    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [October 22, 1999]
    [Pages 1861-1868]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Kennedy/King Dinner in Alexandria, Virginia
    October 22, 1999

        Thank you very much. I guess I ought to begin by saying that all the
    things that Congressman Moran said so
    generously about me, we might all well say about him. He has represented
    you so well. I am delighted to see all of you here, from the leader of
    your Senate

    [[Page 1862]]

    to the chairman of the State Democratic Party to all the local officials to all the candidates. It
    actually might not have been a bad idea to let all 52 of you talk
    tonight. [Laughter]
        I've been thinking about what I could say tonight that would give
    you something to carry out of here into these legislative races and into
    the great election season next year. We come here in honor of the two
    men whose pictures are behind me. Thirty-one years ago, I was a senior
    at Georgetown University when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were
    killed. One of my roommates was working in Senator Kennedy's office.
        This week I had a wonderful experience. Hillary and I hosted a large
    number of Americans as we celebrated the fifth anniversary of our
    national service program, AmeriCorps, in which, in only 5 years, 150,000
    Americans have already served, working in their communities, earning
    credit for college, making America a better place. And we asked Coretta
    Scott King to be one of the people who
    presented awards to the most outstanding of our young AmeriCorps
    volunteers.
        Last night I went to the home of Senator Edward Kennedy for an event to raise funds for his campaign for
    reelection next year. And the wife of Robert Kennedy, Ethel
    Kennedy, was there; his daughter, Kathleen
    Kennedy Townsend, probably the
    finest Lieutenant Governor anywhere in America, the only person to
    successfully get a State to include in its school curriculum, as a
    required course for graduation, community service--in the spirit of her
    father.
        As all of you know, Edward Kennedy's son, Robert Kennedy's nephew,
    Patrick, is now the chairman of
    Congressman Moran's Democratic Senate
    Campaign Committee, for all the House Members. One of his sons, Joe
    Kennedy, represented Massachusetts in
    Congress. Another of his sons, Chris,
    is being urged to run for Congress in northern Illinois this year. The
    Kennedys and the Kings continue to serve, continue to inspire.
        And Senator Edward Kennedy has been
    faithful to his brother's legacy, based on the sheer body of his
    accomplishments, I think by any measure one of the 10 outstanding people
    ever to serve in the entire history of the United States Senate, in over
    200 years, now.
        But I said last night, when I was a sophomore in high school, Ted
    Kennedy was in the Senate. [Laughter] And
    when I leave after two terms as President, he'll still be in the Senate.
    [Laughter]
        I also want to say a word on behalf of a Senator who wanted to be
    here tonight, my friend of 20 years Chuck Robb. You should know--I hope you won't be offended when I tell
    you, as the father of a college student, that I am very glad he is not
    here tonight, because he's at parents' weekend at Jennifer's college. And just as he stood up for all of you for
    so many years, he's standing up for her this weekend. He gets to escort
    her onto the field for her last field hockey game. Now that's a big deal
    to a daddy, and I am glad he's not here.
        But he's still standing up for you. He
    stood up for you in the Senate when he introduced legislation to help
    the States and school districts build or modernize 6,000 schools. No
    State in the country needs that more than Virginia. He embraced and
    introduced a bill with Congressman Moran to
    fight gridlock in northern Virginia. And I've been lobbied about it
    again tonight. He stood up for you and the environment when he offered
    an amendment last month to protect our beautiful national forests and
    supported me in setting aside 40 million acres for roadless areas in our
    national parks.
        And in 1993, at enormous political peril to himself--when, if anybody in the entire Congress could
    have been justified in taking a dive on a tough vote because of all he
    had been through and because of the difficulties of any Democrat getting
    elected statewide in Virginia--Chuck Robb never blinked. He stood up,
    and he gave courage to other Senators when he said, ``We have to support
    the President's economic plan.'' It passed by one vote, and that's why
    we've got the longest peacetime economic expansion in the history of the
    country. He is a brave and good man.
        All the polls say he's behind now
    because he governed and made decisions as a Senator in tough and
    difficult times, and because we Democrats have a hard time in Virginia.
    But I'll make you a prediction. If you stand up for him the way he stood
    up for you all these years, he will be elected in November of 2000 for
    another 6-year term.
        Now, how are we going to do that? What are we going to say? Let's
    begin with the people we honor tonight, and be honest about what our
    problems have been. When Robert Kennedy eulogized Martin Luther King, he
    said, ``Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to

    [[Page 1863]]

    justice for his fellow human beings.'' King could have said that about
    Robert Kennedy.
        The truth is that a lot of people who could vote either way in an
    election know that we're for love and justice. But they used to
    characterize us, our Republican friends did, in ways that were, to say
    the least, unhelpful at election time. [Laughter] They created these
    sort of cookie-cutter stereotypes of us, you know? We never met a tax we
    didn't like. Couldn't be trusted with the budget and the economy. Soft
    on welfare; soft on crime. Could never be put at the helm of the
    country's affairs. You've heard it all.
        So Jim Moran, Chuck Robb, and a lot of other Democrats set out with me in 1993 to
    change all that, to transform our country, to transform our party, but
    to be absolutely faithful to the guiding principles which have kept us
    Democrats and made this the oldest political party in history. And we
    had some new ideas.
        Basically, Jim sort of hit the essence of
    it when he said I never tried to divide people. You have to understand,
    for a dozen years before I came here, I was Governor, as President Bush
    used to say, of a small southern State. [Laughter] I did not--I was
    proud of it and loved every day of it. [Laughter] But I was not part of
    this Washington political scene, you know? I didn't wake up every day
    and read these columns in the Washington Post that turn you inside out.
    I didn't watch the talk shows on Sunday. I just sort of went about my
    life. When I came to Washington, I had people's business to do. I wasn't
    maneuvering on some greasy pole up or down.
        But it seemed to me that the country was totally paralyzed by what
    was going on in Washington. There was this--everybody had to have a
    liberal position or a conservative position. And the most important
    thing is that people should be fighting, fighting always, and never be
    caught getter together.
        And what I was looking for was a set of unifying policies to turn
    this country around. For example, it was hard to get the Democrats to
    support reducing the budget deficit because the Republicans always
    wanted to do it by cutting education. So I said I believe we can balance
    the budget and increase our investment in education. I believe we can
    follow policies which protect the legitimate interests of laboring
    people--both those in unions and those who aren't in unions--and still
    be pro-business. I believe we can grow this economy and make the
    environment cleaner. I believe we can maintain our military strength but
    realize that it is the moral force of our ideas that is the true source
    of our influence in the world; and that we can go into this post-
    communist world and be a great force for peace and freedom. I believe we
    can celebrate our diversity and still find common cause in our shared
    humanity. Unifying ideas.
        And we tried to turn those into specific policy initiatives. Some of
    them were quite controversial because it is always hard to change, and
    people took a chance on me in this country--on me and Al Gore and our
    whole crowd--because we were just making an argument. No one could know
    whether it was true or not. And as we were rocking along in '96, we did
    a little better in the reelection--Virginia we nearly carried, even. We
    did pretty well here. [Laughter]
        But here's what you need to start with saying to people who say
    they're independents: ``Look, this is not an argument anymore. The
    evidence is in, and the policies that the Democrats have followed have
    given us the longest peacetime expansion in history; 19\1/2\ million new
    jobs; the highest homeownership in history; the lowest unemployment in
    29 years; the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years; the lowest poverty rates
    in 20 years; the lowest crime rate in 30 years; the first back-to-back
    balanced surpluses, budget surpluses in 42 years; all accomplished while
    reducing the size of the Federal Government to its lowest point in 37
    years.''
        Now, it doesn't take long to say that. But what I want to say--just
    try to remember that. Because then our Republican friends have a little
    hill to climb. [Laughter] Now, they're pretty good at climbing it;
    they're never in doubt, I've got to give them that. [Laughter] I like
    that the evidence never deters them. I admire that. [Laughter] But we
    don't have to win many--two seats in the Senate, a few more seats in the
    House--to pad your margin.
        There is no answer to that, because we had no support for our
    economic plan from the other party, and most of them opposed our crime
    policy. I had to veto two welfare bills before I got one that required
    able-bodied people to work but didn't hurt the kids and put more money
    into child care.
        These are our policies, and they work. Not because of me. I am just
    grateful I had the

    [[Page 1864]]

    chance to serve at this time, to be the instrument of trying to move our
    country forward and pull our country together. The ideas are important.
    It doesn't matter how persuasive a person is. In fact, it can be
    dangerous if a person is persuasive and the ideas are wrong.
        What we have stood for works for America. And you need to memorize--
    every Democrat needs to memorize that litany. If this expansion goes on
    until February, it'll be the longest economic expansion in history,
    including all the ones with wars. And you just remember that. Lowest
    unemployment rate in 29 years; lowest welfare rolls in 30 years; lowest
    poverty rates in 20 years; lowest minority unemployment rates ever
    recorded, since we've been keeping statistics; highest homeownership in
    history; first back-to-back balanced budgets in 42 years; and the lowest
    crime rate in 30 years. Just remember those things, because the things
    they--all those little things they used to say about us are demolished
    by that set of statistics.
        Then we get to the main event, which is, okay, now we're in this
    shape, now what are we going to do? What are we going to do?
        You know, what I wanted to do in 1992 was to turn the country around
    and pull the country together. And I should say that we also did a lot
    of other things. We passed the Brady bill, and it worked, and it didn't
    do any of the things they said it would do. We passed the family and
    medical leave bill. Fifteen million people took advantage of it. We
    raised the minimum wage, and every year there was a new record set for
    new small businesses started. It worked. It didn't do the bad things
    that they said it would do. And compared to 7 years ago, the air is
    cleaner; the water is cleaner; the food is safer; and we set aside more
    land, protected more land, than any administration in the history of
    America except those of Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. So you can grow
    the economy and improve the environment.
        So we start with that. Now, what are we going to do?
        You know, the election of 2000 ought to be about change. They do all
    these polls and they say 75 percent of the people want change, and they
    act like I should be upset. And I said, ``If they'd polled me, I'd be in
    the 75 percent, too.'' [Laughter] If somebody ran for President, for
    example, and said, ``Vote for me. I'll do everything Bill Clinton did,''
    I'd vote against that person. Why? Because this is a country in a
    constant state of renewal, and because, objectively, the world we're
    living in is changing so fast we have to keep moving and moving.
        But what I want to say to you is this--and it's relevant to the
    State elections and to the national elections--8 years ago in 1991 and
    1992, we had to worry about getting this country together again and
    moving this country forward again. Now, we're headed in the right
    direction. Sometimes the most dangerous time in life is when things are
    really rocking along well. [Laughter] Right? I used to have a rule in
    politics: You're always most vulnerable when you think you're
    invulnerable. And it's a good rule in life.
        How many times in our own lives have we squandered some great moment
    by relaxing, by getting diverted, by not thinking about the opportunity
    being presented to us? Every one of you secretly is nodding your head,
    at least inside your head. [Laughter] It is human nature.
        So when the Republicans come along with this siren song, ``Let us
    take all the non-Social Security surplus and give it back to you in this
    huge tax cut,'' it sounded pretty good. One of the most hopeful things
    for the future is the way the American people stood with me and our
    allies in Congress when I vetoed that tax cut bill. They knew better
    than to do that. It was very hopeful. It was very hopeful.
        What I hope the next few days of budget negotiations, the next year
    of work with Congress, and the debate in 2000, will be about is the
    following thing: Okay, we've got this chance; it is the chance of a
    lifetime. Not in my lifetime have we had a chance like this. The economy
    was maybe close to this good by the terms of that time back in the
    sixties, but we had to deal with Vietnam and civil rights. We now have a
    chance to write the future of America and our children in a new
    millennium, and we better not blow it. And that's what this election
    ought to be about. And what are the big issues?
        Very briefly, this is what I think the big issues are. Number one,
    the aging of America. Not only the baby boomers retiring but all of us
    living longer. If we get the results I expect from the human genome
    project, there are young people in this audience whose children will be
    born with a life expectancy of nearly 100 years.
        Now, what do we know right now? Right now we know that in 30 years
    there will be twice as many people over 65, and we know that the

    [[Page 1865]]

    baby boom generation is bigger than our children. Therefore, since we
    have the money and the opportunity, we should now, move now to save
    Social Security, reform Medicare, and add a prescription drug benefit
    now, not later.
        The second thing, what do we know about the children of America? We
    know that education will be more important to them than ever before. We
    know that they live in a world in which information technology will
    determine all kinds of options in life. We know that they are the first
    generation of children bigger than the baby boom and that they are far
    more diverse racially, ethnically, linguistically, and religiously.
        So what do we know about that? Well, we know, at an absolute minimum
    we have to do more to give them a world-class education. And for me that
    means finishing the work of putting 100,000 teachers out there for
    smaller classes, giving those thousands of modern and new schools,
    having high standards, and giving schools help to turn around problems,
    giving kids more after-school programs and the other mentoring programs
    that they need, but putting the education of these children first and
    recognizing it will be different.
        Third issue--that I think is a huge issue--what have we learned
    about the 21st century economy, with all this long run? Can we keep it
    going? And to me, very important to be faithful to them, can we be
    honest enough to say that in the most prosperous period of American
    history there are still millions of our country men and women who have
    been left behind? Because there are people and places that are untouched
    by this recovery. So is there more that we can do there?
        I would argue for two things. Number one, in terms of poverty, we
    need to continue to do the work that the Vice President has done so well with these empowerment zones and these
    enterprise communities. I wish you could talk to the people who have
    been a part of them. He has mobilized thousands of people across America
    to take their destiny into their hands, to attract investment, to move
    forward. It is amazing. But we'll never have every poor community in an
    empowerment zone. We don't have enough money. That's why it's important
    for the Congress to adopt this new markets proposal I have made. All it
    does is this: It provides some money to help people start things going
    economically, but it gives investors the same incentives to invest on an
    Indian reservation, in the Mississippi Delta, in Appalachia, in a poor
    inner-city community; the same incentive to invest in developing markets
    in America we give them to invest in developing markets in Latin
    America, in Asia, in Africa, and other parts of the world.
        And if we can't bring free enterprise to the poorest parts of
    America now, when will we ever? It's very interesting. We passed this
    financial modernization bill last night, or at least we reached an
    agreement. And I was so moved that all the banks were saying, ``We agree
    with the President. We don't want to get rid of the Community
    Reinvestment Act. We think it's an opportunity to invest in poor
    communities in America, because most of those people are working. They
    want to work harder. They're capable of having new businesses. They're
    capable of doing more.''
        The Democrats ought to be on the forefront. Now is the time to say
    we can bring opportunity to poor people, and the Government doesn't have
    to do it all. The private sector can do it, and we will make it good
    business. That ought to be our cause in this election. We've got to go
    out there and prove that everybody that wants to work, that wants to
    have a chance to start a business, ought to have the same chance that
    those of us who've been blessed to be able to come to this dinner
    tonight have had. I think it is very important.
        Finally--this is something I know Chuck Robb believes, too--I hope that we will stay on the path that
    we're on and say we're not going to spend that Social Security surplus,
    and we're going to hang on to enough money so that over the next 15
    years we can pay off $3\1/2\ trillion of national debt. And in 15 years
    this country will be out of debt for the first time since 1835, when
    Andrew Jackson was President of the United States.
        Now, why should the Democrats be the party? We're supposed to be the
    more liberal party. You've heard it dripped from their lips, our
    adversaries--[laughter]--as if it were a dirty word. Why should the more
    progressive party be for paying off the debt?
        Because it's the progressive thing to do. Because it will keep
    interest rates down. Because it means more businesses and more jobs and
    higher incomes. Because it means, though the economy will doubtless go
    up or down in the future, it'll always be better than it otherwise

    [[Page 1866]]

    would have been. Because it means that ordinary people will have lower
    home mortgages, lower car payment rates, lower credit card rates; and
    they can send their kids to college with lower college loan rates than
    would otherwise be the case. Because it means when our friends overseas
    get in trouble, like the Asian countries did in the last 2 years, and
    our economies hurt because they can't buy our things anymore, they will
    be able to get out of trouble at lower cost. Every wealthy country in
    this world ought to get itself out of debt in a global economy, set a
    good example, and give people everywhere a chance to live up to their
    dreams. And I want the Democrats to lead America away from the
    wilderness of the 12 years before I came here into a debt-free future.
        There are other things that I could say, I don't want to spend a lot
    of time on. We've got to stay with this environmental issue. We've got
    to prove you can grow the economy and improve the environment. There is
    nothing so dangerous for a country to be in the grip of a big idea that
    is wrong. And most countries still believe--most dominant influence
    centers in most countries still believe that you can't get rich in the
    21st century unless you get rich the same way America got rich in the
    first half of this century, which means that you have to use more energy
    than oil and coal and things that burn, more greenhouse gases and heat
    the climate of the world and cause all these problems. We've got malaria
    going to higher and higher places and showing up in odd places around
    the world. That's just one little example. The thinning of the ice caps.
    All kinds of other problems.
        I am telling you, I have studied this for 22 years. I don't think
    anybody believes that I'm not pro-growth, pro-business, pro-economic
    strength. It is no longer true that you have to grow the economy by
    burning up the atmosphere. It is now possible, technologically, to
    reduce our emission of greenhouse gases and create more high wage jobs
    and a brighter, high-tech future by doing the environmentally
    responsible thing. It is affordable; it is sensible; and we just don't
    know it yet. So we need to be out there.
        And let me just say one thing before I get to the main point I want
    to make. [Laughter] I want you to remember this: the aging, the
    children, the economy, the environment, America, and the world. For all
    the politics around this Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty vote, you should
    know that there are a lot of people in the other party that really think
    it's a bad idea. And why do they think it's a bad idea? They say,
    ``People can cheat; we don't trust the rest of the world, so why should
    we sign a test ban treaty?''
        Well, my answer is, number one, we're not testing now. We're
    spending $3\1/2\ billion of your money to keep our nuclear weapons safe
    and usable without testing. Even they don't think we ought to start
    testing. So it's easier to cheat now than it would be if the test ban
    treaty were passed. Why is that? Because if somebody tests an
    underground bomb a good ways away and it's not too big, you may think
    it's an earthquake. And if it's small but still usable, you may not
    detect it at all. But if this treaty passes, we'll have over 300 sensors
    out there, all over the world in all the right places, dramatically
    increasing the chances that people can't cheat.
        So the truth is, it's a visceral, ideological thing. They really
    believe that what we need is more bombs, more missile defense, a higher
    wall, a bigger bomb; that we should go into that 21st century by
    ourselves because you can't trust anybody, never mind the fact that the
    cold war is over; never mind the fact that our allies in the cold war
    have all signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; that Britain and
    France, two nuclear powers without anything like the capacity we have to
    maintain their nuclear weapons, aren't worried at all.
        But you need to understand there is a different view here. A lot of
    them feel sort of bad about not paying their U.N. dues, but they're not
    sick about it--I'm sick about it; it's wrong; a lot of them, it doesn't
    bother at all--or passing a foreign affairs budget that has no money to
    fulfill the obligations we solemnly made to the Middle East peace
    process when we've got a chance to actually get it done; that has no
    money to continue to get rid of the Russian nuclear weapons; that has no
    money for America to do its part to help the poorest countries in the
    world get rid of their debt, something the Pope has asked us to do and
    every sensible world leader knows would be good for the economy of
    America as well as for those poor countries.
        So you've got to decide, what do you think our role is? Most
    Americans, I think, including most Republicans who live outside the
    beltway, believe that this is an interdependent world in

    [[Page 1867]]

    which we ought to work with our friend and neighbors and allies, in
    which we're safer and more secure and more prosperous when we have a
    sense of partnership.
        I'll give you two practical examples. All those people in Kosovo
    were being slaughtered because they were Albanian Muslims. And we went
    in and stopped them because we had the military power to do it, with our
    Allies. But we're very much in the minority in Kosovo now because other
    people are carrying the load. That's what partners do.
        We raised a lot of Cain about what was happening to those poor
    people in East Timor. But it's a long way from our backyard. And because
    we have partners--we're a tiny, tiny portion of the global effort to
    bring humanity and freedom and independence to the people of East Timor,
    because we work with other people. It's a good deal, folks. And if the
    Democrats need to stand up for responsible internationalism and not
    isolationism, that ought to be a part of it.
        But if I were on my last day in office, if you asked me what the
    number one thing I would give to America, if I could give us one last
    gift of citizenship, it wouldn't be solving the aging crisis or the
    long-term economy or the environment or even the problems of the
    children or our role in the world, even though I care about them. I
    would find a way for us to really be one America.
        If you look at all the problems that I've had to deal with, from
    Northern Ireland to the Middle East to the Balkans to the tribal wars in
    Africa--this whole world, on the verge of this modern age of explosion
    in scientific and technological advances, is beset by the most primitive
    failure of human society. We're still afraid of people that aren't like
    us, whether it's because of their race or their ethnicity or their
    sexual orientation. We're afraid.
        So even America, which has had so much success, has a young man like
    Matthew Shepard stretched across a fence, or James Byrd dragged to
    pieces, or a Filipino postalworker murdered in Los Angeles, or a young
    Korean Christian shot as he came out of his church by a guy who said he
    belonged to a church that didn't believe in God but believed in white
    supremacy. And we're doing better than most places, and we have this.
        In one of Hillary's Millennium
    Evenings--which we've been having at the White House, dealing with the
    big subjects of the future--we had a man named Vint Cerf who was one of the founders of the architecture of the
    Internet--sent the first E-mail, 18 years ago, to his wife, because she was so profoundly deaf even hearing aids
    couldn't help her. So he wanted to find a way to talk to her when he was
    at work. That's how the E-mail came about.
        And he was there with a professor named
    Lander, who is a professor of genomics, the
    study of the whole gene structure. And what they were talking about was
    the intersection of computers and learning about the genes, and how we
    couldn't really break down the human gene if it weren't for computers.
    And they said a lot of fascinating things, including the fact that it
    may be that we'll be able to come up with digital, computer-operated
    program devices, tiny ones, that we'll be able to insert in all
    defective parts of the human body. For example, if someone has a spine
    severed in an accident--we've been working on replacing nerves. They now
    believe they may be able to put digital equipment in the spine that will
    replicate the nervous system and allow people to stand up and walk
    again.
        And Mr. Cerf's wife, who was profoundly deaf
    for 50 years, they found--a small digital device was developed, they
    stuck it way down in her ears, and she heard after 50 years and stood up
    and talked about the experience of hearing and what it was like to hear
    the birds for the first time after 50 years and what it was like to go
    to a James Taylor concert now. Those of you who are young, that won't be
    such a big thing--[laughter]--but for me it's a big thing.
        But here's the thing I wanted to tell you. Lander said, ``Look,
    there's 100,000 genes and billions of variations. But the truth is that
    all human beings genetically are 99.9 percent identical.'' And even more
    important--especially here in northern Virginia, where you have all this
    diversity--this is the most astonishing thing. He said if you took any
    genetic group--let me just look around the room. Let's say you took 100
    Pakistanis and 100 Chinese and 100 Mediterranean Europeans and 100
    people from west Africa. He said if you took those groups, there would
    be more genetic differences within the groups, among individuals, than
    there would be between one group and another. Amazing, huh? You remember
    that. It gives scientific support for what our values say.

    [[Page 1868]]

        We're a smart country. We nearly always get it right in the end.
    [Laughter] Otherwise we wouldn't be around.
        But I'm telling you that it is--the thing that concerns me most is
    we're on the verge of all these scientific breakthroughs; we're going to
    find out what's in the black holes in the universe; we'll discover
    billions of other galaxies; we'll revise our notion of time itself
    unless we are dragged down by the oldest human failing: being afraid of
    people because they're different from us, which leads to
    misunderstanding, which leads to hatred, which leads to dehumanization,
    which leads to violence.
        Now, the Democrats are now in a position to say, ``Let's go back to
    love and justice and concern, expressed in Martin Luther King's and
    Robert Kennedy's life. And let us do it because you can trust us. You
    know we can run the economy. You know we can get the crime rate down.
    You know we can manage the welfare issue. You know we can manage the
    budget. You can trust us; let's deal with our core problems.''
        So when the Virginia legislature says, ``We're for a Patients' Bill
    of Rights, or we need smaller classes, and we need to do things to
    educate our children,'' it is an expression of our common humanity and
    our mutual responsibilities.
        I just want you to walk out of here armed with the information to
    say, ``Look, this is not an experiment. Our way works. The most
    important thing is for us to go forward together. Give us a chance, from
    the bottom to the top.''
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:30 p.m. in the main ballroom at the
    Alexandria Hilton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Lt. Gov.
    Kathleen Kennedy Townsend of Maryland; Coretta Scott King, founder,
    Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change; State
    Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw; Kenneth R. Plum, chairman,
    State Democratic Party; Vinton G. Cerf, senior vice president of
    Internet architecture and technology, MCI WorldCom, and his wife,
    Sigrid; and Eric Lander, director, Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for
    Genome Research.