“We can’t be satisfied until the economic revitalization we are seeing in some of Detroit’s neighborhoods is felt in all of Detroit’s neighborhoods,” Clinton said. “We can’t be satisfied until every parent has a good paying job, and every grandparent has secure retirement,” said the Democratic presidential candidate frontrunner.
Clinton’s 3o-minute speech at Cobo Hall addressed both the DPS and the Flint crises. “We can’t be satisfied until all of Detroit’s children are learning in good schools, with good classrooms with good teachers with no crumbling ceilings or mold or rats scurrying across the floor,” she said, adding, “Or do we think some children are less worthy, some families less valuable, some people less than because of their race, religion, income, gender, identity or some other ugly excuse,” Clinton said. “Do we want America to be a place where, as Langston Hughes put it, the quality is in the air we breathe.”
On the Flint water contamination crisis she said: “There are too many Flints in America, places where the water children are drinking is not safe, where the air they breath is not clean,” Clinton said. “We cannot get distracted, not until all of our children have what they deserve in every community that has been left out and left behind.”
Clinton who also delivered the keynote address at NAACP’s Freedom Fund dinner while serving as a U.S. senator in 2004, implored African American voters to preserve President Barack Obama’s legacy. Obama is also a keynote alum, having addressed the attendees of the world’s largest sit don dinner in 2005. “Look at all of the great things happening in the city. There is a palpable feeling of pride and progress. And the auto industry just had its best year ever,” she said, noting that much of that progress has happened under the leadership of President Barack Obama. “We cannot let Barack Obama’s legacy fall into Donald Trump’s hands. If I’m fortunate enough to be president, I’m going to fight to tear down those barriers. … My administration will look like America.”
Clinton is 218 delegates short of clinching the Democratic nomination, with 2,165 delegates to Sanders’ 1,357, which includes her 520 superdelegates. Superdelegates include party leaders and members of Congress. Clinton lost Michigan’s democratic primary to challenger Bernie Sanders last month by 17,168 votes, capturing 49.7 percent of the primary vote.
