AAM did what we set out to do—to rally the people and sound the proverbial “firebell in the night.”  We launched our Town Hall campaign on Tuesday night with a resounding triumph in granite-solid Manchester, New Hampshire.  And it seems that while the people “get it,” not everyone has put “manufacturing crisis” on their radar.

Manchester’s Palace Theater is a great, old-time venue.  Built in 1915, it has that timeless look of classic Americana—balconies, orchestra pit, box seats, drapes, curtains, red-white-and-blue bunting…  We all felt right at home during our first ‘Keep it Made in America’ Town hall meeting.

Fortunately, we drew a lively, enthusiastic crowd.  You can read a play-by-play description of the event on New Hampshire’s Granite Grok, including some interesting quotes from our host, John Ratzenberger, such as:
“I would rather my grandchild’s crib was made here rather than in China.”
“When a factory shuts down, it’s not just the factory, it’s the whole town.”
“You’ll never see the name of a Chinese factory on your kid’s little league uniform.”
“China doesn’t have scrubbers, they dump toxic effluent into their rivers. Our plants are clean.”

You can also view some footage of John being interviewed after the meeting ended.  It’ll give you a sense of the crowd’s lingering excitement—the people milling around, the big stage, the lights, the signs saying ‘Keep it Made in America.’

Unfortunately, Tim Russert didn’t make use of all this intense voter interest when he moderated the Democratic debate on Wednesday night.  He simply didn’t discuss jobs.  Thankfully, China managed to creep into the discussion during a question of product safety issues, with Christopher Dodd offered a barbed “We’d shut down a domestic company in 20 minutes if it were producing products as bad as what China is shipping to us.” 

Ideally, Russert would have attended the Manchester Town Hall meeting, or at least flipped through the Manchester Union Leader to ponder the more than 27,000 manufacturing jobs that the state has shed in the last seven years.

All in all, though, AAM is very excited by the launch of our Town Hall campaign.  And the buzz continues to build.  We’ll be moving on to Des Moines, Iowa for the next Town Hall meeting on October 17.  We’re already receiving plenty of media interest, so if you plan to attend, start marking it on your calendar.  Or visit our website for more information.      

PS: check out AAM Senior Analyst Kerri Houston’s latest op-ed on manufacturing, published in the New Hampshire Business Review.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Manufacturing in the U.S., AAM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.