LIVE from Detroit: Keynote with Debbie Stabenow, Mark Schauer

Good Morn­ing from Detroit! This is the last day of the con­fer­ence and we are begin­ning the day with keynotes from Mark Schauer, can­di­date to replace Sny­der as gov­er­nor of Michi­gan, and Sen­a­tor Deb­bie Stabenow.

Lisa Brown is Schauer’s run­ning-mate. Schauer promis­es to repeal “Right-To-Work-For-Less” and to sup­port unions. Schauer promis­es equal pay for equal work. Schauer will work for afford­able health care and will work with Oba­ma and Stabenow on strength­en­ing the auto indus­try in Michigan.

Stabenow wel­comes Net­roots to Detroit and thanks them for choos­ing Detroit for the loca­tion of the con­fer­ence. “Detroit is a great city with great hard-work­ing peo­ple who are work­ing to turn Detroit around”. Stabenow thanks Bet­ty Wiggens for cre­at­ing gar­dens in the pub­lic schools in Detroit.

Michi­gan is #1 on clean ener­gy patents. Michi­gan has cre­at­ed 70,000 jobs, but still has work to do to get employ­ment back to where it was. Stabenow says it is an out­rage that thou­sands in Detroit are with­out water.

“The game is still rigged for the major­i­ty and only ben­e­fits the few at the top”, say Stabenow and makes ref­er­ence to the Koch broth­ers. “What we need is to raise every­one up with good jobs, health­care, Social Secu­ri­ty”. Stabenow says that every­one deserves a fair shot at get­ting ahead in Michigan.

“If a fair shot can work 100 years ago, a fair shot can work today”, Stabenow said in ref­er­ence to the begin­nings of the auto indus­try when good wages were paid.

“Too many stu­dents are left with only one choice for edu­ca­tion and are left with mounds and mounds of debt.”  Stabenow rein­forces the need for “equal pay for equal work”, good health­care and Social Security.

Stabenow has intro­duced the “Bring Jobs Home Act” and asked every­one in the audi­ence to call their Sen­a­tors and Con­gress­men and ask them to sup­port this bill. Stabenow says that we need to bring back the jobs that were off-shored.

Stabenow: “I need Gary Peters in the Sen­ate” in call­ing for peo­ple to help orga­nize and cam­paign to help Peters win the elec­tion.

Stabenow clos­es by rein­forc­ing the need to keep up the good fight for pro­gres­sive values.