[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
[May 30, 1996]
[Pages 829-834]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Women's International Convention of the Church of God in 
Christ in New Orleans, Louisiana
May 30, 1996

    The President. I'm having such a good time, I hate to interrupt it. 
[Laughter] Please be seated.
    Audience member. We love you, Mr. President!
    The President. Thank you. Thank you.
    Bishop Owens, you don't have to calm this crowd for me. I like it 
the other way. Mother Crouch, thank you for letting me come to your 
meeting. Now, I know whose meeting this is. And I know that this is 
supposed to be about the spirit, but if you will forgive me, this is 
also one fine-looking crowd today.
    Last night my wife called me to check in, as we always do when one 
of us is away from home, and she was on her way to California. And 
Hillary said, ``Well, what are you doing tomorrow?'' And I said ``Well, 
I'm going to the Women's Convention of the Church of God in Christ.'' 
And she said, ``Well, you finally figured out where the power is.''
    The bishops will find a way to make me pay for that, I think, but I 
had a good time. [Laughter]
    I'm glad to be here with some other friends today. I brought two of 
Louisiana's Congressmen down here with me, Congressman Bill Jefferson 
and Congressman Cleo Fields. I'm honored to be here with them. Many of 
these bishops here have had me in their churches--Bishop Brooks, Bishop 
Patterson, Bishop Blake, Bishop Quick. I've been in their churches. My 
friend Bishop Clark from Pennsylvania; Bishop Winbush. Bishop Hamilton 
gave us a good prayer and got us started off well. I thank Bishop 
Clemons, Bishop Haynes, Bishop Anderson, all the distinguished leaders 
of this great church.
    I thank that Women's Mass Choir and Natalie Green. It's too bad she 
has no range to her voice, isn't it? [Laughter] Let's give them another 
hand. She was wonderful, and they were wonderful. [Applause]
    And I thank Bernard Johnson for coming out here on no notice to 
play. Bishop Owens and I were sitting there, and I said, ``Bishop, I 
love all this music, but where's that man that played the saxophone for 
me in 1993 in Memphis? I want to hear him again.''
    I want to say a special word of thanks, if I might claim a personal 
privilege, to the two bishops here from my native State of Arkansas, 
without whom I might well not be here today.

[[Page 830]]

Bishop L.T. Walker and Bishop D.L. Lindsey, thank you for your 
friendship for so many years, and God bless you. Thank you.
    I'm glad to be back in New Orleans. The last time I was here, I was 
riding in that pretty Presidential limousine on Tchoupitoulas Street, 
and we lost our hubcap. [Laughter] And budget cutting got so bad in 
Washington, I was sent here to fetch it back. [Laughter]
    I think all of you who were there know that not only one of my best 
days as President but one of the most memorable days in my life was when 
I met with you in 1993 at the 86th annual convocation in Memphis. I will 
never forget that as long as I live. Our good friend Bishop Ford was 
still living then, and he was my friend and my confidant.
    Back in 1993, in that magnificent church where Martin Luther King 
spoke his last sermon, I asked that we honor his memory by remembering 
what he lived and died for and by working to tackle the crushing 
problems of our young people. Since then, I am more certain than ever 
that there is not a problem in America, and certainly not the problems 
our young people face, that cannot be solved if we will take 
responsibility for them and work together to make things better.
    As I have said so many times, when we Americans take responsibility 
and we work together, we always seem to succeed. But when we deny our 
responsibility and when we are divided, we defeat ourselves. Long before 
Abraham Lincoln said it, our Saviour reminded us that a city or a house 
divided cannot stand. Today I'd like to take up where I left off back in 
1993 and talk about what we can do to help our children build better 
lives.
    We stand on the threshold of a new century, indeed, a new 
millennium. It will be an age of great possibility and enormous 
challenge. I have worked hard to see that all our children enter that 
century with the opportunities they need to make the most of their God-
given abilities, to stand against the forces of division and 
destruction, to stand for rewarding work and honoring families, reducing 
crime and protecting our environment, celebrating our diversity, not 
running away from it, and building a strong, secure, vital democracy 
that is still a model for the world.
    I am pleased at the progress which has been made. Compared to 4 
years ago, we have 8\1/2\ million more jobs. We have the lowest 
unemployment rate among African-Americans since the 1970's. We have 1.3 
million families going from welfare to work, 1 million families moving 
from food stamps to self-sufficiency. The crime rate has gone down for 4 
years. We are fighting for the minimum wage, and we've fought for other 
things to help families like the family and medical leave law and a tax 
program that would reduce the taxes of our hardest pressed working 
families so they would have more money to raise their children on. Those 
things are making a difference.
    And we've fought against some things as well. We've fought against 
budget cuts that were too harsh on Medicare and Medicaid and education 
and the environment, that would have raised taxes on working people and 
given people like me a tax cut. I was against that, but I'm for 
balancing the budget; we just ought to do it in the right way.
    We have fought to mend affirmative action, but not to end it. It 
should not be ended until there is no need for it anymore, and I'm sorry 
to say there's still some need for it.
    We have fought to define religious freedom and the Constitution's 
requirement that the state should not impose any religious views on 
anybody. We have fought to make it clear that our public schools don't 
have to be religion-free zones as long as nobody's imposing their view 
on anybody else.
    We've fought against racial discrimination in all its forms. And I 
tell you today, we are fighting hard to get to the bottom of this rash 
of black church burnings and to find out who is responsible and to 
prosecute them to the full extent of the law. We cannot let people of 
faith be persecuted by people of hate again in America.
    That's all good, but it's not enough. We know we have to do more, 
and we know we have to do it together. All around us, we see evidence of 
our society's need for renewed commitment, for the moral leadership you 
provide. Yes, we do need more economic advancement, but that may not be 
our biggest need, for it is said in the Scriptures, and we must 
remember, that man does not live by bread alone.
    Every day our children are bombarded by influences that would turn 
them from a positive, good path. You are here this week to talk in real 
terms about what you can do to build better homes and better communities 
and better schools and better tomorrows for our children.

[[Page 831]]

You are here to reach out--not to curse the darkness but to light a 
candle, put it on a candlestick, and give that light to all of America's 
house.
    And you are, for you are working every hour and every day to keep 
our children free from harm, free to grow up, free to make the most of 
their own lives; laying the spiritual foundation that is now, because of 
this church's efforts, helping thousands of young boys develop into men 
of courage and character with programs like Rights of Passage and God's 
Male Choice; teaching young boys and girls how to say no to sex and yes 
to the rest of their lives through the purity classes that you run in 
your churches; strengthening families and futures by your efforts to 
increase the involvement of parents in their children's schools and 
education.
    I thank you for this, more than any of you can imagine. I want the 
rest of America to know what you are doing, and I want the rest of 
America to do what you are doing. That is what we have to do together. I 
want our country to reject the voices of division and hatred that would 
weaken our nation, to walk away from the cynicism which is the chief 
excuse for inaction, to work together for solutions. There is no more 
powerful force in this country than the force of conscience and 
commitment. And that is the force we all feel in this room today.
    All of us must step up to the challenges our children face. As I 
said, I have worked hard to help them where Government can help. I am 
glad that African-American unemployment is in single digits for the 
first time since the Vietnam war, that during the past 4 years more than 
100,000 African-American businesses have been created. I am proud that 
homeownership is at a 15-year high, with record increases in 
homeownership among African-Americans. But all of the homes in the world 
don't mean a thing if the children can't play outside in the yard or on 
the street in front of them.
    I'm glad that more of our children are taking more challenging 
courses and that we are seeing at long last some improvement in the 
performance across the country in many of our educational areas. But all 
the schools in the world don't mean a thing if children are afraid to 
walk to and from those schools. All of the opportunity and hope that 
comes from a job, that doesn't mean much if our children are raised in 
fear, seduced by the false allure of drugs or crime or gangs into a 
world of distorted values and diminished hope and ultimate 
disappointment.
    We simply cannot go into the 21st century with children having 
children, children killing children, children being raised by other 
children or raising themselves on the streets alone. That is not the 
America I grew up in, not the America you grew up in, not the America we 
can pass on to our children and their children.
    Let me say again what I have said many times to my country men and 
women across this land. Sometimes I think people just give up on these 
problems. You haven't given up. So if we send one message out today, 
let's tell America: We refuse to accept that crime and drugs and rampant 
teen pregnancy and children being killed and dragged down and destroyed 
are things that we can't do anything about. We can do something about 
it. You are doing something about it. Our country must do more about it.
    In Washington, that's why I worked so hard to pass the crime bill, 
to put 100,000 police officers on the streets. The sheriff here of 
Jefferson Parish is pointing out how much the crime rate in New Orleans 
had gone down because they use these people not just to catch criminals 
but to prevent crime, to work with neighbors, to work with children, to 
find things that will help us to identify people who are problems and 
not only catch criminals but stop it from happening in the first place. 
And that's why I am committed to keeping on until we have every one of 
those 100,000 police officers in a uniform walking the street, getting 
the crime rate down, making people feel safe.
    That's why we took on the interest in Washington that was so 
powerful in the gun lobby, to try to take guns out of the hands of 
criminals, taking 19 kinds of assault weapons off our streets, passing 
the Brady bill that requires a waiting period to buy a handgun.
    You know, some people in our country were told that if those bills 
passed, they would lose their hunting weapons. Well, we now had quite a 
few seasons and we've hunted everything you can imagine in America, and 
everybody that wanted to is still hunting with the weapon they had the 
day I signed those bills. There's only one group of people that don't 
have the weapons they wanted, 60,000 people with criminal records who 
couldn't get handguns because the Brady bill passed. And it's a good 
thing.
    That's why I supported zero tolerance for weapons in our schools and 
community-based

[[Page 832]]

programs not only to punish criminals but to prevent crime in the first 
place, to help our kids stay out of trouble, to give them something to 
say yes to as well as something to say no to. I think people ought to be 
able to say yes to jobs in the summertime, yes to staying in schools 
after hours if they don't want to be on the street, yes to adult 
supervised recreation, yes to things that will enrich their lives and 
give them a good group to hang out with. I think that is important.
    And yes, I am pleased with the progress. I'm glad that the crime 
rate is down. I'm glad the welfare rolls and the food stamp rolls are 
down. I'm glad the teen pregnancy rate is finally coming down. But the 
truth is, it's not good enough. Because even though the crime rate's 
coming down in America as a whole, random violence among people under 18 
is going up. Even though drug use is coming down, random careless use of 
marijuana among people under 18 is going up. And, unbelievably enough, 
after 20 years of working at it, smoking among teenagers is going up as 
3,000 young people a day take up a habit that will end 1,000 of their 
lives earlier than would otherwise have happened.
    So there are a lot of challenges still out there. And we need you. 
We also need you to reach them. How many mothers, I wonder, in this 
country hold their breaths in fear when their kids leave home? How many 
wonder whether their kids will be shot by a gang or pressured to buy 
drugs or robbed of their money or beat up because of their clothes? This 
is no way to live.
    It has not always been this way. We have shown we can make progress. 
It does not have to be this way. We do not have to tolerate it. But we 
all have to be willing to do something about it.
    There are some more things we can do in Washington. We ought to ban 
those cop-killer bullets that pierce the bulletproof vests our law 
enforcement officers wear. They're not needed to shoot anything in the 
woods. We ought to do more to preserve the safe and drug-free school 
program so that every school will be able to do things like stay open 
later or open earlier, or bring in the D.A.R.E. officers or others that 
are helping our children and supporting the work our parents are trying 
to do.
    We ought to have welfare reform that moves people from welfare to 
work, but there ought to be enough child care support in there so that 
the kids aren't hurt and supervision of children is not sacrificed. And 
we have to do more to inspire every community to protect our children.
    I challenged one million citizens the other day across America to 
join the anticrime patrols in their community. There are 20,000 
anticrime groups in America today. If every one of them could just get 
50 more folks to show up and help prevent crime, that would be a million 
Americans, and it would change the future and increase the safety of our 
children. They deserve that.
    We are taking steps to give parents more control over the things 
that influence their children. We've passed legislation that requires 
parents be given in new television sets something called the V-chip so 
that you can screen out TV programs you think are inappropriate for your 
young children to watch, and the entertainment industry is helping by 
providing a rating system.
    We're taking steps to prohibit advertising being specifically 
directed toward young people with cigarettes because of the dangers that 
that is causing that I mentioned. We're trying to help communities do 
what they can to bring more order and discipline and structure into 
their children's lives. One of the things that we have supported is 
giving every community in America the option, not the requirement but 
the option, to consider whether schools ought to have a uniform dress 
policy and have uniforms for the students.
    Let me tell you, I was out in Long Beach, California, the other day, 
the third largest school district in California, where they adopted a 
uniform policy and they let the kids and the teachers pick what their 
uniform was going to be in every school. They got up a little fund for 
the children who couldn't afford their own uniforms. And I listened to 
the children talk about what had happened. I listened to one young man 
say that his school picked a green and white uniform because that would 
clearly show to everybody that they weren't in any of the gangs around 
since none of them used those colors, and now the children were walking 
to and from school in safety. I listened to a young girl say that the 
uniform policy had not just been good for the poor children in school, 
it had been good for the wealthier children and the middle class 
children because they stopped judging each other by what they had on and 
instead by what was inside. And nobody gets

[[Page 833]]

rolled anymore because of their jacket or their shoes. Now, people ought 
to have the option to see if that works. All I know is there, there is 
more order, more learning, less violence, and the kids feel better.
    Today, as the summer approaches, I want to talk to you about another 
idea that New Orleans has made the most of, and that's community-based 
curfews to keep young people off the street. These are just like the 
old-fashioned rules most of us had when we were kids. ``When the lights 
come on, be home, Bill.'' [Laughter] How many of you were told that? 
``When the lights come on, be home.'' They're designed to help people be 
better parents. They help keep our children out of harm's way. They give 
parents a tool to impart discipline, respect, and rules at an awkward 
and difficult time in children's lives.
    Different cities have different ways of enforcing their curfews. 
Some of them take a kind of a punitive approach. Some of them--even a 
few have gone so far as to fine parents if the kids aren't home. But 
some have done much to go the other way, to say that the parents can 
decide whether they want the curfews to apply to their children; they 
just have to tell the police and decide.
    But the evidence shows that wherever these curfews are in place, 
they are working. The Justice Department in Washington has just 
completed a study of seven of these programs that are up and running, in 
Dallas, in Phoenix, in Chicago, in Denver, in Jacksonville, and in North 
Little Rock, Arkansas. They also looked at one that works perhaps the 
best, right here in New Orleans. And I want to thank Mayor Morial and 
law enforcement officers who are here today. Where's the mayor? Stand 
up, Mayor--our host mayor.
    He is here with his police chief, Richard Pennington, and Deputy 
Chief Ronald Docette, who is in charge of juvenile enforcement; with two 
pastors I want to talk about in a moment, Reverend Harold Mayberry and 
Reverend Kenneth Thompson; with the sheriff of this parish, Harry Lee, 
and the FBI special agent James De Sarno. And the most important thing 
of all is he brought two of the young people that have been in his 
program. I'd like to ask them to stand if they're still here, Shelita 
Smith and Anthony Anderson. I think they're here. Where are they? Right 
over there. Let's give these young people a hand here. [Applause] And 
the pastors, stand up. Let's give the pastors a hand. Thank you. 
[Applause] And the law enforcement officers. [Applause]
    Now, let me tell you what all these folks are part of here. New 
Orleans, when I became President, had one of the highest crime rates in 
the country, very high rates of violence of all kinds. They were worried 
about the rampant increase in juvenile crime. But this mayor and an army 
of concerned parents said, ``Enough is enough; we have to do something 
about this.''
    They put in place, in this city that is famous for its nightlife, a 
dusk-to-dawn curfew, 8 o'clock on school weeks, 9 o'clock in the 
summertime, 11 o'clock on the weekends for people under 17. Now, it 
basically says, if you're young, after a certain amount of time you 
ought to be home and not on the street where you can get shot or fall in 
with a bad crowd.
    Now, you want to know if it works? During the very first year, youth 
crime dropped by 27 percent during the curfew hours; armed robberies 
dropped by a third; auto thefts fell by 42 percent. This is working.
    But I want to tell you the most important thing about it, because 
this is consistent with your mission in the Church of God in Christ. 
Maybe the most important thing is, what do they do with people who they 
find out after curfew? Dozens of police officers hit the street to 
enforce the curfew, but they picked up children and didn't send them to 
jail. Instead, they took them to a central curfew center staffed with 
counselors, doctors and nurses, and police officers and, most important, 
an energetic and committed local religious community represented by 
those two fine pastors I just introduced. A local group of ministers 
called--listen to the name--All Congregations Together has several 
ministers at the curfew center to counsel young people and their parents 
or guardians. And I met with these folks earlier, as I said. I'm very 
grateful to them.
    I also was told the story of the one city council member who worked 
in the curfew center who found a 7-year-old child picked up from the 
streets shivering from fear. He was having trouble walking up the 
stairs, so she just picked him up and carried him up. She said, ``Do you 
want to sit down?'' And the boy said, ``No.'' ``Well, what do you 
want?'' she said. ``I want you to hold me,'' he replied. That's what a 
lot of these kids need, somebody to care, somebody to hold on.

[[Page 834]]

    I'm sure that a lot of the teenagers think this curfew is too 
strict. It was a long time ago, but I can still dimly remember what it 
was like to be that age. But they must also know that it's a dangerous 
world out there, and these rules are being set by people who love them 
and care about them and desperately want them to have good lives.
    And there is one thread that seems to run through all of these 
curfew programs across the country, and that is, once they are put in, 
the most intense supporters of the curfews are young people who know 
that they are too often at risk of being victims of violent crime. They 
want our protection, and we ought to give it to them.
    So today I directed the Attorney General to distribute this report 
we did on curfews that are working to mayors and community leaders all 
across this great country. We want to share what is working, not to tell 
every place they need it--maybe they don't--but at least to let them 
know that it's out there, that it's a tool, that people have made it 
work, that children's lives have been saved and their futures have been 
rescued.
    We've read enough of the other kind of stories; it's time to read 
some of the good stories. I want everybody to know about the school 
uniforms in Long Beach and the curfew in New Orleans. I want people to 
know that if we work together and we put our children first, we can make 
a difference and rescue their lives. That's what I want people to know.
    This past January, I had the great honor of speaking at the funeral 
of my friend and one of this country's most eloquent women, the great 
Barbara Jordan. She devoted her entire life to making sure this country 
lived up to its promise, and she once said, and I quote, ``We must 
address and master the future together. It can be done if we restore the 
belief that we share a sense of national community, that we share a 
common national endeavor. It can be done.''
    Ladies and gentlemen of this great church, my fellow Americans, can 
there be any greater national endeavor than saving our children, saving 
all of our children? Don't we have to remember--you know, a lot of 
people in public life love to quote the Scripture, and all of us 
probably do it selectively. But there are hundreds of admonitions in the 
Bible, hundreds, to take care of the children, especially the poor 
children. ``Even as you have done it unto the least of these, you have 
also done it unto me.'' If that was true for Jesus, surely it must be 
true of America.
    So I say to you, I honor your commitment; I honor your actions. We 
must honor these actions I have cited today, but most of all, we must 
believe that if we will take responsibility for these children and if we 
will work together, it can be done.
    God bless you all, and God bless America.

Note: The President spoke at 11:55 a.m. at the Ernest N. Morial 
Convention Center. In his remarks, he referred to Bishop Chandler D. 
Owens, presiding bishop, Atlanta, GA; Mother Emma Crouch, convention 
president; Bishop P.A. Brooks, secretary, general board, Detroit, MI; 
Bishop Gilbert E. Patterson, Memphis, TN; Bishop Charles E. Blake, Los 
Angeles, CA; Bishop Norman Quick, Bronx, NY; Bishop Melvin E. Clark, 
Aliquippa, PA; Bishop R.H. Winbush, Lafayette, LA; Bishop W.W. Hamilton, 
Salinas, CA; Bishop Ithiel Clemons, Hollis, NY; Bishop Neaul J. Haynes, 
DeSoto, TX; Bishop C.L. Anderson, first assistant presiding bishop; and 
Mayor Marc Morial of New Orleans.