[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[March 17, 1994]
[Pages 477-478]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks Announcing Antiviolence Public Service Announcements
March 17, 1994

    Thank you very much, Alicia. I think your family is here with you--
your family members, would you all stand up? Thank you for coming here 
with her. I want to thank Alicia for that remarkable performance. You 
know what I said to her when I saw the PSA's? The same thing all of you 
are thinking; I said, ``The one with you in it was a whole lot better.''
    This is the culmination of a long effort by good people who want to 
do something about this terrible problem. I thank Phil Geier, the 
chairman of the Ad Council, and all those who comprise that council and 
who support this work. I want to thank Jack Calhoun for the work he's 
done and the 123 organizations that make up his Crime Prevention 
Coalition and for his remarkable remarks here today.
    I thank Saatchi and Saatchi for the work they did and others, 
members of the creative community who are here with us today who have 
done their own public service announcements, changed their programming, 
made a common commitment in an earlier meeting with the Vice President 
and me to try to make a sustained effort to change the culture of 
violence that is gripping our country.
    I want to say a special word of thanks and greeting to the chairman 
of our Corporation for National and Community Service, Eli Segal, who is 
in Miami at the seventh annual Youth Crime Prevention Conference. With 
1,200 officers, teachers, community leaders, and others active in crime 
watch projects, peer counseling, drug prevention programs and others, 
these people are going to have to carry a lot of the future of our 
common efforts to reduce violence in America.
    You know, if you just read the big headlines in the papers today, a 
lot of them are very good. There's more growth, more jobs, more 
opportunity, a real sense of recovery in the country. But we will never 
become the country we ought to be if we lose another generation of our 
children to the violence that killed so many and holds the rest hostage.
    I can tell you as the father of a teenager, every teenager in the 
country talks about this issue at home at night, discusses it over the 
dinner table, is concerned about it, worries about whether they have 
friends that are going to fall victim to crime. And this is an 
incredible burden, a burden you can see in the eyes and hear in the 
voice of Alicia, one that imposes on those of us who are grown an 
inordinate responsibility to change the conditions and the attitudes 
which have produced this incredible range of violence.
    We now have a higher percentage of our people in prison than any 
country on the face of the Earth. No other nation has so high a 
percentage of their people in prison. And yet we worry that we don't 
have enough jail space and we have to build more.
    The broadcast, the cable networks that are here who are supporting 
this effort and who will make time available are helping us to begin to 
make a difference. I want to say a special word of encouragement and 
thanks to them because they've done so much to help change our country 
for the better with other such campaigns, the campaign to reduce 
smoking, the campaign to increase seatbelt use, the campaigns to remind 
so many young people that a mind is a terrible thing to waste, or 
friends don't let friends drink and drive.
    President Roosevelt once said if he hadn't gone into politics he 
would like to have had a career in advertising. President Kennedy 
generated his first Peace Corps volunteers through ads like this. 
Messages can speak to dreams and respond to fears and bring people out 
of their shells. I hope that we can do that here today.

[[Page 478]]

    This industry, the entertainment industry, is working hard now to 
help America reduce violent behavior by showing young people that there 
are alternatives to violence. They can help us in the search for a safer 
and a saner land.
    To change, people have to have a willing heart. We're working hard 
here on a crime bill which I hope so much will be passed soon to put 
more police officers on the street, to take more assault weapons off the 
street, to try to change the conditions in communities that exist by 
giving communities opportunities to help young people have something to 
say yes to instead of just something to say no to. But we have to have 
more willing hearts.
    The cable industry will air these ads on 32 cable networks. The 
networks themselves have committed a high level exposure. Already 2,000 
movie theaters have agreed to show the PSA on their screens. And we are 
now getting offers to put these PSA's on movies that are rented at video 
rental stores. The Motion Picture Association of America, under the able 
leadership of Jack Valenti, and the video software dealers are really 
going to do a lot of good work on this.
    These commitments are new and unprecedented. I think they reveal an 
understanding by people in the entertainment industry that our children 
have and share with us daily. We somehow have to find a way to encourage 
young people to settle arguments with words instead of weapons. We also 
have to encourage their parents to do the same thing, for domestic 
violence is still the cause of a lot of these killings. We have to show 
adults how common sense can ease tensions. We have to help communities 
set up programs to deal with this.
    Last week, I was in Brooklyn College with nine people who are giving 
their lives to various efforts to help people turn away from violence. I 
just want to mention two of them to you. I met a woman named Clementine 
Barfield from Detroit, who had two sons, two of her teenage sons, shot 
and one killed in gang fighting. She is devoting her life to try to 
reach kids to make sure not only that they don't become victims like her 
sons but they don't become killers like the people who killed her sons.
    I met a young man named Sherman Spears from Oakland, California, who 
is confined to a wheelchair, has had one leg amputated, lost the use of 
one of his eyes, often still in pain because he was caught in the 
crossfire of a gun shooting. He is devoting his life to an organization 
which reaches out to victims and tries to tell them not to retaliate, 
not to seek vengeance, not to seek revenge, that no one ever gets even 
and you have to go on with your lives.
    These are the kinds of people we want to support. We will send 
specific suggestions to anyone who responds to the 800 line. It's 1-800-
WE-PREVENT. It's mentioned in the ad, and it's very important because 
the people who are going to air the ads can't do the grassroots one-on-
one work after the air is quiet.
    In closing, let me just say this. You probably heard Alicia Brown 
say this; I want to reemphasize it. In a few moments, she is going to 
the funeral of her sixth friend to die from gunshot wounds, a 14-year-
old child, not in a war zone in a far away country, not in Somalia, not 
in Sudan, not in Angola, not in Burundi, not in Sarajevo, but in the 
Capital of the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.
    That is what has become of childhood, my fellow Americans. While the 
rest of us have pursued our dreams in life, had our families, raised our 
children, enjoyed the fruits of freedom, that is what has become of 
childhood. It is indecent. It is unacceptable. We can do something about 
it. And we owe it to them to do it.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 10:30 a.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive 
Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Alicia Brown, a 14-year-
old student at Eliot Junior High School in the District of Columbia. A 
tape was not available for verification of the content of these remarks.