    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [February 10, 1999]
    [Pages 185-188]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 185]]

    Remarks at the ``AmeriCorps Call to Service'' in College Park, Maryland
    February 10, 1999

        Thank you very much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, when I was
    listening to Stephen and Leslie and Justin and Pepe talk, I was reminded of why I wanted to be
    President--so that I could give young people like them the chance to
    make America a better place.
        I want to thank all those who are here today who have supported our
    efforts. I thank Harris Wofford for his
    outstanding leadership of the Corporation for National Service; Deb
    Jospin and John Gomperts of AmeriCorps. I thank Governor Glendening and Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy
    Townsend for making Maryland
    America's leading State for citizen service. They have clearly done
    that. I thank my good friend Prince George's County Executive Wayne
    Curry; Senator Mike Miller, my longtime friend; and Mayor Jacobs, thank you for making us welcome. Carson
    Daly, thank you for the work MTV did on those
    wonderful spots, the PSA's. I would like to thank also the mother of the
    Lieutenant Governor, my good friend Ethel Kennedy, for being here today. And I thank Mark Gearan, our Peace Corps Director, and I'll say a little more
    about the Peace Corps in a minute and its relationship to AmeriCorps.
        I'd like to thank one person who is not here today but who was on
    the frontlines of creating AmeriCorps, Senator Barbara
    Mikulski, your United States Senator
    from Maryland. I thank her. I want to thank the president of the
    University of Maryland, on my right, and the
    president of the student government of the University of
    Maryland, on my left, for making me welcome.
    Avery and Dr. Mote, thank you.
        You have already heard from Dr. Mote and others that 6 years ago I
    came here to celebrate the end of the Summer of Service, which was our
    dry run for this national service program. We wanted to work out the
    kinks and see whether we could make this idea go. There were three
    people who are here who were instrumental on that day; I would like to
    thank them: Georgia Sorensen, Marilyn
    Smith, and my former White House staffer,
    who I miss very much, Bill Galston. Thank
    you all very much for what you have done.
        And I thank the University of Maryland for the College Park
    Scholars, the Team Maryland athletes, the work-study students that are
    tutoring, and the others from the students and faculty who demonstrate
    the power of citizen service.
        Let me say to all of you, when I ran for President in 1992 I wanted
    to get America working again and moving again, but I also wanted to
    bring America together again. It seemed to me that we had two great
    problems. One is that our economy was not functioning very well, and we
    seemed to be getting weaker, but also that we seemed to be letting our
    divisions overcome what we have in common.
        Martin Luther King once said that the old law of an eye for an eye
    sooner or later leaves everyone blind. I always believed that America's
    differences could be the source of our strength if we respected and we
    celebrated our differences but we understood that, underneath it all,
    there was something that bound us together that was more important.
        So, as I look back on the last 6 years, I think we can all take a
    great deal of pride in what our country has achieved together:
    economically, the longest peacetime expansion in history; the lowest
    peacetime unemployment rate since 1957, 42 years ago; the welfare rolls
    cut nearly in half; the lowest crime rate in over a quarter century. I
    think those are great things.
        But I think we can also celebrate the evidence that we are coming
    together: over 90 percent of our children across all racial and ethnic
    lines immunized against serious childhood diseases for the first time in
    history; the doors of college literally open to all, with the HOPE
    scholarship; the lifetime learning tax credit; the more generous Pell
    grant; more affordable student loans; more work-study slots. Those
    things matter. But maybe most of all, those of you here in AmeriCorps,
    and those in citizen service--whether in the Peace Corps, serving our
    country in the military, or serving in some other way--embody the
    determination of America to draw closer together as we grow more
    diverse. And that, I think, is terribly important.
        When you saw the four AmeriCorps volunteers up here speaking, and
    each of you identifying with them in turn--if they worked in your
    project or you knew them--you know they were a picture of America, of
    the changing face of

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    America, and the best of America that never changes.
        If you look around the world today, at many of the challenges that I
    face as your President and that the United States faces--the sad trip
    that the First Lady and I recently took to Jordan for the funeral of our
    friend the King of Jordan, who survived decades of assassination
    attempts--literally decades of assassination attempts, probably 50 in
    all--to stand as a symbol of peace among people in a very tough
    neighborhood, who use religion as a reason to find their differences
    more important than their common humanity. All over the world today, you
    see that. If the United States wants to lead the world toward peace and
    freedom and prosperity in a new century in a new millennium, it is
    actually quite an advantage for us to have within our borders people
    from all races, all religions, all ethnic groups, all cultural
    backgrounds doing all kinds of different things.
        But we cannot do good around the world unless we are good at home.
    And therefore, we have to find this magical balance, being honest about
    our differences of opinion on matters from the serious to the mundane,
    and I'll leave it to you to decide whether it was serious or mundane
    when the president asked me take sides in the basketball game.
    [Laughter] You've got a great team here, though, I'll tell you that.
    I've watched it.
        We have to find a way to do that, to say, this is what I believe;
    this is where I stand; this is what I'm for; and also to say how lucky
    we are to stand on the verge of the new millennium in a totally global
    society, where people are being brought closer together than ever
    before, and we are finding ways to relish, to celebrate, to honor our
    differences in a way to bring us closer together instead of driving us
    apart.
        AmeriCorps is the living, breathing symbol of the answer to that.
    Where we do not ask people to check their differences at the door, but
    we do ask them to reaffirm our common humanity. We do not ask for a
    handout, but we do ask for a hand up for everyone who needs it, and we
    say we are going forward together. That is what you represent. That is
    my fondest hope for America. And I thank you for your service.
        You know, all during the 20th century, the tradition of citizen
    service grew stronger in America. In the Great Depression--I remember my
    parents telling me about the chance President Roosevelt gave able-
    bodied, unemployed people to work in Civilian Conservation Corps, the
    CCC. They cleared trails; they fought fires; they planted trees. They
    built whole State parks: the Appalachian Trail, Skyline Drive in
    Virginia; parks in my home State that Hillary and I have stayed in, with
    rather interesting names like Petit Jean and Devil's Den. I have in the
    back office of the White House an old CCC cap, a cap that one of the
    volunteers wore in the thirties, that I found wedged in between a
    chimney and a wall in a cabin in a State park in the mountains of north
    Arkansas. And I have kept it with me all these long years to remember
    the unifying power of citizen service in one of the most difficult
    moments of the 20th century for the United States.
        President Kennedy, in the 1960's, asked young people to serve in the
    Peace Corps to teach English, to provide health care, to bring running
    water and electricity to some of the most remote villages in Africa,
    Asia, and South America. My brother-in-law
    served in the Peace Corps in Colombia. And the other night, he was
    getting together with some of the people who served there with him. When
    we were getting ready to come out here today and Senator
    Wofford came in with Mark Gearan, the present Peace Corps Director, we were celebrating
    the fact that, if our new budget passes, we will have more people
    serving in the Peace Corps in the next 2 years than have ever served in
    any given year. We'll be back at an all-time high.
        And we were lamenting the fact that we just had to withdraw our
    Peace Corps volunteers from Eritrea and Ethiopia, two countries that I
    have felt particularly close to in the last couple of years, because of
    the trouble the two countries are having, the threat to go to war. And
    the Peace Corps volunteers, going all the way back for decades, have
    volunteered to try to come in and solve the conflict and deal with the
    disputed area of land. I don't know if they will accept it, but think of
    that. All these years later, people that were there years and years and
    years ago remember what it was like, not to give a handout but to give a
    hand up and to ask people to understand that their differences are not
    as important as what they have in common.
        So I thank our Peace Corps volunteers; I thank Mark Gearan. And I thank all of you

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    in AmeriCorps, because you are in the rich tradition of America's
    citizen service, from the CCC to the Peace Corps to AmeriCorps.
        Now, six summers after I first came here, AmeriCorps is thriving.
    There now have been over 100,000 people serve in AmeriCorps in just 4
    years of the full-time program. Everywhere I go around the country, I
    see you. I see you in all kinds of different contexts. I was in San Jose
    right before the election, and there were a lot of--the Peace Corps
    volunteers had just come to start their mission, and so I saw them
    standing on the street as I pulled into the hotel. And I asked them all
    to come see me, and we took a little picture, and they were from
    everywhere.
        And then when I went home to Arkansas after the terrible tornadoes a
    couple of weeks ago, in both the communities I visited there were
    AmeriCorps volunteers there, and there were people there who, believe
    me, would never have come to Arkansas in their lives--[laughter]--if
    they hadn't been in AmeriCorps. I know it was good for the people they
    were helping, and I think it was pretty good for them.
        This has been an astonishing encounter for tens of thousands of
    people. Now, all of you know what it's like. I love talking to people
    who have been in AmeriCorps because I always hear two things. Number
    one, they're proud of what they did to help people, teaching a child to
    read or immunizing a child or having a playground that's safe in an area
    that used to be dominated by gangs or cleaning up some polluted site or
    doing something to preserve the environment. I love that. The second
    thing I always hear is, ``I like the people with whom I serve. I met
    people I never would have met. I got to know people I never would have
    gotten to know. We were all so different, and yet, when we worked
    together, we grew together, and it made my life different and better.''
    That is what AmeriCorps needs to do, and that is what America needs to
    do.
        America needs to think of itself as sort of a giant AmeriCorps, the
    Peace Corps at home, getting things done together. Getting things done
    together. If our budget passes this fall, we can boost the number of
    AmeriCorps volunteers by one quarter, to 50,000 members. In our new
    budget, we want to keep expanding AmeriCorps every year so that by the
    year 2003, and there forward, every year, 100,000 young people will be
    serving in AmeriCorps.
        But I want to challenge the young people of this country, and the
    not so young who are willing to do it, to sign up for AmeriCorps, to see
    for yourselves what you can do to solve America's problems and reap
    America's promise. I want to challenge high school students, as well.
    Maryland has done a wonderful job, as the Governor and the Lieutenant
    Governor said, being the only State in the country to actually require
    community service as a part of a public education. In our balanced
    budget, we propose to allow high schoolers for the very first time to
    join AmeriCorps by serving part-time during the school year and full-
    time in the summers. And I want to challenge, again, the young people
    beyond this room, to dedicate a year or two of your lives to a cause
    larger than yourselves. It may be your best chance to change the lives
    of others for the better and to enrich your own life in the process.
        Today, so many young people have the time and freedom and energy
    they will never have in the future, to tackle the kind of challenge
    AmeriCorps represents, to pack a bag at a moment's notice to fight a
    forest fire, or move into our most remote towns or Native American
    reservations to teach children, or work with churches in some of our
    toughest neighborhoods. At the end of your service, as all of you know,
    AmeriCorps will provide help to pay for college or pay off student
    loans. So I ask you all to help me reach others, to take advantage of
    this opportunity, to use this moment to prove that this generation of
    young people, far from being a generation of cynics and slackers, is
    instead a generation of doers and patriots.
        Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend quoted something her
    father said. I would like to close with a quotation from Senator Robert
    Kennedy, in a speech he gave to college students in South Africa when I
    was a young man. It resonated around the world, and every person my
    age--which was then your age now--every young person I knew, without
    regard to their party or their opinions or anything else, was riveted by
    the notion that a United States Senator could go to South Africa and
    talk to the young people about building a different future, a long time
    before, for the first time in over 300 years, all South Africans had a
    chance to choose their future.
        This is what he said: ``Each time a man stands up for an ideal or
    acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he
    sends

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    forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million
    different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current
    that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.''
        That is still true today. For those in AmeriCorps, I thank you for
    sending forth those ripples of hope. I thank you for bringing out the
    best in yourselves and others.
        For those who could still yet serve, I ask you to join the rest of
    your fellow citizens in building that bridge to the 21st century that
    all can walk across, arm in arm, to the best days of America.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:34 p.m. in Richie Coliseum at the
    University of Maryland. In his remarks, he referred to AmeriCorps
    volunteers Stephen Hellinger, Leslie Mayo, Justin Ward, and Susan (Pepe)
    Carrasco; Gov. Parris N. Glendening and Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy
    Townsend of Maryland; Thomas V. (Mike) Miller, Jr., president, Maryland
    State Senate; Mayor Michael J. Jacobs of College Park; Carson Daly,
    host, MTV Live; Avery Straw, student government president, and C.D.
    Mote, Jr., president, University of Maryland, College Park; and the
    President's brother-in-law, Hugh Rodham.