[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[April 17, 2000]
[Pages 728-734]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With the Community in
East Palo Alto, California
April 17, 2000
The President. Good morning. I want to thank Mayor Wilson for making us welcome today. And thank you, Magda
Escobar, for all you have done. I also want
to recognize some other people who are here with us today. Reverend
Jackson, thank you for coming. Carly
Fiorina, the president of Hewlett-Packard; and
Robert Knowling, the president of
Covad, thank you for being here. Rebecca Lobo,
thank you for being here. We're glad to see you.
I'd like to also acknowledge the presence in the audience of
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo; the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission,
Bill Kennard; and many Members of
Congress--Representative Zoe Lofgren,
Representative John Conyers,
Representative Bill Jefferson,
Representative Barbara Lee, Representative
Silvestre Reyes, Representative Stephanie
Tubbs Jones, Representative
Anna Eshoo--I think that's all the Members of
Congress who are here.
I'd like to thank Gene Sperling and Maria
Echaveste. And I want to recognize
especially the man who helped us avoid the Y2K problem, a distinguished
Republican Senator from Utah, Bob Bennett.
Thank you for coming, Senator Bennett. We're glad to see you.
I'd also like to thank all the civil rights leaders who are here,
the high-tech CEO's, the foundation directors. And I'd like to thank
Julian Lacey, who is here, for helping us kick
off our national call to action for digital opportunity. I know that all
of you know Julian. Thank you.
I want to thank AOL for webcasting today's event live. And I'd like
to say a special word of appreciation to one person who is not here who
helped us to develop our entire approach to closing the digital divide,
Vice President Al Gore. I thank him as
well.
Now, I will be brief because I want to get on to the questions. But
I want to tell you why we're here. This is a very fortunate time for our
country. We have the strongest economy in history. We have the lowest
African-American and Hispanic unemployment rates our country has ever
recorded and the lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years. But we all
know there are people and places that have not fully participated in
this new economy.
I have been to a lot of those places on my digital divide tour--I
mean, my new markets tours--because I see these places as places of
opportunity, places of new markets. If we can create new employees, new
businesses, new jobs, new opportunities, we can keep the American
economy going. This is one of those fortunate times when, by doing the
thing that is morally right, we actually help to keep America's economic
expansion churning forward. It's going
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to take the efforts of government, business, and the community sector to
succeed.
This is our third new markets tour. When I leave you, I'm going to
northern New Mexico, to the Shiprock Navajo Reservation. And tomorrow
I'll be in Chicago, meeting with representatives of every aspect of the
high-tech industry in America. I wanted to begin here in East Palo Alto,
because even here in Silicon Valley there are many people who could be
left behind, and because you're doing so much to make sure you're not
left behind. And we ought to be giving a helping hand.
I don't think there is a better place in America to show what can be
done to reach out to our children who are at risk of falling behind. We
can see that here at Plugged In, at the Silicon Valley Project, at the
new Cisco Sun Academy where graduates are virtually assured of good jobs
that pay up to $70,000 a year. In a few minutes, I will announce some
other things that corporate leaders here today are prepared to do to
help this city on the move, move even faster.
Let me just briefly ask you to remember the history of this
community. A hundred and fifty years ago, East Palo Alto got its start
as a community called Ravenswood. Ravenswood was a good candidate to
become the last stop on the transcontinental railway, something that was
very important in the industrial age. Unfortunately, plans changed, the
railroad bypassed Ravenswood altogether, and it was a decision that had
repercussions for the people who lived in this community for a century
or more.
Today, we're in another time of fundamental economic transformation,
but we can do it very differently because, unlike the railroads of the
industrial age, the trade routes of the information age can run through
every city, every town, every community. And in fact, the more
communities they run through, the better it works.
No one has to be bypassed this time around. The choice is in our
hands. We can use new technology to extend opportunity to more Americans
than ever before; we can truly move more people out of poverty more
rapidly than ever before; or we can allow access to new technology to
heighten economic inequality and sharpen social division.
Again I say, the choice is ours. But I want to reiterate a point I
made earlier. The truth is that doing the right thing will accelerate
the strength of this powerful economic engine. Every economist knows
that new technologies will continue to drive rapid economic growth only
if they continue to spread to all sectors of our economy.
I have made closing this digital divide a big priority. It is a big
priority in our budget and a big priority for trying to enlist the
energies of our fellow citizens. That's why I issued a national call to
action, to enlist the support of businesses, State and local
governments, community groups, foundations, schools, and volunteers.
Already, more than 400 organizations have signed on to our call.
To reach these broad national goals, all of us are going to have to
do our part. In addition to our $2.25 billion E-rate initiative, which
allows us to hook up every school and library in the country to the
Internet, including those who can't afford it on their own, and our new
$450 million Technology Literacy Challenge, which helps to provide to
poor areas the computers, the software, the teacher training, and the
Internet access that's so important, I'm asking Congress for $100
million for community technology centers like Plugged In, $150 million
to help train all new teachers to use the technology and the Internet in
the classroom, and $2 billion in new tax incentives for computer
donations and contributions to our schools, our libraries, and community
technology centers.
But the important announcement is the one I want to make today.
Corporations in this area have committed over $100 million to help you
do what you do best. Gateway will provide technology training to 75,000
teachers, including every single teacher here in East Palo Alto. Novell
will donate $20 million in software for nonprofit organizations devoted
to helping underserved Hispanic organizations. Hewlett-Packard will
invest $15 million in a new digital village initiative to help three
underserved communities, starting here in East Palo Alto.
Qualcomm is giving back to the city where it's based, San Diego,
with a $25 million commitment, including $7 million--this is important--
to improve math and science education among all of our young people.
PowerUP, a partnership of AOL, Gateway, and several other companies that
brings technology to young people in schools and community centers, is
going to expand from 19 to 250 sites nationwide. AmeriCorps, a strong
partner of PowerUP, will assign 400 of our young volunteers to work at
these sites. AOL is going to provide 100,000
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accounts for use at these sites, a commitment worth $26 million every
year.
Applied Materials has pledged a million dollars for projects such as
a new high-tech job training center for the people of East Palo Alto.
And they are going to be in partnership with the city and with Reverend
Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, which has an
office right around the corner here. I promised Jesse I would promote
his job site, too, you see, around the corner.
AT&T is committing $1.2 million to support the Academy of
Information Technology, which is dedicated to helping high school
students prepare for high-paying jobs in the high-tech industry. Cisco
will invest $1.4 million to expand its Cisco Network Academy program to
10 more underserved communities. People PC has agreed to donate 300 new
multimedia computers to the East Palo Alto Schools.
I want to thank all these corporations and all their leaders for
their new commitments, and I want to thank Covad for leading an effort
to increase minority participation in the high-tech industry. We are
nowhere near where we ought to be on that.
Now, the commitments of governments and corporations are only part
of the equation. The rest requires motivation, and that's what I want us
all to focus on for the rest of our time here. Frankly, all the
computers and software and Internet connections in the world won't do
much good if young people don't understand that access to new technology
means access to new learning opportunities, new job opportunities, new
entrepreneurial opportunities, access to the new economy.
That's why I am very pleased that the Kaiser Family Foundation is
going to create a major public service campaign to inspire young people
to get on computers and get on-line. The ads will air on NBC, ABC, CBS,
Fox, BET, Univision, MTV, the Cartoon Network, and other major channels.
They will feature Magic Johnson and
Rebecca Lobo, who will highlight new
technologies and the fact that they're not only fun, they can open a lot
of doors in life. BET.com will also air their own PSA's, encouraging
African-Americans to use the Internet and participate. Let's give them
all a hand. That's great. [Applause]
Now, let me just say this. I want to thank the people at Plugged In
again, Magda and all the others. Places
like this can change lives forever. You come in, learn how to design
webpages or set up networks or just how to use the Internet as a tool
for discovery. That gives you the power to control your future.
I want to show you something. If you haven't done this, I want to
urge you all to take a look at the classifieds from yesterday's San Jose
Mercury News. There are 10,000 technology-related jobs advertised in
this paper. If they could be held by every unemployed or underemployed
person in East Palo Alto, this would be a better country today. So
whether it's finding a high-tech job or serving as a teacher or just
being a more effective parent, every young person needs to know how to
use this technology. It will serve you well, no matter what you do.
Now I'd like to begin our discussion by asking Rebecca Lobo a question that I hope will help us to understand
what's involved here in getting young people to actually commit
themselves to becoming technologically literate.
A lot of people, Rebecca, across the
country look up to you because you're tall. [Laughter] And they also
look up to you because you're a great basketball player, a great human
being, and therefore a great role model. They see the life you have;
they'd like to have a career in professional sports. But a lot of kids
have to find their stardom somewhere else. There are only so many people
who can make it in sports, but everybody can make it in life. So I'd
like to know how you would speak to children to try to persuade them how
to become technologically literate, why they should master computers and
the Internet. What would your message be?
[Rebecca Lobo, a player for the Women's
National Basketball Association New York Liberty, said that children
should follow their dreams and that access to the Internet offers a way
to find paths to success.]
The President. I'd like to--is it on? I'm still technologically
challenged, right? [Laughter] I want to ask Reverend Jackson a question. You've been involved in the civil rights
revolution all your life. We were just in Selma together. When Dr. King
died, he was moving the civil rights revolution to a new stage, the
stage of economic opportunity. And you have spent most of the last 30-
plus years trying to extend that opportunity to people who have been
left out and
[[Page 731]]
left behind. What do you think this new technology means to your
prospects of succeeding at the work of the last 30 years?
[Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson
recalled that young America came alive in the civil rights movement of
the fifties and sixties to achieve social change. He announced an
upcoming Rainbow/PUSH Coalition conference in East Palo Alto to energize
youth, parents, and churches to take advantage of technology and to
close the digital divide.]
The President. Thank you.
I would like to ask a question of Carly Fiorina. One of the things that bothers me about being President
is that I can--I'm a fairly high-energy person, so I can go to a place
like East Palo Alto, and we can get everybody together, and we can get
all these commitments, and people can follow through on their
commitments. But I'm always worried that somehow there will be a gap
between this moment and when people's lives really change. And I would
like to know what you think it will really take for the information
revolution to permeate this community and others like it, to the extent
that we really will be able to guarantee equal opportunity to all these
kids if they master the fundamentals of the information revolution.
[Carly Fiorina noted the constant war for
talent in the high-tech industry and said the need for skilled personnel
would continue because it was a growth industry with no end in sight.
She said that information technology and the Internet could be the great
equalizer and erase barriers of time, distance, and prejudice; however,
without those tools, skills, and access, the digital divide would become
greater.]
The President. Thank you. Let me just say--I just want to follow up
on something. I want you to think about this. We're all sitting here
talking about this, with 10,000 job vacancies being advertised in the
paper yesterday in this area. If we don't do this now, when are we ever
going to get around to it? Do you think we'd be having this meeting if
the unemployment rate were 10 percent in America, or 10 percent in
California? This is the time we've got to do this.
We're back in Washington today debating legislation about how much--
not whether but how much--we have to raise the cap on visas to bring in
people from other countries who are trained in these skills. And I'm
pro-immigration. I'm all for this. We've got to do it. We've got to keep
these industries going. We've got to do the right thing. But I'm also
trying to make sure when we do it, we get more investments to train
people here to do those jobs, because you can do it.
And I just want to say something to the local folks here and to the
kids who are here. You've got to decide whether you believe intelligence
is equally distributed in this world--I do; whether you believe ability
is equally distributed--I do. I mean, not for everything; I couldn't
play basketball like Rebecca. But everybody can do something, and
everybody can learn this.
I just got back from India, a country with a per capita income of
$450 a year. And I was in a poor village where I saw women who were
almost illiterate--had never even been given the privilege of going to
school--getting on computers, calling up their government's webpage,
getting information about how to take care of their newborn babies in
remote villages, because they had a computer with a good printer to take
the software, give it to them, they could take it home.
This can change the way the world works, and it can save you and
your children from having to wait 30 years to move into the mainstream.
It can be done in a matter of months or a year. But you have to believe
it, and you have to take advantage of it. And if we can't do it where
there's 10,000 job vacancies in the paper, we will never get around to
doing it.
I would like to ask Bob Knowling
to talk a little bit about--to be more specific here. What kind of job
opportunities are available for minorities, for example, who may come
from poor homes or poor neighborhoods or poor communities, if they get
the skills and the training they need? And what do you think is the most
important thing they could do and we could do to bridge this gap?
[Robert E. Knowling, Jr., noted that
the industry offered a wide variety of job opportunities, but women and
people of color often got through the educational process and then did
not get the jobs. He said high-tech businesses should stop merely paying
lip service to diversity in hiring, and he hoped the next time the
President visited, there would be only a few job vacancies remaining.]
The President. Good deal.
[[Page 732]]
President's Use of the Internet
[Magda A. Escobar, executive director,
Plugged In Enterprises, began the question-and-answer session with the
community members in the audience, and a 9-year-old asked how the
President used the computer and the Internet.]
The President. Mostly--let me tell you what, you know what I did? At
Christmastime I actually ordered Christmas presents with the computer. I
confess, I don't use it much for E-mail, but that's for very personal
reasons. When I want to talk to my daughter, for example, I get on the
phone and call her. If you work for the Government, you don't use E-mail
very much unless you want it all in the newspaper. [Laughter]
So I mostly use--and the other thing I do is I try to find new
sites. When I hear about something new, I try to get onto it. For
example, when I learned that now up to 30,000 people were making a
living off eBay--I'm always reluctant to give one company a free
commercial here but--and that a lot of them had once been on welfare, I
wanted to look at it and figure out, how were these people making a
living?
So for me, I'm almost like you, I'm still trying to learn about all
this, and I'm so interested in what its possibilities are. But the only
thing I get personal benefit out of is shopping, because it's hard for
me to move around very much. [Laughter]
Let me say, I also wanted to thank--I forgot to say something--I
wanted to thank the Costano Elementary Choir. They sang before I got
here. So let's give them a big hand. Thank you very much. [Applause]
High-Tech Industry and Community Development
[Ms. Escobar noted that America Online was
broadcasting the event live on the Internet and questions were being
submitted from 17 locations across the country. She read a question
about what students could do to attract high-tech industries to their
area.]
The President. You should answer that.
[Ms. Fiorina answered that high-tech
industries would go where there was skilled labor, where the education
system continued to develop skilled labor, where the tax system was
encouraging, and where transportation systems enabled growth.]
Reverend Jesse Jackson. Mr. President?
The President. Go ahead, Jesse. Let me
just answer that question real quick, though, because this is important.
People ask me this all the time.
The truth is, everything Carly said is right. Therefore, if you
really want high-tech jobs in your area and you don't have them, you
need to examine your school system and then get someone who understands
all these factors that she just mentioned, to come into your community
and help you develop a specific plan for all the changes you need to
make to get it done. This is not something that can be done in a speech;
I used to do this for a living when I was a Governor. This is about
having a specific plan--what are you going to do; what's the list of
people you're going to contact; who's going to do the work?
So if the students who asked me this question are really interested
in it, your community needs a plan. And then somebody needs to be
charged with carrying it out, and then somebody else needs to be
checking on them to make sure they're doing it. It is like every other
endeavor: You've got to have a plan, and then you've got to execute it.
[Reverend Jackson reiterated that many pockets
in the Nation were fundamentally disconnected and in need of a
combination of structural universal access, motivation, and access to
capital for entrepreneurship.]
The President. I agree with that.
Any other questions in the audience here? Go ahead.
Future Technology
[A 9-year-old girl asked what technology would be in the future.]
The President. Well, I certainly can't answer that. Who wants to
answer that? Bob, you want to answer
that question?
[Mr. Knowling suggested that smart
cards and smart chips would replace money, and devices for Internet
access would become more mobile. He said that globalization would
increase, and the Internet revolution would make the Industrial
Revolution pale in comparison. Ms. Fiorina
added that young people would help figure out the future, and technology
would become personalized and nonintrusive.]
[[Page 733]]
The President. I also think what you will see is that--two things--I
think all communications, information, and entertainment systems will
merge. So people will be carrying around things that are telephones or
faxes or televisions, you know, calling up movies, everything else in
one little thing they can carry around with them. I think you will have
that.
And the other thing I think will happen is there will be a radical
alteration in the relationship of energy to work, which will enable us
to dramatically improve the protection of the global environment and
generate a whole different kind of jobs than we've ever had before. I
think those are the two things that will happen over the next 20 years.
There was one other--I promised the lady over here--that young
woman, yes, I promised her.
High-Tech Industry Internships
[The next questioner asked if the President would help the community's
youth receive internships in Silicon Valley. Ms. Fiorina interjected that Hewlett-Packard's internship program
had been successful for both the company and interns.]
The President. How old are the interns? When do you start?
Ms. Fiorina. Most of them start at the end
of their high school years and in their college years. I don't think we
have interns much younger than 15 or 16.
The President. Let me just say this. Maybe one of the things that
the mayor could do is to sort of scout the interest in the high schools
of the community and then talk to some of the companies about it. I'll
bet you could arrange for some intern or intern-like programs for kids
in their high school years so at least they could be exposed to these
companies and see what it is they need to do. And we could come out with
something good here.
Internet Access in Low Income Areas
[Ms. Escobar read a final question from the
Internet about plans to help children from poor neighborhoods get access
to the Internet.]
The President. Well, right now, what we are trying to do is to make
sure all the schools are wired. And when we started, only about 3
percent of our schools were, 1993. Now, we're up to 95 percent of the
schools in the country have at least one Internet connection, including
90 percent of the schools in low income areas. Surprisingly enough, some
of our schools, believe it or not, can't be wired because they are so
dilapidated, which is why I've been trying to get a school construction
initiative passed through Congress.
This may be hard for you to believe out here, but there are schools
in New York City that are still heated by coal-fired furnaces. In
Philadelphia, the average school building is 65 years old. And there are
literally some of our poorest schools in our poor neighborhoods that we
are physically unable to wire. But apart from them, by the end of this
year, we should be at 100 percent of the schools.
Then what I think we need to do is to look at some of the things
that have been done, for example, by Lucent and others in Union City,
New Jersey, where they are trying to put more computers and Internet
connections into the homes of first generation immigrants so that they
can--the parents can E-mail the principals and the teachers and learn
and actually having--my goal is--it can't be done while I'm still
President, but I'm going to keep working on it--my goal is to have the
penetration of computers and Internet access in this country to equal
the penetration of telephone usage. That's what our goal ought to be. We
ought to not quit until we get there.
Ms. Escobar. Mr. President, we actually
have time for one last question from the audience.
Audience member. Hello.
The President. No, let this lady go, and then I'll take yours. No,
this lady first and then you. Okay, go ahead.
Audience member. Hi, Mr. President. My parents both voted for you.
[Laughter]
The President. Thank you very much.
Diversity in Science and Engineering
[The audience member asked about programs to promote more access to
science and engineering for African-American females.]
The President. Well, I mentioned one of them in my announcement, but
I think that beyond what we have talked about here, I think generally
there needs to be a greater emphasis among young female students and
among minority students on science, engineering, mathematics education.
And we actually have some initiatives to invest in that, to do more
outreach,
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do more recruitment, get more people involved in these programs, to
encourage more people to go on to college to major in these programs in
the 21st century science and technology initiative that the Congress
has. And I think it's about a $3 billion initiative. I think it has very
broad bipartisan support, and I expect it to pass.
But I think we need to continue to just work on recruitment and then
make sure that the kids that are interested in it take the courses in
high school they need to take to get into the college majors. But I
hope--that's one of the things that I was talking about. You know, we
don't have enough women or minorities in a lot of these technology
fields. But there are a lot of other fields related to science and
engineering where we need more. I was talking to a young woman
yesterday, who is a classmate of my daughter's at Stanford, about that,
in the engineering area.
I think a lot of it, too, is making people believe they can do it.
You know, in that sense, there is a parallel to the--you know, a few
years ago, we had a lot of talented women basketball players, but they
didn't imagine that they could have a pro league that could work. But it
does now, and so Rebecca has got a whole
different life than she would have had if she had been an all-American
college basketball player 20 years ago. She wouldn't have had the life
she now has. And that's--someone imagined it, and then they went around
putting it together.
And I think it's even easier if we could just get more talent into
the science and technology and engineering fields. And I think the main
thing is recruitment and then making sure the young women and other
people who have been left out actually do the preparatory work they need
to get into the majors. I think the companies will recruit them coming
out of college if they get there in the first place.
Now, I promised this lady she could ask her question.
President's Visit
[In lieu of a question, the audience member welcomed the President and
other dignitaries on behalf of the East Palo Alto community.]
Ms. Escobar. We have received hundreds
of E-mails from students across the country. And once the President gets
back, I understand he will be responding to them.
The President. Yes, we want to respond to all the E-mails.
Ms. Escobar. Great, wonderful!
The President. Anything else? Let me say to all of you--I'd like to
ask you to give a big hand to Senator Bennett and all the Members of the House of Representatives that
are here. I thank them for coming. [Applause] One of the things I've
noticed after 7 years of being President is that the President gets to
give the speeches, but if the Congress doesn't appropriate the money,
it's just a speech. So I think their interest in being here is very
encouraging, indeed.
I want to thank all the chief executive officers of all these
companies who are here, because much of the work that will be done and
much of the commitment that has been made today comes from them. So give
them a hand as well. [Applause]
And let me urge you again not to get discouraged, to work on this,
and to remember that as big as the challenges seem, there are other
people for whom the challenges are greater. I will just give you one
example. When we get to the Shiprock Reservation today, we will be at a
place where only 20 percent of the residents have telephones. Now, you
can't be on the Internet if you don't even have a line. The last Indian
reservation I visited, the unemployment rate was 73 percent.
The one thing you have here is physical proximity, and you ought to
make the most of it. I'm out there trying to figure out how to help
other people overcome physical distance, from Appalachia to the small
towns of the Mississippi Delta to these Native American reservations.
You've got the proximity. These people showed up here today for you. And
now, to some extent, the community, the schools, you've got to make the
most of this. They want to be here to help you, and you can do it.
Thank you very much, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 9:07 a.m. in the parking lot at Plugged
In. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Sharifa Wilson of East Palo
Alto, CA; Julian Lacey, manager, Plugged In Enterprises; and Earvin
(Magic) Johnson, former National Basketball Association player.