FDR Four Freedoms Park Memorial Day with Council Member Ben Kallos
Channel: New York City Council Member Ben Kallos
Date: 2014-05-27

Thank you to the brave men and women of the United States armed forces who have served and have given their lives to protect our freedom.

Thank you to all those here present today who are joining us in remembering our fallen soldiers that we commemorate on this Memorial Day.

I am New York City Council Member Ben Kallos.

I have the honor of representing Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedom's Park.

Thank you for the leadership of the Four Freedoms Park Conservancy who make today's ceremony possible:
• Sally Minard, President
• William J. vanden Heuvel, Founder & Chair Emeritus
• Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., Honorary Chair
• Barbara Shattuck Kohn, Chair
• William R. Griffith, Secretary & Treasurer

 
"Freedom is not free," and we continue to strive to attain the Four Freedoms set forth by President Franklin D. Roosevelt:

The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want ... -- everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which ... means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation...

I hope, perhaps selfishly, that these freedoms can be attained now -- in our generation.

Today we remember the more than one million men and women who died in our armed forces to protect our freedom.

Tomorrow, I yearn, as generations before me have, for a future, a future where freedom from fear has been attained in our generation, when as prayed for millennia ago in Isaiah, "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."