[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

[[Page 844]]

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

[[Page 845]]

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

[[Page 846]]

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.