[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 42 (Monday, October 25, 1999)]
[Pages 2098-2102]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the Fifth Anniversary
of AmeriCorps

October 20, 1999

    The President. Well, Andre, thanks to you no one has to wonder about 
what AmeriCorps is all about. I thank you for your introduction. I thank 
you for your service to AmeriCorps and to your country. And I thank you 
for the power of your example. And I hope, maybe more than anyone else 
who speaks today, your voice and your story will be told out of this 
great anniversary meeting.
    I want to thank all the other people here who helped to make this 
day possible. I want to thank Deb Jospin for her leadership; Senator 
Harris Wofford; Eli Segal, for what he did to help us get started; and 
all of them. Let's give them all a hand. [Applause]
    I want to thank Hillary for always believing in this and for taking 
it on as a personal goal that we would do something about the fact that 
when we had 100,000 people in AmeriCorps and everybody who knew about it 
loved it but most people didn't know about it, she decided she would 
change that. And Eli and Alan Solomont and our friend Dan Dutko and 
others agreed to help. And I thank her for her passionate support during 
these years when we believed in AmeriCorps when it was just sort of an 
idea. And she has done a wonderful job. [Applause] Thank you.
    I want to thank the Members of Congress who are here, who were here, 
Senator Spector, Congressman Quinn, and Congressman Payne, three who 
represent the bipartisan support that we have enjoyed. I thank James Lee 
Witt, Jack Lew, Janice Lachance, and others in the administration who 
have helped us. I want to thank our presenters, whom I will introduce in 
just a moment--General Colin Powell, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, Sargent 
Shriver, and the Governor of Utah, Mike Leavitt--for being here. And I 
want to thank the Howard University Choir. They're going to sing for us 
and with us in a few moments.
    You know, it seems impossible to me that it was 5 years ago on the 
North Lawn of the White House that we led the first class of AmeriCorps 
members in the AmeriCorps pledge. It wasn't very long before that that I 
had the privilege of signing the legislation creating AmeriCorps with 
the same pen that President Kennedy had used to sign the legislation 
creating the Peace Corps.
    I always believed that you would elevate the cause of citizen 
service in America, that you would make America a better place. But on 
that day 5 years ago, AmeriCorps was still just an idea with a good 
plan, built on the remarkable pathbreaking efforts of Sargent Shriver 
with the Peace Corps and VISTA; built on the remarkable service corps I 
had seen in Boston and Los Angeles and San Antonio and other cities; 
championed by some of the most thoughtful and passionate citizens of 
both parties; energized by--even then--20,000 young people who were 
raring to give something to their country and wanted to be part of 
AmeriCorps.
    But still, it was just an incandescent idea. Today we celebrate, 
thanks to you and your predecessors, a glowing success. AmeriCorps 
members are living up to the highest obligations of our citizenship. 
They are creating opportunity for others, taking responsibility for 
themselves, and fostering a community of all Americans. They are our 
best builders, building that bridge to the new century.
    You can see it in the way their optimism inspires others to also 
lend a hand and volunteer in their communities. You can see it in the 
remarkable teamwork and camaraderie that I have personally witnessed and 
felt all over this country in so many different activities. You can see 
it in the way they work together across the lines that would normally 
divide AmeriCorps members, and eliminate the alienation that too many of 
our young people experience today.
    You can see kids who went to Ivy League schools and kids who dropped 
out of high school working side by side, serving together, giving 
together, and treating each other as equals, proving that Dr. King's 
dream of a beloved community is alive and well in the hearts and lives 
of the AmeriCorps volunteers.
    I could just give you one illustration among thousands. On his very 
first day as an AmeriCorps member in a small town in southern West 
Virginia, Scott Finn heard

[[Page 2099]]

that local residents had a dream of cleaning up a boarded-up old 
schoolhouse and turning it into a community center. The school had no 
electricity; it had no running water. It was a complete wreck, inside 
and out, an eyesore, and a place that invited drugs and crime and 
mischief.
    So Scott, fresh out of Harvard, a long way from a little town in 
West Virginia, put together a team of volunteers and sparked a new 
determination to get things done. They hauled water out of a nearby 
creek to mop the floors. They negotiated a lease. They raised $50,000 in 
grant money. And today that sorry old school is a beautiful new 
community center, with a lending library, a gym, and a safe playground. 
That's AmeriCorps at its best. That new community center is a meeting 
place for dances, for gospel concerts, for after-school programs, and a 
Boy Scout troop. It's a tremendous source of community pride. Scott is 
one of the 21 remarkable AmeriCorps members and alumni who will receive 
one of our All-AmeriCorps Awards. They'll all be introduced later. But I 
just wanted you to think about that.
    When AmeriCorps members like Scott first took their pledge, they 
promised, and I quote, ``to carry this commitment with me, this year and 
beyond.'' Today we will help them fulfill the second part of that 
pledge, for today I'm asking the Corporation for National Service to 
develop a new initiative to connect former AmeriCorps members with 
service opportunities wherever they live. Habitat for Humanity, the Red 
Cross, the Boys and Girls Clubs, America's Promise, the Points of Light 
Foundation, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, the United Way, the National 
Mentoring Partnership: they've all signed on to help, all to use the 
incredible experience and commitment of our former AmeriCorps members.
    Like returned Peace Corps volunteers and military veterans, those of 
you who are AmeriCorps members and alums represent an enormous national 
pool of know-how and can-do. You are already 150,000 strong and growing 
stronger. I hope soon we'll be adding 100,000 new members to your ranks 
every single year.
    There is no question that you are now an indispensable force for 
change in America. After years of fights over funding and purpose in 
AmeriCorps, peace is breaking out all over in Washington. [Laughter] A 
major factor lifting AmeriCorps out of the realm of partisan politics 
here is the support of people and leaders and especially Governors of 
both parties, like Governor Leavitt, out in the country who have seen 
firsthand how AmeriCorps members are setting off chain reactions of 
civic involvement, civic progress, and civic pride.
    In State after State, in community after community, AmeriCorps 
volunteers prove daily they're one of the best and smartest investments 
our country ever made. They're showing us here in Washington what you 
can do when you stop talking past one another and start working with 
each other. Right now, in the middle of this battle over the budget, we 
need more reminders like this.
    Today I had the honor of signing the budget for VA and HUD, for the 
EPA, for the National Science Foundation, programs to help the homeless, 
give housing vouchers to empower the poor; programs for our empowerment 
zones that the Vice President has led; and for the first step in my new 
markets initiative, to give investors in this country the same 
incentives to invest in poor communities in America, where many of you 
work, that we give them today to invest in poor communities in Latin 
America and Asia and Africa. This is important.
    I hope this is just the beginning and that we will do the same when 
it comes to the education of our children. AmeriCorps volunteers have 
been in the forefront of a lot of our education efforts, and I hope that 
the spirit you bring will infect the spirit of our deliberations here. 
We know that our children can have a good future if we work together 
across party lines the way you do.
    Let me just say, before I introduce the distinguished Americans who 
will present the All-AmeriCorps Awards, once again how profoundly 
grateful I am to every person here who has helped to lift AmeriCorps 
beyond the pale of a partisan political fight. I especially thank those 
who had genuine reservations 5 years ago and then have the followthrough 
and the courage and the openness

[[Page 2100]]

to take an honest look at AmeriCorps in action and to help us to improve 
some of our actions, which we also did.
    Most of all, I want to express my gratitude to the AmeriCorps 
members and their leaders throughout this country who have lived up to 
their pledge and so much more. By taking your responsibility personally, 
as the advertising campaign says, you are breathing new life into our 
old, old democracy, sparking a new patriotism among a new generation of 
Americans--a patriotism of the homefront rooted in the knowledge that 
our Nation's strength and security and our individual possibilities are 
all determined in no small measure by whether all of us have a chance to 
live up to our God-given potential. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
    I'm going to introduce our four presenters and they, in turn, will 
come to the microphone and do their jobs.
    From the moment her husband was struck down on the balcony of the 
Lorraine Motel, Coretta Scott King determined that it was up to her to 
keep the dream alive. Despite her grief, she got on a plane for Memphis 
to address the same striking sanitation workers her husband had gone 
there to help. She told them, ``We are going to continue this work to 
make all people truly free.''
    She has done that in every possible way: by leading marches and 
giving impassioned speeches for racial justice, human rights, an end to 
discrimination based on sexual orientation; by founding the Martin 
Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change; by leading the 
efforts to create a national holiday in her husband's memory; and by 
helping to turn that holiday into a day of service, not a day of rest. 
There is no one in America who is better suited to present the All-
AmeriCorps Common Ground Award, and we welcome her today.
    Sargent Shriver often describes himself as a lucky man, having been 
graced with the remarkable and wonderful family he has. I might say, the 
rest of us think he's lucky because, among other things, he's the 
youngest and healthiest man his age on the face of the planet. 
[Laughter]
    But our luck is just as profound, for America has never in its long 
history had a more compassionate and passionate man more devoted to 
public service. He was the founder of the Peace Corps and the VISTA. He 
served the Navy in World War II, created Head Start and the Job Corps 
and Legal Services. He led the Special Olympics, served as Ambassador to 
France, led the Chicago Board of Education; fostered civil rights early, 
when it wasn't so popular; and economic opportunity for the poor, all 
growing out of his profound religious faith and his deep patriotism. On 
top of all that, he is one of the most warm and genuinely unassuming 
people you will ever meet. We are honored to have him here today to 
present the All-AmeriCorps Award for Strengthening Communities. One of 
the greatest public servants in the history of the United States, 
Sargent Shriver.
    Whenever I speak about Mike Leavitt, the Governor of Utah and the 
new chairman of the National Governors' Association--one of the most 
popular leaders in Utah history--I am reluctant to say anything nice 
about him because his State is so Republican, I'm afraid I'll hurt him 
and knock him down a peg or two back home if it gets out that I'm 
bragging on him. [Laughter] But his complete commitment to service and 
his generous support of AmeriCorps is one of the reasons that we are 
where we are today, with the breadth and depth of support for this 
program.
    Two years ago, in a rally with General
Powell, Governor Leavitt helped to launch Utah's Promise, a statewide 
effort to mobilize all the citizens of that State to action. Already it 
is yielding remarkable results, increasing literacy, creating new 
service teams, recruiting and training more caring foster parents, a big 
issue for Hillary and for me. Governor Leavitt has been a great champion 
of Utah's schoolchildren, reducing class size, increasing teacher pay, 
equipping Utah's classrooms for the 21st century. It is only fitting 
that he present the All-AmeriCorps Award for Leadership, because he is 
truly an All-American leader. Thank you, Governor Leavitt.
    And finally, General Colin Powell. In 1993 General Powell, the 
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the architect of America's 
victory in Desert Storm, retired from his extraordinary military career. 
I was one of many Presidents who benefited immensely by his service.

[[Page 2101]]

    But that was just the first act in Colin
Powell's remarkable life of service. He has gone on to serve our country 
as the leader of America's Promise, his national crusade to give every 
child the nurturing and support he or she needs and to give every young 
person the opportunity to serve. Already General Powell and his troops, 
including many AmeriCorps members, have touched the lives of millions of 
children. General Powell used to say in a characteristically modest way 
that he was, first and foremost, an infantryman. Ladies and gentlemen, I 
begin by introducing you to the infantryman who is leading the charge 
toward America's Promise, General Colin Powell.

[At this point, the All-AmeriCorps Awards were presented.]

    The President. Now, I think our presenters did a wonderful job. 
Let's give them all a hand again. [Applause] They were great. We thank 
them for their time.
    I want to leave you with this thought, and then ask the new class to 
stand and join me in the AmeriCorps promise. And then we will hear from 
and sing with the Howard University Choir in ``America The Beautiful.''
    When you leave here today and you remember how you felt and you 
remember the stories of the people we honored, I want you to think of 
the future you would like to build for America in the 21st century. I 
want you to think about what you'd like this country and this world to 
be like when your children are your age, when your grandchildren are 
your age.
    If I ask you to write down what you think the new century will hold, 
depending on your background, you might say, well, we're going to 
finally solve all the mysteries of the human gene, which is true, and 
then mothers will go home from the hospital with their newborn babies 
with a little map of their future, and it will tell you, individualized, 
what kind of food your children should eat, what kind of exercise 
regimes they should have, what they should avoid, how you can maximize 
the quality of their lives.
    Or if you're into computers, you might talk about the next 
generation of the Internet and how, in no time at all, the number of 
Internet users will be as dense as the number of telephone users in 
America and how the Internet might allow children in the poorest 
villages of the world to skip a whole generation of educational and 
economic development. Or you might think about how these two things will 
join together, and we'll be able to put little digital, electronic 
impulses in various parts of people's bodies that will help them 
overcome paralysis and have medical miracles.
    Or if you're interested in outer space, you might say you look 
forward to the discovering of billions of new galaxies and finding out 
what's really in those big black holes in outer space.
    Isn't it interesting when you think about all this modern, exciting 
stuff, the most sweeping discoveries the world has ever known--don't you 
think it's interesting that the biggest problems we have in this country 
and throughout this world relate not to some modern problem--although 
there are modern problems, like sophisticated weapons--but they're 
rooted in the oldest, most primitive problem of human societies: We're 
still afraid of people who are different from us, who look different 
from us, who act different from us, who have different views about how 
to worship God or live their lives.
    That's why AmeriCorps is so important. For all the things I've been 
involved in all these years as President, all the things I've worked to 
do, I really believe, looking toward the future, if every young person 
has a chance to be a good citizen--and we don't give up on anybody; we 
always give them a chance to come back, here; we had a lot of comeback 
kids here today talking--and if America can remain committed to building 
one America across all the lines that divide us, recognizing that our 
differences make life more exciting, but what's important is our common 
humanity--if those two things can prevail, more than any modern 
discovery, you'll be proud of the America your children and 
grandchildren have.
    That's why AmeriCorps matters and why I am so grateful to you. Thank 
you very much.
    Now, I want to ask the newest class of AmeriCorps volunteers to 
stand up and repeat the oath after me. Raise your right hand.

[[Page 2102]]

    ``I will get things done for America to make our people safer, 
smarter, and healthier. I will bring Americans together to strengthen 
our communities. Faced with apathy, I will take action. Faced with 
conflict, I will seek common ground. Faced with adversity, I will 
persevere. I will carry this commitment with me this year and beyond. I 
am an AmeriCorps member. And I will get things done.''

[Audience members repeated the pledge line by line after the President.]

    Congratulations.
    Now--good for you. Ladies and gentleman, I would like to ask you, in 
advance, to give a warm round of applause to the Howard University 
Choir. They've waited through this whole thing to sing ``America The 
Beautiful'' with us. [Applause]
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:55 p.m. in a tent on the South Lawn at 
the White House. In his remarks, he referred to Andre Crisp, AmeriCorps 
volunteer, who introduced the President; Eli Segal, former Chief 
Executive Officer, Corporation for National Service; Alan Solomont, 
former national finance chair, Democratic National Committee; and the 
late Dan Dutko, Democratic Party fundraiser. The transcript released by 
the Office of the Press Secretary also included the remarks of the First 
Lady.