‘Will Not Wait’ on Inequality, de Blasio Tells New York
By THOMAS KAPLAN
Bill de Blasio on Wednesday claimed his place as the 109th mayor of New
York City, delivering an address at City Hall in front of luminaries
like the Clintons as well as hundreds of ordinary New Yorkers.
‘Will Not Wait’ on Inequality, de Blasio Tells New York
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Bill de Blasio was ceremonially sworn in as mayor by former President Clinton on Wednesday outside of City Hall. More Photos »
By THOMAS KAPLAN
Published: January 1, 2014
Claiming his place as the 109th mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio delivered an inaugural address
on Wednesday that focused on the issue of inequality, promising that
the attention he gave to the subject when he was running for office was
not merely campaign rhetoric.
Related
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Text of Bill de Blasio’s Inauguration Speech (January 2, 2014)
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De Blasio Sworn In as New York Mayor (January 1, 2014)
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De Blasio Draws All Liberal Eyes to New York City (January 1, 2014)
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Bill de Blasio during his inauguration ceremony on Wednesday outside City Hall. More Photos »
Outside City Hall, in front of an audience that included members of his
family, luminaries like Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton and hundreds of
ordinary New Yorkers, Mayor de Blasio spoke of the city’s history of
embracing liberal causes, and he laid out a mayoralty that emphasized
social and economic justice.
“We are called to put an end to economic and social inequalities that
threaten to unravel the city we love,” he said. “And so today, we commit
to a new progressive direction in New York. And that same progressive
impulse has written our city’s history. It’s in our DNA.”
He called on “millions of everyday New Yorkers, in every corner of our city,” for their help.
“Our work begins now,” Mr. de Blasio told the audience, saying he would
push for the development of affordable housing, the preservation of
local hospitals and the expansion of prekindergarten. For several
causes, he punctuated his call for action with the words: “We won’t
wait.”
Mr. de Blasio, 52, was formally sworn in shortly after midnight in a
brief ceremony in front of his family’s rowhouse in Park Slope,
Brooklyn.
Shortly after 1 p.m., he was ceremonially sworn in by former President
Clinton, in whose administration he had served as a regional official in
the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mr. de Blasio was
sworn in using a Bible once owned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
He spoke for about 20 minutes, during a ceremony that began with hip-hop
music and ended with an invitation for New Yorkers to meet the new
mayor.
A Democrat, Mr. de Blasio begins his term as an emblem of resurgent liberalism,
offering hope to progressive activists and officeholders across the
country — but also as an untested chief executive whose management of
the city will be closely scrutinized.
Previously the city’s public advocate and before that a city councilman,
Mr. de Blasio rose out of obscurity in a crowded Democratic primary
field as he shaped his campaign around the “tale of two cities” — a
succinct summation of the rising income inequality he vowed he would
urgently address as the next mayor.
“We will make this one city,” Mr. de Blasio said in his inaugural
address. “And that mission — our march toward a fairer, more just, more
progressive place, our march to keep the promise of New York alive for
the next generation — it begins today.”
The mayor also spoke of his proposal to expand prekindergarten and
after-school programs by increasing taxes on high-earning New Yorkers.
“We do not ask more of the wealthy to punish success,” he said. “We do it to create more success stories.”
Mr. de Blasio won a landslide victory on Nov. 5 over the Republican
candidate, Joseph J. Lhota, seizing on an anxiety among voters that the
city was increasingly becoming a gilded enclave for the rich, and vowing
a sharp turn from the administration of his predecessor, Michael R.
Bloomberg, who had served for 12 years.
The new mayor appeared at City Hall on Wednesday with his wife, Chirlane
McCray; his 19-year-old daughter, Chiara; and his 16-year-old son,
Dante.
Mr. de Blasio’s successor as public advocate, Letitia James, who had
been a city councilwoman, was also inaugurated on Wednesday, as was the
new city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, who had been the Manhattan
borough president.
Children played an unexpectedly prominent role in the swearings-in of both Ms. James and Mr. Stringer.
Dasani Coates, the 12-year-old girl at the center of a recent New York Times series
about the plight of the 22,000 homeless children in New York City, was
called upon by Ms. James to hold the Bible while she was being sworn in.
In the series, Dasani and her family — her parents and seven siblings —
were living in a decrepit room in a homeless shelter in Brooklyn.
On Wednesday, Dasani looked happy but slightly nervous, chewing gum as
she solemnly watched Ms. James take the oath of office.
Afterward, Ms. James held Dasani’s hand during her speech, and referred to her as her “new BFF.”
Earlier, as Mr. Stringer raised his left hand (not his right) to be
sworn in, his young son Max, whom his wife, Elyse Buxbaum, was holding,
squirmed and seemed to register a few audible objections.
But Mr. Stringer managed to get through his oath. Afterward, he joked of
Max, “He’s not quite ready for a television commercial yet, but we’re
working on it.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
COPY http://international.nytimes.com/
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