Speech and Images: Julie Menin Delivers First Speech as Council Speaker

NEW YORK, NY - The New York City Council voted today to elect Julie Menin as Speaker during its 2026 Charter Meeting. Official images from the meeting will be made available here.

Read Julie Menin's first speech as Speaker, as prepared for delivery:

Thank you everyone.

Words truly cannot describe the tremendous gratitude I feel for my incredible colleagues. I am humbled by the faith, trust, and confidence you have placed in me. And I pledge to be a speaker for every single member of this council.

I want to start by recognizing some of the honored guests who are here with us in the room today including: Former Speakers of the City Council: Speaker Adrienne Adams, Speaker Corey Johnson, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, and Speaker Gifford Miller.

Thank you for joining us today: NYS Attorney General Tish James, NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, and our new Comptroller Mark Levine. From our new administration, First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Jahmila Edwards.

We have been joined by Bronx Borough President Vanessa L. Gibson, Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Former Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., and NYS State Senator Sam Sutton.

I now want to thank our friends in labor who have supported us for all these years. President of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, Rich Maroko; President of SEIU Local 32BJ, Manny Pastreich; President of the UFT, Michael Mulgrew; Executive Director of the DC37, Henry Garrido; President of the AFT, Randi Weingarten; President RWDSU, Stuart Applebaum; and President of NY Central Labor Council, Brendan Griffith. And we are also joined by the District Council of Carpenters.

And some of the individuals who are not able to be here today but have been so amazing throughout this entire process:

With Washington and Albany in session, Queens County Democratic Chairman, Congressman Gregory Meeks, and Bronx County Democratic Chairman, State Senator Jamaal Bailey are not able to be here. But they are represented by Frank Bolz, Counsel to the Queens County Democratic Party, and Ariana Collado, Executive Director of the Bronx Democratic Party.

We are joined by Brooklyn County Democratic Chairwoman, NYS Assembly Member Rodyense Bichotte Hermelyn.

And I am so proud that we are also joined by: Former City Councilmember Keith Powers, Mark Weprin, Mark Treyger, and former Congressmember Carolyn Maloney.

I want to extend a special thank you to the members who ran spirited campaigns for speaker - Crystal Hudson, Chris Marte, Selvena Brooks-Powers, and Amanda Farias. You all ran races of integrity, and I look forward to working with you in the coming years.

And finally, I want to thank my family.

I know I am here today in great part because of the paths that every member blazed not just for the City Council, but for women in leadership - especially with this historic, majority-women Council.

And I have had no greater professional honor in my life than to stand before you as Speaker.

When I think about what that honor means, I think about what brought me to this moment, and what brought all of us here today: It is the story of America, which is the story of New York - and that is the story of immigrants.

Right now, we gather at City Hall, but mere blocks away is where that story starts: By the shoreline of Battery Park.

It is the place where land meets the water and history meets the present. The place where newcomers became New Yorkers, and where immigrants came to seek a better life. Because they came here with hope - hope that this city, and this country, could give them a chance to achieve the American dream.

In the early 1950s, two of those immigrants were my mother and grandmother. Yet their journey to the land of the free was far from a timid one. They both survived the Holocaust in Hungary by hiding in a cellar. But my grandfather was murdered solely for being Jewish.

After the war ended, my mother and grandmother stayed in Hungary - but even this new chapter did not lead them into a world of freedom. When the Soviets took over, they sealed the borders - and with mines along the fences, there was no way out. But my grandmother was fearless, and in the middle of the night, thanks to the compassion of a stranger, she took my mother and escaped to Czechoslovakia.

Europe was still no friendly place for Jews, and the only country that would take them in was Australia. But after living in Sydney for six years, they finally fulfilled their dream to come to New York. When they arrived, they settled into a rent-controlled apartment in little Hungary with little more than that newly American hope - and the stubborn refusal to give it up.

The East Side of Manhattan was a community that welcomed my family with open arms, A community that gave them a better life after the horrors they had been through. And with the beauty of life bringing things full circle, it is now a community that I have the true privilege of representing.

This is the story of so many New Yorkers - it's Dominican families in Washington Heights, and Mexican families in Sunset Park, opening doors to their homes and small businesses to new arrivals.

It's Haitian households in Flatbush and Canarsie embracing those fleeing instability, and Caribbean communities in Crown Heights and East New York extending the same support they once received.

It's Polish families in Greenpoint and Ridgewood helping the next generation find their footing, and Chinese families in Flushing supporting them through family networks and local shops.

It's South Asian families in Jackson Heights and Richmond Hill welcoming newcomers with opportunity, and West African families in the Bronx and Staten Island building communities rooted in faith, work, and mutual care.

Now, I want to personally say that I never thought of myself as a politician, and never imagined I would run for office when I first engaged in public service. In fact, after practicing law for seven years, I left the legal profession to open up a small business - a restaurant in lower Manhattan.

But when 9/11 happened, it changed everything. Both my restaurant and my home at the time were located just a few blocks from Ground Zero. My husband Bruce was supposed to be at the World Trade Center that fateful morning, but unbeknownst to me he had moved the location of his meeting at the last minute. My mother, who lived with us, had gone to a doctor's appointment earlier that day, and I couldn't find her until later that afternoon.

Thankfully, our family was ok. But my small business had been decimated - with every window blown out, with broken glass everywhere, and with carcinogenic ash covering every inch of the place.

When insurance carriers took out full-page advertisements in all the local papers, they promised New Yorkers they were in our corner. And when insurance carriers gave us small business owners a mere five days of business interruption payments - despite us being in the frozen zone for months - they broke that promise. But that broken promise forged a new one within me - a promise to take on large corporations that engaged in predatory conduct.

While the windows of my restaurant were shattered, our spirit of resilience was anything but. After founding a non-profit to restore the vibrancy and vitality of Lower Manhattan, growing it to 30,000 members, I ended up chairing the Community Board for seven years. From programs like Art Downtown and Music Downtown, to building new schools and the WTC Performing Arts Center, to helping over 600 small businesses stay in the community, we planted the seeds for Lower Manhattan's revival at a time when people doubted our ability to rebuild.

But our city also faced another distressing issue in the wake of 9/11: the deplorable surge of Islamophobia. When the construction of an Islamic cultural center was proposed near Ground Zero - a center to foster dialogue and unity - people fiercely opposed it. And that shameful opposition sent a signal to Muslim New Yorkers that they did not belong in a city that is meant to welcome everyone. When their freedom of religion was protested in public, we could not stand by in silence.

Along with Daisy Khan, who proposed the project - and whom I'm honored is here with us today - we stood up to champion the rights of every New Yorker. Despite the death threats I received - not for a week, not for a month, but for over a year - we did not waver in our support of this project. So as chair of the community board, I was proud to write the resolution and guide my members to vote overwhelmingly in favor of the Islamic cultural center and mosque.

Sadly, that surge we saw over twenty years ago is not unlike the atmosphere we are currently experiencing. Hatred and violence are running rampant across our country and around the world - from the horrific shooting at Brown University, to the antisemitic terror attack at Bondi Beach in Sydney. But we must ensure that New York continues to serve as a beacon of hope, tolerance, and inclusion.

We live in a day when the first Muslim mayor of New York City, and the first Jewish speaker of this Council, are serving at the same time. This moment truly is historic. But what will write this interfaith leadership into the history books is if it can act as an opportunity for all of us to come together - to calm tensions, to bridge divides, and to recognize we are one city, no matter the religion we practice or the language we speak.

Building that Islamic cultural center meant upholding the dignity that every New Yorker deserves, and for the past four years in the City Council, it has been an honor striving to do that with you all in so many ways.

For the past four years, we have worked to build more affordable housing in every single borough. We have worked to combat antisemitism through education, launching a program to bring every 8th-grade public school student to the Museum of Jewish Heritage. We have worked to address issues around health disparities and maternal mortality. And we have worked to take the first steps to enact universal childcare - and by working with the Mayor and Governor, we can truly make it a reality.

But now, we all have an exceptional opportunity to take the Council into a new era. A proactive era. An era of initiative and ingenuity.

Rather than simply wait to react to ULURPS, we as a Council will release our own affordable housing plan by looking at the 215 public library branches we can use. And we are going to study the 1,000 DCAS under-utilized and city-owned assets that we can convert into affordable housing for New Yorkers who need them.

As a Council, we must make it easier for our small businesses to operate by slashing fines and cutting red tape. And we must tackle skyrocketing healthcare costs because medical debt is the leading cause of financial burden. Why should a woman giving birth by c-section pay $55,000 at one NYC hospital, and $17,000 at another two blocks away? It shouldn't - and we will use the new Healthcare Accountability office to lower exorbitant healthcare costs once and for all.

As a Council, we must confront the culture of fraud, abuse, and corruption that has plagued City Hall, and enact procurement reform to end no-bid contracts that have cost our city billions. We have to ensure city services are functioning at the highest levels, and restore the enormous staff vacancies that have gutted our agencies.

We must counter income inequality with historic investments in baby bonds and universal college savings accounts - because ongoing education, whether it be vocational school or community college, can lead to double the wages earned in one's lifetime.

In certain parts of the city, our immigrant communities are facing an increasingly hostile environment. And as a council, we must work to ensure that every family feels safe enough to put down roots in their neighborhoods - roots which strengthen the structure, shape the culture, and provide the vibrancy of the five boroughs.

But as your Speaker, I want to anchor our vision of leadership in the story of our city - a vision as hopeful of the immigrants who come here, and as persistent as the spirit that drove them here. The waves of immigrants that arrived on our shores created waves of change that forever altered the fabric of our history. They brought new perspectives and ideas. They brought new solutions to old problems and new people to solve them - and they still do.

As the first Jewish speaker, I want my vision of leadership to be as focused on dissolving division as it is on uniting all coalitions. And most of all, I want to be a speaker for every single member of this council. Because I know the fight to create a safer, stronger, and more affordable New York is not won alone - and we need to work together to make the greatest city in the world even greater.

As a body of 51 individuals, the legislation that is most life-changing and forward-thinking comes from the collection of policies to which all of us contribute. Our city has flourished because our foundation wasn't built on simplistic paradigms - and because of our ability to hold two truths that may seem mutually exclusive, but are, in fact, mutually reinforcing.

For instance, our city needs meaningful criminal justice reform, and at the same time, we must have the requisite resources for robust public safety measures. Our city needs to attract new businesses, and at the same time, we must have the strongest worker protections in the country. And our city needs to protect the first amendment right to peacefully protest, and at the same time, we must never jeopardize a New Yorker's right to worship - because we cannot let what happened outside Park East synagogue ever happen again, at any house of worship.

To me, this especially hits home. Our faith is about our family. Now, I know I said earlier that being elected speaker is the greatest professional honor of my life, but I'll happily admit that being a mom will always remain the role that is most important to me. As a mother of four, my children give me a lot of love, pride, and joy, but they also give me a lot of ideas. And as I was speaking to them about what I should say today, they continued to deliver.

One of the ideas my seven year-old daughter proposed was a law that social media should only be used to show nice things, like baking cakes, or cute stuffed animals. Hard to disagree with her on that one. But then she said something else. She said we should pass a law that when you cross the street, we must all smile at each other.

At first, her idea made me smile. But in the next instant, it sent me back more than twenty years. I thought of the days right after 9/11 - and how we all had a little more love, a little more patience for one another. Or how during COVID we all checked in with each other, looked out for one another. How in the worst of times, we still had the capacity to give our best. And we still do.

It shouldn't take childlike exuberance, or a tragedy, or even the memory of one to forge compassion within us. It shouldn't take retelling the story of New York to remind ourselves that immigrants in every decade built and rebuilt this city. But when we do, when we remember who planted the seeds that bore the fruits of our success; when we recall that the cohesion of our community is rooted in the tolerance of our differences, not the echo chamber of our similarities - we can celebrate New York as a city that leaves no one behind, a city that was founded as much on courage as on kindness, a city that raised me and my family and millions of others.

And we will be a Council that works for all of them.

Thank you.

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