[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[April 4, 2000]
[Pages 614-618]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Efforts To Bridge the Digital Divide
April 4, 2000

    Thank you very much. First of all, Julian, 
I thank you for your introduction, for your remarks, and, mostly, for 
the power of your example. I find very often when we do these events in 
the White House, by the time I get up to talk, everything that needs to 
be said has already been said. And I certainly thank you.
    I want to thank you, Senator Barbara Mikulski, for being the first Member of Congress to talk to me about 
the digital divide. And once I realized you were interested in it, I 
stopped worrying about whether we would address it--[laughter]--because 
no one will ever say no to the Senate's sparkplug of energy. I want to 
thank Secretary Herman for her support. And 
Secretary Glickman, thank you for being here. 
Harris Wofford, the leader of our national 
service movement; and Gene Sperling, my 
National Economic Adviser, who has pushed this whole digital divide 
issue so passionately.
    I want to thank the Members of Congress who are here. Over to my 
left, Senator John Breaux, my neighbor from 
the Mississippi Delta, where we are very interested in the potential of 
the computer and the Internet. And we just had a large delegation of 
House Members that have come in. They've been voting, and I'm glad 
they're here. I hope I have all their names, but I'd like to introduce 
them: Representative Maxine Waters, 
Representative Bart Stupak, Representative Ellen 
Tauscher, Representative Lucille Roybal-
Allard, Representative Silvestre 
Reyes, Representative John Larson, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Representative Zoe Lofgren, 
Representative Ruben Hinojosa. Thank you all 
for being here. Did I get everybody?

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Thank you. And Elijah Cummings from 
Maryland; he's on the front row.
    I'd also like to thank Governor Angus King from Maine for being here. He is working to create an 
endowment fund in Maine to provide portable computers and Internet 
access to all seventh graders, so they can actually be taken home.
    There are many other distinguished Americans here who have worked on 
this. Bob Johnson, the head of BET, thank 
you for being here. And I want to acknowledge the presence of former 
Governor of West Virginia Gaston Caperton, 
now the head of the College Board. West Virginia, under his leadership, 
was the first State to provide computer access to all elementary school 
students. So we're glad to have you here, sir. And I thank you all for 
being here.
    I want to talk about what we're doing now as we set the stage for 
the administration's third new markets tour, which will begin in the 
week of April the 16th. But before I begin, I would like to acknowledge 
two very important developments yesterday in America's ongoing fight to 
protect our children from the dangers of guns falling into the hands of 
criminals and children, one of them in Senator Mikulski's home State of Maryland.
    Last night I called Governor Glendening and Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy 
Townsend to congratulate them and 
the Maryland Legislature for passing legislation requiring built-in 
child safety locks on new handguns, ballistics testing for new guns, and 
safety training for gun purchasers. And yesterday Massachusetts began 
enforcing tougher consumer product safety rules, banning junk guns and 
requiring trigger locks. Next week I'm going out to Colorado to support 
a citizen ballot initiative there that would close the gun show 
loophole.
    These are all great efforts, and I think it's worth pointing out 
that they are bipartisan efforts in these States. Colorado, for example, 
Republican registration has gone up in the last 6 or 7 years, and this 
ballot initiative today is overwhelmingly in the lead on the ballot. So 
this should not be a partisan issue in Washington, DC, if it is not a 
partisan issue in the rest of the country.
    And again I say, I challenge the Congress to send me the commonsense 
gun safety legislation by April the 20th, the anniversary of the 
Columbine tragedy. We have to close the gun show loophole and require 
child safety locks and ban the importation of large scale ammunition 
clips that make our assault weapons ban a mockery. It requires national 
legislation, as well. So congratulations to Maryland and Massachusetts, 
and I thank the people in Colorado, but we still have to do our job 
here.
    Now, I cannot imagine a better place for us to kick off our next 
chapter in the new markets effort than here in the East Room, for it was 
in this very room nearly two centuries ago that Thomas Jefferson and his 
personal aide, Meriwether Lewis, laid maps on this floor to chart the 
Lewis and Clark expedition. Today we are here again to chart a new 
expedition, to open new frontiers of possibilities for America, the 
digital frontiers. Our mission is to open that frontier to all 
Americans, regardless of income, education, geography, disability, or 
race.
    This is a fortunate time for the United States. We have the 
strongest economy in our history, the lowest African-American and 
Hispanic unemployment rates on record, the lowest female unemployment 
rate in 40 years. But we all know there are people and places that have 
been left behind.
    Over the last year I have traveled to many of these places. I have 
been to Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta, to the inner cities of 
Newark and Watts, to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. 
Every place I have gone I have seen how we could do more to bring the 
benefits of free enterprise and empowerment, with private sector and 
community organization cooperation, for new businesses, new jobs, new 
training and education that will make a real difference in people's 
lives.
    I want you to understand that while most people talk about the 
digital divide--and it is real, and it could get worse--I believe that 
the computer and the Internet give us a chance to move more people out 
of poverty more quickly than at any time in all of human history. That's 
what I believe. But it won't happen by accident. We'll have to work to 
make it happen.
    On this upcoming new markets tour, we will focus specifically on how 
to pool resources to help communities get access to and take best 
advantage of the tools of the information age. We will visit your 
hometown of East Palo Alto, a community where 20 percent of the 
residents still live below the poverty line, to show that even in the 
heart of Silicon Valley there is still a substantial digital divide, but 
that things are being done about it.

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    We will visit Shiprock, New Mexico, a small town in the Navajo 
Nation, to demonstrate the unique challenges faced by geographically 
remote Indian reservations. I will speak at the influential COMDEX 
Conference in Chicago, where I'll talk to representatives of every major 
computer and Internet company in America and ask them to join our cause.
    And then the following week I will go to North Carolina, where we 
will discuss the importance of connecting rural America to the same 
high-speed, broad-band networks now proliferating in metropolitan areas.
    On all these stops, I will make the case that new technologies can 
be an incredible tool of empowerment in schools, homes, businesses, 
community centers, and every other part of our civic life, arguing that 
if we work together to close the digital divide, technology can be the 
greatest equalizing force our society or any other has ever known.
    Imagine if computers and Internet connections were as common in 
every community as telephones are today, if all teachers had the skills 
to open students' eyes and minds to the possibilities of new 
technologies, if every small business in every rural town could join 
worldwide markets once reserved for the most powerful corporations--just 
imagine what America could be.
    Let me say, first of all, I see Congressman Jefferson and Congressman Rush and 
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. There 
may be other Representatives, but as they come in, I'll try to 
acknowledge them. There's a ton of interest in this.
    Let me give you an example. You know, I just got back from India, a 
country of 900 million people with a per capita income of $450. We think 
we have challenges. But I saw what you could do there to close the 
digital divide, to use technology in an affirmative way.
    I went to a little village in Rajasthan called Naila, typical low 
income Indian village. And in the public building, the village's public 
building, there is a computer with software where the programs are in 
both English and Hindi and can be adapted to other local languages as 
the case may be.
    And the first thing I saw was a mother who had just given birth to a 
child come in. And they have all the public information from the Federal 
and State government on this computer, so she goes--she brings up the 
Health Department's page on newborn babies. And there's so much visual--
there's such a good visual component to this software that you could be 
almost illiterate and still work it. And she identifies the instructions 
that any new mother might want to have, and then she pushes a few 
buttons. And there's a printer. She prints it out, and she now has 
information just as good as she could get if her baby were born at the 
Georgetown Medical Center here and she were going home.
    Then I met with this women's dairy cooperative--keep in mind, in 
this little village in India--where every transaction, every time they 
brought milk in, it was all entered on the computer, what the fat 
content was, what the volume was, what the price was. And every time the 
milk was sold, it was entered, so that they got a regular computerized 
record of not only what they had put in but what they got out.
    Then I went to Hyderabad, which is sort of a high-tech center of 
India. But in that whole State, you can now get 18 public services on 
the computer, on the Internet. Nobody goes to a revenue office to buy 
their license anymore. You can get a driver's license on the Internet. 
Now, Governor, if you do that, you can 
be Governor for life. They'll repeal the term limits, repeal everything. 
[Laughter]
    My point is that you can see the potential of this, for even the 
poorest people in the world, is truly explosive. That's why we want 
these 1,000 computer centers out there, because we don't want to wait 
even for all the schools to do this right. We want adults in rural 
areas, in isolated areas, in poor areas, to be able to come in and 
access the same sort of services, and use them and get the same sort of 
information and access.
    The potential of this is truly staggering. We need not see the 
digital divide as a threat. It is the greatest opportunity the United 
States of America has ever had to lift people out of poverty and 
ignorance.
    But I will say again, if you look at the whole history of economic 
development, whenever there's a change in the paradigm, there's a divide 
that opens, because some people are well-positioned to take advantage of 
the new economy. It happened when we moved from being an agricultural 
nation to an industrial nation. Some people are well-positioned to take 
advantage of it, and others aren't. So new divides always open when the 
dominant way of making

[[Page 617]]

a living in any society changes. But this empowerment tool gives us a 
chance not only to close the divide quickly but to actually lift poor 
people in a way that has never before been possible.
    I just got back from northern California, and I learned that now--I 
met with some people from a lot of different computer companies, but the 
people from eBay told me that there are now 30,000 people plus, making a 
living just trading on eBay, not working for the company, and that many 
of them used to be on welfare. So it's important that we see this not 
only for the problem it presents, but for the phenomenal opportunity 
that it presents, important that we see it not only as a way to close a 
gap so people don't fall further behind but a way to give people a tool 
that will enable them to leap further ahead. But again I say, it won't 
happen by accident. It requires government, business, educators, 
librarians, civil rights, religious leaders, labor union leaders--thank 
you, Mr. Bahr, for being here today--community-
based organizations, foundations, volunteers. Everybody has got to work 
together.
    Today I want to issue a national call for action on digital 
opportunity, to help us achieve two vitally important goals: first, to 
bring 21st century learning tools to every school. That means we have to 
finish the job of connecting every classroom to the Internet, ensuring 
that all students have access to multimedia computers, creating more 
high quality educational software, helping all teachers learn how to 
make the best use of these tools. And this is very important.
    Again, I want to thank the Members of Congress here who have 
supported our efforts in the aftermath of the Telecommunications Act of 
1996 to create the E-rate, which has made it possible for the schools, 
no matter how poor they are, to have access to the Internet.
    The second goal is to expand efforts far beyond our schools, to give 
every citizen Internet access at home, by bringing technology centers 
and high-speed networks to every single community, by helping adults to 
gain the skills to compete for IT jobs, and inspiring more people to 
appreciate the great value of getting on line.
    Today is the opening of this national call to action. More than 400 
organizations already have signed the pledge, and this is just the 
beginning. For the rest of the year we will try to inspire hundreds, 
indeed, thousands more to sign up. We will work with Congress across 
party lines to build support for budget and legislative initiatives to 
meet these goals. And you heard Senator Mikulski outline some of them. We have to be willing at the 
national level to do our part. This is a worthy Federal investment.
    During the new markets tour, we'll have an opportunity to announce 
many commitments tied to this call to action. Today I'd just like to 
review four of them, all of them vivid illustrations of the kind of 
visionary partnership and barn-raising spirit that we are working to 
foster.
    First, to reprise something Senator Mikulski mentioned, AmeriCorps will make an enormous contribution 
to closing the digital divide by marshaling the power of active citizen 
volunteers. Thanks to the leadership of Senator Mikulski and Harris 
Wofford, AmeriCorps is committing $10 million 
to recruit 750 new members to serve in a brand-new E-Corps. The E-Corps 
will be a large battalion of volunteers, trained and devoted exclusively 
to projects like providing technical support to school systems and 
teaching computer literacy to adults and children.
    The Corporation for National Service will also unleash the power of 
students helping students by providing funds to allow 90,000 high school 
students to get involved in digital divide projects as part of their 
educational curriculum.
    Most young people I know can run circles around me and most people 
my age when it comes to computers and the Internet. AmeriCorps is going 
to tap their capacity so that they can help others in their communities 
to close the digital divide.
    Second, to help get AmeriCorps' E-Corps off to a running start, 
Yahoo will donate a million dollars in Internet advertising to attract 
potential E-Corps members with high-tech skills.
    Third, in partnership with the YWCA, 3Com is launching an innovative 
initiative called NetPrep GYRLS--g-y-r-l-s. Currently less than 30 
percent--listen to this--less than 30 percent of our computer scientists 
and programmers are women. NetPrep GYRLS will help to right this 
imbalance offering free computer network training and certification to 
hundreds of high school girls across our country.
    Fourth, the American Library Association has pledged to greatly 
expand the information literacy programs of its members in at least 250 
communities. So this is just the beginning, but I want to thank the 
people who were involved for these four initiatives. There will be many 
more, but I thank you very much.

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    I've heard Harris Wofford, who worked with Martin Luther King and 
who was in Selma with me the other day and was in Selma 35 years ago 
when the first march took place, say that making sure all young 
Americans share in the opportunity and promise of America is the 
unfinished business of the civil rights movement.
    It is appropriate that we are meeting here on this subject 32 years 
to the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. He was 
there working to lift the economic fortunes of disadvantaged people. I 
think if he were with us today, he would therefore say closing the 
digital divide is a righteous cause.
    In his last Sunday sermon, he ended with a prayer that said, ``God 
grant us all a chance to be participants in the newness and magnificent 
development of America.'' That's what this is all about. We need more 
people like Julian. We need more people like 
you, not only clapping for people like Julian but helping them to live 
their dreams.
    We do that when we help young people, when we help seniors in rural 
America get medical advice over the Internet, when we create tools that 
allow people with disabilities to open new doors of possibility. We give 
our neighbors a chance to participate in this astonishing American 
renaissance. We have done something that would have made Dr. King proud. 
And the new technology of the digital age gives us a chance to do it for 
more people, more quickly, more profoundly than at any time in human 
history. It's up to us to seize that opportunity.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 3:04 p.m. in the East Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to computer skills teacher and 
website developer Julian Lacey, who introduced the President; Harris 
Wofford, Chief Executive Officer, Corporation for National and Community 
Service; Robert L. Johnson, chairman and chief executive officer, BET 
Holdings, Inc.; Gov. Parris N. Glendening of Maryland; and Morton Bahr, 
president, Communication Workers of America.