Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul and Bipartisan Coalition of Elected Leaders Meet to Highlight Shared Commitment to Standing Against Political Violence

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul convened a meeting with a bipartisan group of elected leaders to highlight a shared commitment to standing against political violence and bringing down the temperature on inflammatory rhetoric. The bipartisan group received a briefing from the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services about the correlation of volatile language to an increase in threats of political violence. Political violence is preventable, and today's meeting shows that bipartisan political cooperation can send a message that political violence is unacceptable.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

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

Good afternoon. Last week was certainly a difficult one. As we saw in a single day, a school shooting in Colorado followed by an attack on a campus in Utah - and that resulted in the assassination of an activist known as Charlie Kirk. And his assassination was certainly the latest in a troubling trend of political violence in this nation.

You think about the April firebombing of fellow Governor Josh Shapiro's home - barely escaped with the safety of his children. A June shooting of a Minnesota lawmaker, Melissa Hortman and her husband. And it continues. We will never forget the assassination attempt on President Trump when he was campaigning last year.

Earlier attacks at the home of Nancy Pelosi and her husband. Attempt to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. And, of course, the attacks on our Capitol on January 6. And we've even seen domestic terrorism in our own State of New York, and it was just over a few years ago, three years ago, when 10 innocent individuals were gunned down doing nothing more than shopping in a neighborhood grocery store. It was a racially motivated killing spree.

And in the aftermath of that - but also as a precursor to what is now unfolding - we took immediate action as we do here in New York. I had an Executive Order to increase funding for threat monitoring and targeted violence prevention. And in my first Budget, I made sure that we could provide more money to localities - $10 million to invest in domestic terrorism grants.

We actually knew we needed to beef up our online surveillance. I think there had been just a small handful of people doing this job statewide, and we added 20 employees full-time and almost $16 million to the Budget there, and added more people to the operations and focusing on investing in our State Police.

So we're doing what we can, looking at cybersecurity - Colonel Crowe and others give me a regular briefing on the threats in our state, and whether they're homegrown or abroad. But it's really gotten to a point where we've really seen enough. How much more can this country endure? And I will call out dehumanizing language that leads to violence anytime - and that does not censor me from telling the truth, but there is a way that incidents, or disagreements or policies can be described.

Now earlier today, and I want to thank all the elected officials who joined us here, we heard from every elected official here, but also six more leaders who are on Zoom - we can identify those, and leaders from the Senate in the Assembly majority, minority. I wanted to have a small, more intimate dialogue, but also, really create an environment where people can just speak out and talk about what's on their mind - and it was very important for me to hear.

It was very candid, and we talked about the role that we play as leaders, our personal responsibility and our own social media posts, like, should elected officials be on social media? When you think about the debates and the fights that continue in that platform - and really, again, just beyond just what elected officials do - just the rise in the hate speech and dehumanization that occurs when things are said that we discuss, you'd never say to someone walking down the street, or in your workplace or in your place of worship.

So, there's something that Commissioner Bray talked about, about how inflammatory rhetoric leads to real violence - and she'll talk about some of the statistics that she monitors regularly. And it's not just a theory. There's something called stochastic terrorism. And what that is that direct linkage between the speech and the action. And what is happening, the dehumanization of people and ideas, is leading to these violent consequences.

So every leader has to be conscious of their language - all of us. And also, I have a friend, someone I got to know as he led our National Governor's Association, Governor Cox of Utah - it was his home state where the most recent political assassination occurred, Charlie Kirk. And he launched an initiative urging people to disagree better a number of years ago.

I, as a Governor, and 23 others signed onto this initiative, and he launched it in cities and elsewhere. We had conversations about it, we did some videos. And it was born out of a desire to debate real ideas but not dehumanize our political opponents for people we disagree with. So I want to thank him for that, but also encourage others to take some of the lessons - and we've handed out some literature on the websites, and just some basic lessons in humanity.

And it's a shame that we have to even talk about that - what you would've learned likely from your parents, or in schools or in your houses of worship when you were younger. But, how do we lose that? Where does it go? How is all that teaching about our shared values as Americans dissipate over a disagreement on a policy or the way someone phrases the debate? That's what we need to figure out. What is happening from that young innocent age, and is it the radicalization of exposure to social media? We saw that was the genesis of the top shooter in Buffalo - direct correlation between him imitating and parroting language that had occurred at the (Christchurch massacres) in New Zealand.

So, we can do more as elected officials. We need to listen a lot more, respect differences of opinion and I think it would be surprising to many others who think that there is this divide that's forever there based on your party affiliation. I once represented the most Republican district in the State of New York as a Democrat. I recall going to Congress in my early days, and they had Democrats on one side, Republicans on the other, and I had the audacity to sometimes go across the aisle - there literally is an aisle. And you'd swear that there was some sort of moat or alligators there because nobody else was doing that.

There was some fear of crossing over and being seen on the other side. I never had a problem with it, because I'd talked to members of the other party, Republicans, about shared interests; representing Upstate; what we can do for our farmers, what we can do for our communities. And I think we just have to do more about just getting more to that gut level and getting back to the values we learned as we were younger, and what defines us - and I've always believed, set us apart as Americans - because it doesn't feel like it's there right now. And it's a shame that our children have to grow up in this environment, but it's not too late to change.

I grew up in a time of political assassination. John Kennedy - when I was very young, John Kennedy; Dr. Martin Luther King; Bobby Kennedy; the shooting of George Wallace, a candidate for office; Gerry Ford was shot; Ronald Reagan was shot. So, it's not new to this generation, but social media has taken it where it has created a more dangerous situation, not just for those national leaders, but also for a political activist or a Minnesota House Member.

So it's gotten down to a level that's causing a great deal of anxiety among elected officials of all stripes, their families, and all communities. But I do believe that there's a chance for a reset - that's what I want to talk about, is a reset - and despite views of the past, statements of the past, this could be a defining moment for our nation. And that's why I'm so proud to stand with like-minded elected officials from Long Island all the way to Buffalo who had this conversation and feel committed to doing what we can to disagree better, and model the behavior that we want to see in all of our residents.

And so, I will turn it over to Commissioner Bray to give just some highlights of what we talked about and some data, and then ask two of our in-person representatives to give a couple of their reflections.

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