Abdul El-Sayed — "I'm not gonna tell you what you cannot have because some corporation said so." | Abdul for Senate

All right. Who here believes in Medicare for all? And who believes it's time to abolish ice? And who believes we gotta get money out of politics, and in your pocket? My name is Abdul Al Said, and I endorse this message. Listen, y'all, it just shouldn't be this hard. Shouldn't be this hard to afford a second bag of groceries. Should not be this hard in the richest, most powerful country in the world to get your kid to a doctor. Shouldn't be this hard to pay your taxes and know that that money's gonna be spent on you and your kids instead of dropping bombs on other people and their kids. Shouldn't be this hard. Should not be this hard. Now, I never intended to be a politician. My parents gave me an 11 letter for his name that's got sounds that come out of parts of people's throats. They don't know they got. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a doctor 'cause I could go 15 hours. to my family's native Egypt. Or I could go 15 minutes from where I grew up right here into the city of Detroit. And either way, I would cross a 10 year difference in life expectancy. And I don't believe it should matter the color of your skin. I don't believe it should matter what you do for work. I don't believe it should matter your paycheck. I believe you deserve to have a long, healthy life in these United States of America. I went off to the University of Michigan with that goal, went off to medical school. In my last year of medical school, I'm finally doing the work that doctors do, which is about asking and answering two questions. What's wrong, and how can I help? And too often, the answer to what was wrong had less to do with all that physiology we studied and so much more to do with pathologies in our politics. The air we breathe, the water we drink, whether or not you can walk in your community without being the victim of violence, whether or not you can see a doctor in the first place. And I realized that I wanted to solve those problems. So when all my classmates and I, we graduated medical school, they went off to residency, and I went into public health. Got the opportunity to rebuild Detroit's Health Department working alongside Detroiters. We put glasses on thousands of kids' faces for free, we took on some of the biggest corporate polluters in our entire state. We forced Marathon Petroleum, not too far from here, poisoning our kids with their pollution to invest $10 million of their own money to reduce the missions when they had wanted to increase them. After Flint. We had every school, daycare, and head start tested for lead in the water. For 68 schools, we tested, 19, Tested positive for Len. Shane, help to rewrite our state's led policies after fling. I led Wayne County's Department of Health, human and veteran services. And in case anybody's told you, I don't have governing experience. I led a $175 million agency with 550 employees in government. And we did big things. We put air quality monitors all over our county, so folks knew the quality of air they were breathing. We built the program to provide free health insurance for new small businesses. We put Narcan, life saving, anti overdose medication, in 100 locations for free. And when we found out that our county ranked number eight for medical detonation wide, $700 million of medical debt, and that we could eliminate it for pennies on the dollar, guess what we did? We set aside $7 million to erase up to $700 million of medical debt. $300,000 families. Now, this is not my first rodeo. I... didn't know if I was gonna get to have a run for office again. And I'm never gonna forget the day. Sitting in my office in Wayne County, the day the narcissist in that White House decided to freeze federal funds. Y'all remember that? I'm reviewing all the items in my budget. WIC, food on the table for moms and babies, federally qualified health centers. The last line of healthcare for people who can't get it. Vaccines, all frozen. And I get a notification to my phone, that after his long career, our current U.S. senator, Gary Peters, is retiring, and he's not seeking reelection. And I'm gonna put you in my mind right then and there. The first thing that I thought was, where is the fight for the public's health now? I'd be the first Democratic doctor elected to the U.S. that is since 1969, if I were elected. And if you've ever looked at RFK Jr. and ask what the F is going on? I think we probably could use one of those right now. And then I get a text message from our sister, Rasheeda. Habibi, this one looks like yours. And that's because I ran for governor back in 2018. I had no clue what I was doing. 32 years old, never run for office in my life. I said, You know what, I'm gonna go big or go home. I went big. Then I went home. But we earned 340,000 votes from folks like you, folks who believed in something. And I said something at the time, the votual require ready to hear. And that's that Donald Trump is not himself the disease of our politics. He is just the worst symptom of the disease. The disease is the system. That allows billionaires, big corporations, special interest, like APAC, to buy and sell politicians to do their bidding instead of ours. We pay more for all the stuff we gotta buy, get paid less for the work we do, and watch our tax dollars get misappropriated abroad, to drop bombs on other people when they should be spent on our own. So we're running a campaign. To do three things. Money out of? Money in your? Medicare for? Let talk a little bit about that. I am the only candidate, running for U.S. Senate, who has never taken a dime from a corporation to run a campaign and never win. So here you mean. We are going to ban corporate contributions in our politics. We are gonna end the Super Pacs and the 501C4s, and all the systems that they use to corrupt our politics, and we'll bring it back to the people. We got to stand with unions again. Unions, again. Unions that gave us the middle class. Unions that built the 40 hour work week. Unions that make sure our kids go to schools like this instead of going to work. We gotta stand with our union sisters and brothers again, empower unions in every sector of American life. And I think it is high past time. That somebody not named Bernie Sanders decides to stand up to some billionaires, don't you think? And let me tell you what that means. I think we need to tax billionaires their wealth. Because if you're a billionaire, and I tax you at 8%. You know what you still are. You're still a millionaire. Your kids, kids, kids, kids, kids are gonna be rich. Maybe you could spend a little bit. You've already won a capitalism so that all of our kids could get to go to good schools. And it means, in the richest, most powerful country in the whole world, medical debt shouldn't exist, I'm proud of the work we did to end it. But let's end it nationwide, and finally buy people out of medical debt by passing Medicare rule. Now... when you're a doctor, and you come up with a program to say, put glasses on kids' faces, or eliminate medical debts, you know what they come at and tell you, but doctor, how are you gonna pay for that? You know what they never ask a general, drawing up war plans, the Mom Iran, General? How you gonna pay for that? And I'll tell you this. Take me to the U.S. then, and I'm gonna be asking general, how you gonna pay for that? We spent $25 billion on this war in Iran. Nobody in the United States asked for. Just so you understand, we could eliminate all the medical debt in the whole country for $2.5 billion. Now, we're at a high school, so we're gonna do some math. We could abolish the medical debt in this country ten times over for what we spent on a war we should have never fought. And I really wish people asked, General, how the hell you gonna pay for that? It turns out the way they're gonna pay for that is to make sure that we never get the schools we deserve. We never get the health care we deserve. The gut, things like Medicaid, come for Medicare and Social Security, that's how they intend to pay for that, and I think it is high past time, you said enough is enough. Now, there is one person who has wanted us to fight this fight for the past 40 years, but he is not an American citizen. He is the leader of a foreign government. Benjamin Netanyahu has been searching for 40 years. to find a president dumb enough to go to war with Iran. And he finally found one in the form of Donald J. Trump. But ask yourself why a foreign Prime Minister gets to dictate the foreign policy of the richest, most powerful country in the whole world. There is one reason why. A super pack called APAC that is getting ready to drop $20 million on this race... to try and dictate... a world where that keeps happening. I want to be clear about something crystal clear. APAC and Israel. are not the same, as Judaism and the Jewish people. I love Judaism, and I love the Jewish people. I venerate Judaism, and I venerate the Jewish people. I stand with Judaism, and I stand with the Jewish people. And the single... And the single most dangerous thing that they try to tell us is that somehow, they can extend the definition of anti Semitism to include a foreign government and its leaders. I call bullshit. No. No. If you believe that anti Semitism extends to include a foreign government in APAC, you are creating a dangerous circumstance. That's right. So it is important for us to recognize that we love Judaism and the Jewish people because we love people, and we love Palestinians, and their rights, because we love people. And we love that our tax dollars get spent here. on schools here and healthcare here, because we love people. You cannot claim that human rights end at a border. You cannot claim that you want to invest in our kids when you send our money abroad to kill other people's kids, you cannot claim it. And I'll finish here. I got to meet with a group of teachers yesterday. The American Federation of teachers. President Wilson Lumpkins. See you. She was there. I want you to imagine you're working at a school like this one and you take all your days to try and take care of the kids in that school. And then another government employee tries to violate the sanctity of this safe space you created for kids, because they want to detain one of your students or your students' parents. They want to tell us that ice is about immigration. They want to tell us that ice is about the southern border. Now, I went to Minneapolis at the height of Project Metro Surgeon. You know how cold it was there? Negative two degrees? And I thought to myself, damn, this is not the southern border. I'm a public school educated kid. I learned maps. And I was, like, pretty damn far away from the southern border. Why are they in Minneapolis? It turns out that ice is about something far crueler. Ice is about normalizing, putting government thugs on our streets against the Constitution itself. And maybe it's because I ran government agencies, but I can tell you that once a culture of impunity sets in, there is no reform. What do you tell an agent who used a child as bait? I mean, can you imagine the PowerPoint's lie that you'd have to design? No, don't take the kid. You cannot reform this. You cannot retrain this. The only logical path is to abolish ice. Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. I'm sure you heard, I can't win this race. I got the wrong name. I got the wrong color skin. I come, my family comes from the wrong places. I pray the wrong way. My beard's too weak. But I'll tell you this. People like to dissect you when you're a candidate for office, but you spend a lot more time thinking about everyone else. While people look at me, I get the privilege of looking at you. I get to see you in all of your glorious diversity all over the state. The best thing about training as a doctor was that people brought you the gift of their vulnerability, because they thought you could do something about it. And the best thing about running for office is exactly this thing. Across the various communities, I've been in, living rooms in Grand Rapids, or VFW halls in Escanaba, or churches in Detroit, people bring that to you, that gift of bearing their soul and their pain, and hoping that you could do something about it. Now, I've never fully belonged to anyone tribe. I was raised by my father, an Egyptian immigrant, my stepmom, Jackie, a daughter of the American Revolution. I grew up in a family where I'd spend some of my summer in Egypt, and then another part of my summer in a cottage on a lake in Montcalm County, Michigan. I remember having to explain one of my grandmothers to the other grandmother. And here's the thing about it. When your grandmother gives you a kiss on the forehead, tells you she loves you, makes you your favorite meal, it is done with the exact same life. And in the ensuing eight years, I've had the privilege of having my own children. And I've come to understand that vulnerability you feel. When you look your own kids in the eye and you ask, What is the future for you? My little girls and my incredible wife, Zara, are here. Ethnically, my girls are half Egyptian, like me, half Indian, like their mom, or they got their looks, you can see. 100% American. Growing up in America. They're growing up in America where I'm afraid that they have fewer rights than their immigrant grandparents had when they moved here. Grandparents who took a bet on a set of ideals. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men, should say people, are created equal. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And I know I'm not the right candidate. But I also know I'm not gonna stand up at a stage like this and tell you what you cannot have because some corporation said so and what you should not fight for because their politicians told you couldn't. So I think over the last couple of months, they learned something about this movement. When they tell us that we cannot show up and fight for healthcare, we don't back down. When they tell us that we just how to make good with ice on our streets, we don't back down. When they tell us that we can't get corporations out of our politics. We don't back down when they tell us that unions should just disempower and sit down. We don't back down. And when they tell us that we cannot have a future, we want to pass on to our kids, we don't knock down. So with that. It is a privilege and an honor. To get to introduce the gentleman. who has never backed down. Y'all, I'm 41 years old. I like to think of myself as like a middle aged man. He's been more consistent before I was ever born. People are like, Abdul, why do you think this movement's surviving? I was like, well, consistency. I've been saying the same thing for the better part of us, a decade. And then I thought about myself, man. He's been saying the same thing for a better part of a century. The man I'm going to introduce, who needs no introduction, is the reason that Medicare For All sits on our lips when we worry about how we're gonna parent it up. He is the reason why. We recognize that you can run on and win a politics where we got money out of politics. He is the reason why. We never back down when it comes to union rights. He's the reason why. We understand that we don't have to bend over backwards when a general tells us that we've just got to go to war. And he is the reason why. When I thought about running for this seat. I travel to Washington, D.C. And I said, Senator, I'm thinking about this race. He said, Abu, that's good. Very good. I told him, I can't do this without you. And he said, Okay. This is not his first rodeo. It's not even his first visit to Michigan, this cycle. And we know it's not gonna be his last. So, please. Oh, big. Loud. Detroit, welcome. For the OG himself, Senator, Valdi Sando