{"id":49229,"date":"2022-06-07T19:17:55","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T02:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=49229"},"modified":"2022-06-08T09:18:32","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T16:18:32","slug":"secretary-antony-j-blinken-remarks-at-the-inter-american-dialogue-mayors-workshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=49229","title":{"rendered":"Secretary Antony J. Blinken Remarks at the Inter-American Dialogue Mayors Workshop"},"content":{"rendered":"
06\/07\/2022 09:11 PM EDT<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State<\/p>\n

Los Angeles, California<\/p>\n

Millennium Biltmore Hotel<\/p>\n

MS BILL-CHAVEZ:\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>So my name is Rebecca Bill-Chavez.\u00a0 I\u2019m the president and CEO of the Inter-American Dialogue; the host of this event, Mayor Garcetti, and (inaudible).\u00a0 (Laughter.)\u00a0 There you are.\u00a0 Sorry (inaudible).<\/p>\n

And so thank you so much, Mr. Secretary, for joining us.\u00a0 We\u2019ve spent the day talking about global solutions to some of the most pressing challenges that the hemisphere is facing, so we have a gathering of mayors from the United States as well as from Latin America and the Caribbean, and we\u2019re all just thrilled you could join us.<\/p>\n

SECRETARY BLINKEN:<\/b>\u00a0 Thank you, Rebecca, so much.\u00a0 First of all, it\u2019s wonderful to see all of the colleagues here.\u00a0 I want to thank you, Rebecca.\u00a0 I want to thank the Inter-American Dialogue for bringing us together (inaudible).\u00a0 Mr. Mayor of the City of Los Angeles, thank you, thank you, thank you.\u00a0 We have an old bad joke here where we say, \u201cI\u2019m from the federal government.\u00a0 I\u2019m here to help.\u201d\u00a0 (Laughter.)\u00a0 Well, the truth is mayors can say, \u201cI\u2019m the mayor.\u00a0 I actually do help.\u201d\u00a0 You make a huge difference every single day.\u00a0 This is where, as you know better than I do, citizenry and government really come together.<\/p>\n

And on every single cutting-edge issue that we have to deal with, whether it\u2019s climate, whether it\u2019s health, whether it\u2019s technology, whether it\u2019s transportation, this is where it\u2019s happening.\u00a0 Your cities are in so many ways innovation labs where we are learning from what you\u2019re doing every single day and hopefully applying these lessons.<\/p>\n

As I said, it\u2019s also where there is more democratic connectivity than at any other level of government.\u00a0 And so to the extent that we need to demonstrate \u2013 and I believe that we do \u2013 that democracies can really effectively deliver for their citizens, you are the ones who are doing it, and we will rise or fall on the success that you have.<\/p>\n

So one of the things that we really wanted to do is to foster even greater connectivity among mayors, among municipalities, and we\u2019re doing that in a way that I am extremely excited by.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to have the first Cities Summit of the Americas next year in Denver.\u00a0 (Applause.)\u00a0 I think it\u2019s incredibly fitting that we\u2019re doing this in Denver, which is really an extraordinary innovation hub in the United States.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to be bringing together city leaders.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to bring together the private sector, advocates, communities \u2013 all to look at how we can make our urban environments work better and find solutions.\u00a0 And of course, our own hemisphere is the most heavily urbanized part of the world.\u00a0 Eighty percent of the people in our hemisphere live in cities.\u00a0 The success that cities have will make all the difference in our future.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re also launching an initiative called Cities Forward, where we\u2019re going to be bringing municipalities together with technical experts to find sustainable solutions to the challenges that we all face and that our citizens face.<\/p>\n

So for me this is the very first event of the Summit of the Americas.\u00a0 (Applause.)\u00a0 I\u2019m really looking (inaudible) with all of you.\u00a0 (Laughter.)\u00a0 Okay.\u00a0 Mostly I\u2019m really excited to see what you\u2019re all going to be doing, both here in the next few days, but also over the next few years.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be in Denver next year, look forward to that.\u00a0 But meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Mr. Mayor, thank you, thank you, thank you.\u00a0 And to all of you, we\u2019ll have a great summit.\u00a0 Thank you so much.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

06\/07\/2022 09:11 PM EDT   Antony...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49229"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49230,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49229\/revisions\/49230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}