    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [January 17, 2000]
    [Pages 65-66]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Washington
    January 17, 2000

        Thank you very much. Good morning. First of all, I want to take my
    notes out, because the older I get the worse my memory is. [Laughter] I
    want to begin by thanking Alex and all the
    people of DC Cares--the executive director, Susan Linsky, and all the others who are here with DC Cares. I want
    to thank the Washington CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs, Pat
    Shannon. Thank you. And I want to say,
    Charles Mann, it's good to see you. Wish you
    had been on the field. [Laughter] Next year. We'll get it next year.
        Let me also say how honored I am to be here with your
    Mayor and your Representative in
    Congress. The Mayor used to be a
    member of our administration, actually. A lot of people don't know that.
    I always think that's why he's such a successful mayor; he got good
    preparation. [Laughter] And everything he said about Eleanor Holmes
    Norton is absolutely true. When she asks you for something, there is
    only one question: Are you going to do it now, or are you going to do it
    later? [Laughter] Because, in the end, she always gets what she wants.
    She's been a brilliant Representative.
        When Hillary and I moved here to Washington, we wanted to be good
    citizens of the District of Columbia. Some of you may remember, one of
    the first things I did after I moved to Washington was to go to Georgia
    Avenue and walk up and down it, talk to business people there. And ever
    since then, we've tried to be involved in the life of the city. And it's
    a source of immense pride to me to see the success that Washington is
    having and to have had the opportunity to work with so many of your
    local officials.
        I see also my good friend Charlene Drew Jarvis back there--welcome. And Sharon Ambrose, who is the councilperson for this ward, I think is
    here. Thank you very much. Where are you? There you go.
        So this is, to me, a source of immense pride to see DC really coming
    back and doing well. But it won't happen, we cannot realize the full
    potential of this city without Greater DC Cares, without other
    volunteers, without people, companies like AT&T doing their part to help
    everybody become what they ought to be and to make all these
    neighborhoods come alive again.
        And let me also say a special word of appreciation to the head of
    our national service program, who has already been mentioned several
    times, Senator Harris Wofford. It is actually

    [[Page 66]]

    Harris Wofford and another good friend of Martin Luther King,
    Congressman John Lewis, who had the idea for
    making the King holiday a day on, not a day off. And AmeriCorps
    volunteers--when we started--I signed this bill 6 years ago to make the
    King holiday a national holiday and a day of service, and I think we had
    10,000 volunteers that day. Now we have hundreds of thousands of
    volunteers, all across America, doing things like what we did today,
    thanks in no small measure to you, sir. And we thank you very much for
    your leadership.
        And now I just want to do one other thing. I want to acknowledge the
    young people who worked with me today--we were in there staining the
    bookcases in the computer room--because they made sure I didn't mess up
    too bad. [Laughter] So, thank you, Dietrich, Marcus, Dedra, Artile, and
    Shawntesse. Thank you. Raise your
    hands, all the people who worked with me. Thank you all very much.
    They're here somewhere. There they are, back there. [Applause]
        I just want to say one final thing that I hope will go across
    America today. You look at all these young people here, with your T-
    shirts on, doing good things. Dr. King once gave a sermon at the
    National Cathedral here in Washington in which he said we are all caught
    up in--and he had a wonderful phrase--he said, ``in an inescapable web
    of mutuality,'' which is an elegant way of saying that I can never be
    fully what I want to be unless you have a chance to be fully what you
    want to be, and you can never be fully what you want to be unless I have
    a chance to be what I want to be; that we are in this together, that we
    are members of the community of this city, the community of this Nation,
    and the community of humanity.
        And frankly, we all know that in the last 30-plus years since Martin
    Luther King left this Earth, we have forgotten that too much. And I have
    done my best to remind the American people of the truth of that at every
    single opportunity for 7 years now. And it is a source of immense pride
    and joy to me every time I see people reaching across the lines that
    divide them to do things that lift us all up. This holiday embodies
    that. All these children embody that.
        In my lifetime, and perhaps in the lifetime of our country, we have
    never, ever, ever before had at the same time so much economic
    prosperity and social progress, with the absence of internal crisis or
    external threat. And that means that we have an enormous obligation,
    those of us who are grown now, to make the most of this magic moment; to
    bring to all the people, the neighborhoods, and the children who haven't
    been a part of this economic prosperity a chance to live their dreams,
    too. To bring to bear--yes, you can clap for that. That's all right.
    [Applause] To bring to bear our best efforts to meet the long-term
    challenges of this country and not to forget that more than a billion
    people in this old world of ours still live on less than a dollar a day
    and that there are people, not only at home but around the world, that
    the United States ought to be lifting up.
        And if you believe Martin Luther King was right, every time we give
    a child in America a chance, every time we give a child in Africa, Latin
    America, or Asia a chance, all the rest of us are better off, too. Every
    time you give a little, you always get more back. Let's remember that as
    Dr. King's enduring legacy.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:48 a.m. in the game room. In his
    remarks, he referred to Alex Orfinger, chairman of the board of
    directors, and Susan Linsky, executive director, Greater DC Cares;
    former NFL Washington Redskin Charles Mann; Mayor Anthony A. Williams of
    Washington, DC; Washington, DC, Councilmembers Charlene Drew Jarvis,
    ward 4, and Sharon Ambrose, ward 6; and Boys & Girls Club members
    Dietrich Williams, Marcus Harrison, Dedra Gamble, Artile Wright, and
    Shawntesse Jefferson. The Martin Luther King, Jr., Federal Holiday
    proclamation of January 14 is listed in Appendix D at the end of this
    volume.