    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [June 3, 1998]
    [Pages 873-876]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 873]]

    Remarks to the City Year Convention in Cleveland, Ohio
    June 3, 1998

        The President. Thank you. Well, since 600 City Year members like
    Lesley and Casey wrote and invited me, I thought the least I could do
    was to show up. I want to thank Lesley for that
    very wonderful introduction and for the terrific letter. I thank
    Casey for what he said. When he started talking
    about his mother, I almost started to cry, too. [Laughter]
        I'd like to thank Harris Wofford and Eli
    Segal. I'd like to thank Mayor White and Congressmen Stokes
    and Sawyer for coming with me today. Father
    Glynn, thank you for making us feel so welcome
    here at John Carroll. I thank the City Year Board of Trustees for their
    service, and the county and city officials and State officials here for
    their service. Thanks again, Lesley and
    Casey. And let me also say a special word of
    thanks to Alan Khazei and Michael Brown, the founders of City Year.
        I found City Year, you know, back in 1991, when it was a much
    smaller program, beginning in Boston. And I was there as a candidate for
    President with about a one percent name recognition in Massachusetts.
    And so I had a lot of time on my hands. [Laughter] And I spent the
    better part of a day, as I recall, talking to the young people in City
    Year.
        I wanted to be President because I felt that our country needed to
    take a new course if we were going to prepare for the 21st century so
    that for all of you the American dream of opportunity would be alive for
    everyone who was responsible enough to seize it; so that our country
    would still be the leading force for peace and freedom and prosperity
    and security in the world; and so that we would come together across all
    the lines that divide us into one America, bound in no small measure by
    citizen service.
        Now, since 1991 and the election of 1992, my belief that our country
    could do better has certainly been vindicated. I am grateful beyond
    measure that, thanks to people like you and my friends in Congress and
    Americans throughout the country, we've been able to change America. I'm
    grateful that we have the lowest unemployment rate in 28 years, the
    lowest welfare rolls in 27 years, the lowest crime rates in 25 years.
    I'm grateful.
        But what I want to say to you today is that all of these
    achievements basically leave us free to chart the right course for
    America toward the 21st century. Part of it must be done in Washington;
    part of it must be done in the hearts and minds and lives of our
    citizens, where the greatness of America has always resided.
        One of the things I think I ought to mention today, because it's so
    timely in Washington, is that we have a chance to pass comprehensive
    legislation to protect young people from the dangers of tobacco, and we
    ought to do it and do it right away. I just came from an elementary
    school here in Cleveland where I met a lot of City Year/AmeriCorps
    volunteers. They had worked with young children in this elementary
    school, the Stephen Howe Elementary School, to write 1,500 book reports
    this year, to build a new playground.
        But one of the things I'd like for every child in that grade school
    to know is this: Smoking-related illnesses kill more people every year
    than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, murder, suicides, drugs, and fires
    combined--combined. And 90 percent of all smokers started before they
    were 18, even though it's illegal to sell cigarettes to children under
    18. Three thousand young people start smoking every day; 1,000 will have
    their lives shortened because of it. So I say again, while there are
    some in Congress who seem determined to stall, stop, or kill the tobacco
    bill, we will never have a better chance to save 1,000 lives a day and
    save a million kids in the next few years. And I hope you will help me
    send a loud message back to Washington, DC, to act and act now.
        There are a lot of other things that we are working on back there
    that will shape the world you will dominate as adults. We're about to
    have our first balanced budget and a surplus in 29 years, and before we
    spend a penny of it, I want us to make sure we know how we're going to
    save Social Security so we don't bankrupt your generation when my
    generation retires. It's not right.
        While we're strong and prosperous, I want us to do everything we can
    to invest in education so that not only our colleges but our grade
    schools, our junior high schools, and our

    [[Page 874]]

    high schools are the best in the country and every child of whatever
    race or income or station in life can get a world-class education
    starting at kindergarten.
        I want the Congress and the country to accept changes in the Earth's
    climate as real and commit ourselves to reduce the problem of global
    warming, even as we continue to grow the economy. We have to face the
    environmental challenges of the 21st century, and the sooner we get at
    it, the better off we're going to be.
        There are many other things I want the Congress to do in health care
    and campaign finance reform and adopting the initiative that the First
    Lady and I have tried to advance for a 21st century fund to put money
    into research, in biomedical research and scientific research to build
    the next generation of the Internet, and also to preserve our precious
    natural heritage.
        But I will tell you this. If America hasn't learned anything from
    you in the last 4 years since we've had the AmeriCorps program going, we
    should have learned that in the end, we will never be the country we
    ought to be, we will never meet the challenges that are there before us,
    we will never fully seize the opportunities that are there, until
    America believes in and practices citizen service.
        As I said, when I started running for President in 1991, I had this
    idea--but it was just an idea in my mind--that we had two big problems.
    We needed more idealistic, energetic young people out there working on
    our communities--helping to solve problems at the grassroots level and
    touching other children one on one, helping people that would otherwise
    be forgotten, going to places where the private economy would not
    otherwise send them--and we also needed to open the doors of college to
    everyone. So I had this general idea, and then when I went to City Year
    in Boston, the lights came on in my mind, and I said, ``This is what I
    want to do.''
        You know, out of the national service of our soldiers in World War
    II came the GI bill, which educated a whole generation of my parents and
    created the great American middle class. Out of the all too short
    service of President Kennedy came the Peace Corps, which took the idea
    of citizen service around the world. And I still see it as I travel for
    America, our best ideas and our greatest humanity manifest in these
    Peace Corps volunteers all across the world. I saw them recently when I
    was in Africa.
        Out of AmeriCorps has come a blending of the two, taking the idea of
    service and the idea of education. It's almost like the Peace Corps
    comes home, in larger numbers, with a ``GI educational bill'' for
    citizen service. That is what we have done.
        In only 4 years, nearly 90,000 young people have served through
    AmeriCorps in their communities; nearly 50,000 have become eligible for
    the education benefits. This year alone, more than 40,000 AmeriCorps
    positions are being filled around the country. And every young
    AmeriCorps volunteer, as anyone else could see from your enthusiasm,
    typically will generate 12 more volunteers helping on whatever the
    service is.
        Last year AmeriCorps members taught or tutored 500,000 students,
    mentored 95,000 more, recruited 39,000 more volunteers, immunized 64,000
    children, helped with disasters in over 30 States, worked with over
    3,000 safety patrols, with local law enforcement and civilian groups,
    trained 100,000 people in violence prevention, built or rehabilitated
    5,600 homes, helped put 32,000 homeless people in permanent residences,
    worked with people with AIDS and other serious diseases, and did a whole
    raft of environmental projects. Because of AmeriCorps, the Senior Corps,
    Learn and Serve America, America is a better place today.
        I am especially proud of our America Reads program, which relies on
    all our national service programs, because one of the most important
    things we can do is to make sure every 8-year-old in America--and many
    of them don't have English as their first language now--can read
    independently by the time they leave the third grade. It's just terribly
    important to all other learning.
        We now have--I learned this morning just before I came here that we
    now have over 1,000 colleges and universities that are allocating work-
    study positions or other volunteers to help make sure that by the year
    2000, every 8-year-old can, in fact, read. And a lot of AmeriCorps
    volunteers have helped to mobilize, organize, and train those tutors,
    and I am very grateful for that.
        I was also proud of the word used in my introduction, ``enabling,''
    that I had enabled service. I think that's important because we don't
    dictate anything about AmeriCorps from

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    Washington. You know that City Year is a grassroots, community-tied
    organization, even though it's a national network. We have enabled
    organizations like the Boys and Girls Clubs, the Habitat for Humanity,
    hundreds of other nonprofit organizations, faith-based organizations--
    6,000 young AmeriCorps volunteers in faith-based organizations this
    year--to select and use AmeriCorps members to continue and enlarge the
    work that they are doing.
        Here in Cleveland, more than 200 citizens of all ages and
    backgrounds are serving in 14 different AmeriCorps programs, including
    those serving with City Year Cleveland. In Cleveland, AmeriCorps does
    everything from tutoring children to building homes, to organizing
    neighborhood watches, to cleaning streams. I guess the next message I'd
    want you to help me send back to Washington today is that AmeriCorps
    works, and it should be extended by Congress into the 21st century so
    more young people have the opportunity to do that.
        Now, I want to make one other point about AmeriCorps and citizen
    service. As you bring volunteers to communities in need, you also bring
    people together. I mean, just look around. The first thing I remember
    blazed in my mind when I first went to AmeriCorps--to the City Year
    project in Boston was that there was a young person who had been in an
    Ivy League school who dropped out of school for a year to work full-
    time, working side by side with a young person who had gotten in trouble
    in New Hampshire and the juvenile authorities said, ``If you'll go work
    for City Year, that's the best rehabilitation you could do.'' They
    learned a lot from each other, those two young people. And they both did
    very well in the future as a result of it.
        If you look around at this crowd today, it's a pretty good picture
    of America. And I have always believed that in the 21st century, America
    would have its greatest days in no small measure because we are growing
    more diverse as the world grows smaller. So it simply stands to reason
    that we're better off if we have people who look like people from
    everywhere in the world, who share their cultures, their language, and
    their religions, but who are bound together by common devotion to
    American ideals, to personal responsibility, expressed through
    constructive citizenship.
        I believe that the key to solving a lot of our racial tensions in
    America is to make sure we keep living together, working together,
    learning together, and, in some ways most important of all, serving
    together, giving together. It can unite us across all the lines that
    divide us. It can even unite us across political lines. And after
    spending a few days in Washington, I sometimes think those are the
    deepest divides of all.
        Last year I was so honored to be with Presidents Bush and Carter and Ford, Mrs. Reagan, and General
    Colin Powell at the Presidents' Summit on
    Service in Philadelphia. Some of you were there. I believe everybody who
    was there felt this enormous sense of excitement and also a great sense
    of possibility as we defined an agenda that we wanted every child to be
    a part of. We wanted every child to have a caring adult in his or her
    life, a safe place to grow up, a good school to attend, a healthy start
    in life, and a chance to serve the community.
        Now, since that summit we've worked to do our part in Washington.
    Again, there's some things the Government should do. We've worked to
    expand health insurance to 5 million children. We've worked to expand
    access to child care so parents can be more effective at home and at
    work. We've worked to implement something called the High Hopes
    mentoring program that will involve young people like you with other
    kids who are younger, starting in junior high school, for 6 years. And
    also we'll give you an extra tool; you'll be able to tell those seventh
    graders, ``Look, if you learn, if you stay in school, if you live a good
    life, I can tell you right now here's how much college aid you will get
    to guarantee you can go to college when you get out of high school.''
        We've been helped by corporations, by nonprofits, by other
    organizations who've committed fabulous sums of money to try to
    implement this agenda under the leadership of General Powell around the country. We want to do more, because in the
    end you know and I know from what you're doing that the most important
    thing we can still do in America with a lot of human problems is to make
    one-on-one contact and that you can put up all the money in the world,
    but hands build houses, hands clean streams, hands immunize children.
    People have to do these things.
        So what I want to say today is I'd like to do some more to fulfill
    the goals of the Presidents' Summit on Service. And the Corporation for
    National Service is now prepared to commit another additional 1,000
    Ameri-Corps leadership

    [[Page 876]]

    positions targeted only to the goals of the Presidents' Summit. These
    AmeriCorps volunteers will support these State and local efforts. But
    you think about it, 1,000 volunteers trained to be leaders of community
    efforts. Wouldn't you like to know that when you finish and when you
    start your careers that every American child has a safe place to grow
    up, a good school, a healthy start, a caring adult, and a chance to
    serve just like you're doing? I think it's worth our making that effort.
        I hope that one of the legacies of this period at the end of the
    20th century will be a renewed spirit of community, a renewed sense of
    idealism, a renewed commitment to service. I hope, in other words, that
    when I finish my work and you finish yours we will have helped to make
    real the pledge that you take when you join AmeriCorps in the lives of
    all Americans. Indeed, I wish every American would take that pledge. I
    think it might be well again to send that message to the country.
        So if you'll help me, I'd like us to conclude with that AmeriCorps
    pledge. I'll say it, then you say it:
        I will get things done for America to make our people safer,
    smarter, and healthier. I will bring Americans together to strengthen
    our communities. Faced with apathy, I will take action. Faced with
    conflicts, I will seek common ground. Faced with adversity, I will
    persevere. I will carry this commitment with me this year and beyond. I
    am an AmeriCorps member. And I am going to get things done.

    [Audience members repeated the pledge line by line after the President.]

        The President. Let me say to all of you, in every generation young
    Americans are called upon to renew our country, to deepen what it means
    to be free, to widen the circle of opportunity, to strengthen the bonds
    of our national community. Because of the progress that has been made in
    this time, your generation has an incredible opportunity. You can finish
    the work that was done when I was your age by the people you saw in that
    video.
        Thirty years ago this week, Robert Kennedy was killed. Thirty
    springtimes ago, we lost both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
    Their effort to bring America together and lift America to higher ground
    was delayed by a lot of the things that happened along the way. But now
    that we have regained our sense of confidence--that we know we can make
    our economy work, we know we can make our schools work, we know that we
    can make our streets safe, we know we can take poor people and give them
    a second chance and give them a chance to work and succeed in raising
    their children as well as working, we know that America can be more and
    better and that we can live up to our highest ideals--your generation
    will have a chance to make that the history of the 21st century.
        I am so proud of you. I can't even convey what it feels like for me
    to stand here and look into your eyes. I know now that one of the best
    decisions I ever made was to fight to create AmeriCorps and to fight to
    keep others from taking it away and to fight to give you the chance to
    serve.
        But remember--remember what you promised in the pledge, that you
    will serve now and beyond. For when you no longer wear these jackets or
    T-shirts every day, if you continue to believe and you continue to serve
    and you continue to have the feelings inside toward your fellow human
    beings that you have today, then you will write a remarkable history for
    America in the 21st century. We need you to do that, and I believe you
    will.
        God bless you, and godspeed.

    [At this point, Stephen Spaloss, coexecutive
    director, City Year Philadelphia, made brief remarks and presented the
    City Year Lifetime of Idealism Award to the President.]

        The President. Thank you. Let's give him
    a hand; he was great. [Applause] I want you to know that I still have
    Stephen's sweatshirt, and I'll have it with me forever to remember when
    I first met him and I first met City Year. You keep it with you forever,
    too.
        God bless you. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:25 p.m. in the gymnasium at the Don Shula
    Sports Center at John Carroll University. In his remarks, he referred to
    City Year members Lesley Frye of Chicago and Casey Hunt of Cleveland;
    Eli Segal, president and chief executive officer, Welfare to Work
    Partnership; Mayor Michael R. White of Cleveland; Rev. Edward Glynn,
    president, John Carroll University; and Gen. Colin Powell, USA (Ret.),
    chairman, America's Promise--The Alliance For Youth.