[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
[January 18, 1999]
[Pages 58-59]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 58]]


Remarks to AmeriCorps Volunteers
January 18, 1999

    The President. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone.
    Audience members. Good afternoon.
    The President. First of all, I'd like to say that I am very grateful 
to be here at Regency House with all of you. I want to thank the 
residency council for making us feel welcome--Sarah Beaner, Kenneth Brown, and others.
    I want to say to the members of the press here--you know, the press, 
they all think that we're all on automatic, because they give us little 
notes here to read about every place we go. But I think it would be 
interesting for you to know the note I got on Regency House here: Sarah 
Beaner is the president of the residency 
council; Kenneth Brown is the past president 
and is now serving as the vice president--not such a bad idea. 
[Laughter] Regency House has 157 tenants. The tenant population is made 
up of seniors and the disabled. They are all current in their rent. 
[Laughter] Good for you; that's great.
    Let me say to the mayor and 
Councilmember Patterson and Delegate 
Norton, I am honored to be here to 
participate in Martin Luther King Day as a day of service, as provided 
by law and in the spirit of what Dr. King said. And I am proud that I 
now live in a city with truly outstanding leadership. Eleanor Holmes 
Norton has been my friend for a very long time and is one of the most 
remarkable women in any leadership capacity of any kind in the United 
States. DC is fortunate to have her.
    The mayor, in his former life, was 
actually a member of our administration in the Agriculture Department. 
And you know, it didn't really offend me that we'd already torn the wall 
down by the time he showed up today--[laughter]--because he's working 
hard, and he's got a lot of things to do. And I feel good about what 
he's going to achieve. And Mr. Mayor, you just stay on the job, and I'll 
tear a wall down for you any day you want, any time, any way, and I 
thank you.
    I want to thank David Gilmore of the DC 
Housing Authority; and my great member of the White House staff Ben 
Johnson, who did used to be a former 
director of DC Public Housing; the others whom the Vice President 
mentioned with AmeriCorps, Deb Jospin, John 
Gomperts. But mostly I want to thank these 
young volunteers behind me.
    Near the end of Dr. King's life, he envisioned a partnership in 
America across racial lines. He could never have imagined that America 
would become so diverse as it is today. But AmeriCorps, it seems to me, 
is the living, breathing embodiment of the way Martin Luther King 
thought all of America ought to work. And that's what I wanted to do 
when we established it.
    You might be interested to know that in only 4 years, since we set 
AmeriCorps up and got it going, more than 100,000 volunteers have joined 
AmeriCorps. It took the Peace Corps 20 years to reach that milestone. 
And they have done unbelievable things to make America a better place, 
helping to deal with natural emergencies, helping to build houses, 
helping to tutor children, helping to immunize children, working in 
1,000 communities across this country.
    And if you just look at these young people standing behind me, you 
know they come from all different parts of America; they come from all 
different backgrounds; they had different kind of reasons for joining 
AmeriCorps; they came here after different points of experience in their 
lives. And I'm very, very proud of them, and I thank them.
    You should know that today more than 100,000 volunteers are out 
there keeping Dr. King's dream alive. AmeriCorps members, seniors, 
students, soldiers are rehabilitating buildings, painting schools, 
cleaning neighborhoods, reading to children. They are doing what Dr. 
King would want us to do.
    I also want to mention one other thing. The Vice President talked 
about the need to continue to fight discrimination. Dr. King believed 
that every American, regardless of race, religion, or background, should 
be able to live in a home without discrimination. Today, on this Martin 
Luther King Day, I am pleased to announce the largest settlement in 
history in a lending discrimination--for home lending.
    Let me tell you about it; it will affect a lot of people's lives. 
Thanks to the efforts of the

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Department of Housing and Urban Development under the leadership of 
Secretary Cuomo, the Columbia National 
Mortgage Company will offer--listen to this--$6.5 billion in home 
mortgages and extra effort to help 78,000 minority and low and moderate 
income families unlock the door to homeownership. This settlement was 
made under the Fair Housing Act, which Congress passed just 6 days--just 
6 days--after Dr. King was killed. He had worked for years to outlaw 
discrimination in housing, and many who voted for the measure said they 
did it in tribute to him. So here all these years later--31 years later, 
to be exact--we're proud that it's happened on Dr. King's national 
holiday.
    Now let me just say one final thing. Yesterday, in the church that 
Hillary and I attend, they observed Dr. King's birthday with some 
special music. They had a wonderful singer from the Army Chorus. They 
did a lot, but one of the songs they sang that I love so well was one of 
Martin Luther King's favorite hymns, and it embodies what we are doing 
here today. The first line of the hymn is, ``If I can help somebody,'' 
and the last line is, ``then my living will not be in vain.''
    All these people are here not only because they want to help you but 
because their lives are richer because of it. And we're all learning and 
growing. And besides that, as the press pointed out, it did the Vice 
President and me a lot of good to pick up 
those hammers and crowbars and tear something down. [Laughter] You know, 
we do this desk work all the time and we do this word work all the time, 
and there's not always a beginning, a middle, and an end. There was a 
beginning to that wall, a middle, and it is no longer; it is over. 
[Laughter] So we are very grateful that you gave us the chance to be 
part of this today, and we thank you.
    Again I want to say, I hope all across America people will hear 
this. Look at these young people; they're here with you. They're getting 
something out of this, too. Their lives will be richer and better. They 
will be wiser sooner. They will be more sensitive and more understanding 
more quickly in their lives because of the experience they've had here 
and the other experiences in AmeriCorps. Every American needs to serve. 
And remember what Dr. King said: Everyone can be great, because everyone 
can serve.
    Thank you, and God bless you.
    Now, I know we're done, but I want to say a special word of 
recognition to Melody Scales and Beth 
McCarthy of AmeriCorps who worked with me, and 
to Donald Stokes, who is a resident here. I'd 
like for them to come up and be recognized, since they worked with the 
Vice President and me. Come on up here. [Applause] This is our crew, and 
if you need a wall torn down, you couldn't do better than this.

Note: The President spoke at 1:53 p.m. at Regency House. In his remarks, 
he referred to Mayor Anthony A. Williams and Ward 3 Councilmember Kathy 
Patterson of Washington, DC. The Martin Luther King, Jr., Federal 
Holiday proclamation of January 15 is listed in Appendix D at the end of 
this volume.