, we choose the future. Because for all those who say our time is coming, my friends, our time is now.