    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [May 24, 1999]
    [Pages 843-846]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the City Year Convention
    May 24, 1999

        Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen of City Year, I can't tell you how
    glad I am to be back. I want to thank President Swygert for making us all feel at home at Howard. I thank
    Senator Wofford and his predecessor, Eli
    Segal, and Mark Gearan,
    our great Peace Corps Director, for their presence here.
        I'd like to thank especially all the companies who have helped you,
    and one in particular, Timberland, your founding sponsor, especially
    because they are setting a standard for corporate America by giving
    their employees time off for volunteer work.
        I want to thank Alan and Michael, their wives, their families who have supported them
    through these long years, for all the wonderful things they have done
    for you and, through you, for America. And I want to thank
    Stephen for the jacket, although I still
    have the sweatshirt, and I still wear it, and it's nowhere near worn
    out. And I will have it and that jacket with me for the rest of my life.
    I thank you so much.
        Now, to all of you who are young, 10 years of life for City Year
    seems like a very long time. For those of you who are not so young, like
    me, it seems like yesterday, the 8 years ago, when I saw City Year in
    Boston--like yesterday, vivid in my mind.
        So, to me it wasn't so long ago that Alan
    and Michael were just two young students with
    this big idea, an idea for making idealism work in practical ways in the
    lives of ordinary people. A lot of their classmates at the time told
    them their big idea was just pie in the sky. I've often wondered what
    pie in the sky looks like; now I see you, and I know. You are the pie in
    the sky, and you are as real as real can be.
        When I was going around the country as a candidate for President in
    1991 and 1992, I told the people of our Nation that our politics

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    in Washington had become too much about the pursuit of power, devoid of
    principle and divorced from people; that there had to be a way to use
    the power given to people in public life through the Constitution, to
    actually connect it back to people, to make it about some larger purpose
    for America and for the lives of people, and not just about the
    perpetuation of people in office.
        When I saw City Year, I knew that I had found that concrete, living,
    breathing embodiment of what I thought politics ought to be about. In
    1991 I called it the New Covenant. It has come in common parlance to be
    called the so-called Third Way. It simply means that Government can't
    solve all of our problems, but it can't leave people to sink or swim on
    their own, either. It means that we have an obligation, all of us, to
    give every single person the tools to make the most of his or her life.
    It means that we have an obligation, together, to create opportunity for
    those who have been forgotten, to take responsibility for the welfare of
    not only ourselves and our families but of our whole community, and to
    build that community out of every single American, excluding no one
    because of their background, their race, their religion, or any other
    trait that has nothing to do with undermining our common humanity.
        And much to the surprise of everyone in America but my mother, I got
    elected President--[laughter]--and I had a chance to put those ideas
    into action. One of the most important days of my Presidency was that
    wonderful, wonderful day when I got to sign the bill creating
    AmeriCorps. I signed it, Mr. Wofford, with
    the pen that President Kennedy used to establish the Peace Corps. Soon,
    Mr. Gearan's Peace Corps will have 10,000 members in a year--that's the
    most they've had in a generation, and we thank the people who have
    served in the Peace Corps as well.
        This spring, since the time I signed the bill creating AmeriCorps,
    more than 100,000 young people have answered the call to citizen service
    in America, including those of you in City Year. It is remarkable what
    has been accomplished, or in your terms, how many millions of starfish
    you have collected. Because you have proved, beyond any question, that
    this is a good and decent and wonderful thing, we are now working with
    the Congress to reauthorize AmeriCorps to create opportunities so that,
    if we can pass it, we'll have 100,000 young people able to serve in
    AmeriCorps every single year.
        There has never been a more important time to do this. We are
    enjoying the longest peacetime expansion in our history. It has given us
    the lowest minority unemployment, the highest homeownership ever
    recorded. Just yesterday there was a wonderful article in the New York
    Times about the ways in which young African-American men, who have long
    faced bleak job prospects, are now joining the economic mainstream. But
    you know, because of the service you have done, there are still millions
    of Americans in inner cities and rural areas such as Appalachia, the
    Mississippi Delta, our Indian reservations, for whom the prosperity of
    our time is not yet a reality.
        You know there are a lot of people who don't have decent houses to
    live in. You know there are a lot of children who still don't have
    access to good health care. You know there are a lot of places that,
    because they are poor, still have pressing environmental problems. You
    know, because I have seen you in the last year or so more often than
    ever before, that there are natural disasters which afflict us all and
    need help to heal. You know all these things.
        And we have, therefore, both a unique obligation and, because of our
    prosperity and security, a unique opportunity to galvanize people as
    never before in the cause of citizen service. I cannot thank you enough
    for what you have done. But there is one particular thing I would ask
    you to focus on. It relates to all the work you do in the schools with
    America Reads, the mentoring program, and many other kinds of things
    that you have done. I believe that community service can have a profound
    impact in diminishing, even erasing, the sense of alienation and
    isolation so many of our young people feel.
        Last week Hillary and I went to Littleton, Colorado, where we
    visited with the families of the children and the teacher who were
    killed, where we talked to the young people still in their wheelchairs
    from their grievous wounds. There have been too many such instances in
    our country in the last couple of years, even amidst all of our rising
    prosperity and our falling crime rate.
        And one of the things that struck me so strongly, in following all
    the accounts of what happened and what could have motivated those two
    young men to descend
    into darkness and

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    take the actions they did, was the repeated description of the sense of
    alienation they felt, that they and their group were somehow looked down
    on by others in their school and that, in reaction, they not only felt
    bitterness against those who were looking down on them, they turned
    around and looked for someone else to look down on.
        This is an endless cycle. Everybody has a beef in life--everybody.
    [Laughter] Everybody has resentments because of slights or mistreatment,
    whether imagined or real. A big part of living is finding ways to
    overcome your own smallness, to get out of your own skin, to let go of
    all the things not only that you have imagined have happened to you but
    the things that have really happened to you that should not have.
        And I couldn't help thinking how lonely those young men must have become, trapped
    in their own fears and resentments and hatreds, how distant they must
    have drifted to get to the point where they could literally dehumanize
    the other children that they were living with, so they could then
    justify killing them. That is the exact opposite of what you embody.
        I was looking at your colleagues standing behind me. That's a pretty
    good picture of America, the America we have and the America we're going
    to be. We're growing more and more and more diverse. That means that we
    will have more and more and more groups, not fewer. And that can be a
    very, very good thing. If we respect each other's differences, if we
    even celebrate each other's differences, life will be a lot more
    interesting in America than it ever has been before.
        But underneath all that respect for diversity there must be a solid
    anchor of respect for what unites us across the lines that divide us, a
    belief that we really do share a common humanity, a common journey of
    life, that none of us is a repository of all wisdom but all of us have
    something to give as well as something to learn. We have to believe
    that. And then we have to find a way to both respect individual liberty
    and the right to privacy and still be connected to one another in
    specific and concrete ways.
        And so I say to you, there are still a lot of our kids who may even
    become strangers in their own homes as they turn inward and retreat and
    disengage. But those who join City Year, AmeriCorps, they become part of
    a team, and they are by definition important, every single one of you.
    So I say to you, this is a message that our kids need to get. Oh, they
    get it just from the power of your example, if you're out there reading
    to them or you're out there mentoring them or you're out there working
    in their schools to rehabilitate them, but you must speak to them.
        Most of you at some point in your lives have been bitterly
    disappointed, have been profoundly despondent. Many of you have done
    things that you're now ashamed of, that you wish you hadn't done. But
    you have decided not to give up and not to give in but to reach out and
    give to others. That is a message every child in this country needs to
    get.
        And as you see, from where these instances of violence have
    occurred, this is not a problem that solely afflicts the poor. You can
    have plenty of money in your home and the fanciest computer equipment
    and the most advanced knowledge of technology and still be poor in
    spirit. I'm telling you, you can reach the poor in spirit among our
    young. You can tell them that no matter what has happened, no matter
    what's bugging them, no matter who is dissing them, no matter what they
    have a beef about, real or imagined, what you're doing is a better way
    to live, and they ought to join you and live that way, too.
        Each of you is a thousand people strong and maybe stronger. I have
    thought a great deal, in these last weeks, about how people drift away
    and how they are lost and how the whole idea of family is to bring
    people up, not only to be individuals but to be a part of something
    better and stronger. And when we expand that to our communities and to
    our country, we do better.
        But we are still losing too many of our kids. I can't help wondering
    how many children have been saved from lives of despair because they
    found City Year or AmeriCorps. I can't help wondering how many of you
    have a story of real difficulty, more profound than any of the stories
    of the young people who have taken guns to their classmates in the last
    few years.
        Why did it not happen? Because somebody reached out and gave you a
    chance to have a meaningful life that is connected to other people--and
    in so doing, to find meaning in your own life. Because somebody said to
    you, ``You know, it doesn't matter whether you're tall or short, wide or
    narrow, black or white or Hispanic, or anything else. You're a person.
    You're

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    an American. You've got something to give. We need you. Be on our
    team.'' That is a message that needs to get out to every child in this
    country--every child.
        And I want you to know that if we can continue to expand your ranks,
    to expand the range of your activities, to deepen the commitment of
    people to letting you do your job, to get Washington to support you and
    go beyond politics as usual around here and realize this is something
    that is just good, good, good, I am convinced that you have the power to
    change America, forever, for the better. And I believe you will.
        So I ask you, with all the other things that you're doing, when you
    leave this great convention of idealism, give a little spark to every
    kid you see on every street corner, not just the ones that are in your
    project, just somebody you see standing. Tell them about what you're
    doing. Tell them about what it's meant to you. Tell them to hold their
    heads up and put their shoulders back and take a deep breath. Whatever
    it is, it's not that bad. Tomorrow's better. Don't let--don't let this
    happen. Don't let it happen to any child who can be saved. You can keep
    a lot of them from drifting away. You already are, every day, in ways
    that you're not even aware of.
        I want people to look at you, and think about America, and say,
    ``This is what I want for our children and our grandchildren. This is
    what I want America to be. This is why I want to serve.'' And in so
    doing, you will be enriching yourselves beyond your wildest dreams.
        Keep going. I love you. I'll save my jacket. I'll save my
    sweatshirt. I'll save my memories. You keep going. We need you.
        God bless you. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 6:25 p.m. in the Cramton Auditorium at
    Howard University. In his remarks, he referred to H. Patrick Swygert,
    president, Howard University; Harris Wofford, chief executive officer,
    and Eli Segal, former chief executive officer, Corporation for National
    Service; and Alan Khazei and Michael Brown, cofounders, and Stephen
    Spaloss, member, City Year; and Columbine High School gunmen Eric Harris
    and Dylan Klebold.