Mark Serrano

I'm going to step up, Jackson Arelli.

I'm going to make sure you take New Jersey because that should have been mine last year.

No, no, no.

Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns.

And yet over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater.

Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city who made this movement their own.

This campaign is about people like Wesley, an 1199 organizer I met outside of Elmhurst Hospital on Thursday night.

It's about people like the woman I met on the BX33 years ago, who said to me, I used to love New York, but now it's just where I live.

And it's about people like Richard,

The taxi driver I went on a 15-day hunger strike with outside of City Hall.

Because of you, we will make this city one that working people can love and live in again.

Now I know that I have asked for much from you over this last year.

Time and again you have answered my calls.

But I have one final request.

We have held it in anticipation of defeat.

Held it because the air has been knocked out of our lungs too many times to count.

Held it because we cannot afford to exhale.

I am so proud to be your son.

And to my incredible wife Rama, Hayati, there is no one I would rather have by my side in this moment and in every moment.

To every New Yorker, whether you voted for me, for one of my opponents, or felt too disappointed by politics to vote at all,