[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 44 (Monday, November 8, 1999)]
[Pages 2246-2250]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Community in Newark

November 4, 1999

    Thank you. Let me begin by saying that, as an old school musician, I 
appreciate the band being here today and playing for us. Thank you very 
much.
    Secretary Herman, thank you very much for your introduction; and my 
good friend Mayor Sharpe James--I told Jayson, when Mayor James was 
talking, I said, ``You know, I really like Sharpe. He never loses his 
enthusiasm. He's always out there pumping, and you need that for 
leadership, to make something go.''
    I thank Secretary Herman for her leadership. Secretary Slater, thank 
you for being here. Your principal, Lanni Paschall, better? The third 
time I'll get it perfect. Your superintendent, Marion Bolden, thank you 
for being here. Senator Lautenberg, Congressman Payne, who used to--Don 
Payne used to teach and coach at this school, and we thank him for being 
here.
    I am also joined by Congressmen John Larson from Connecticut and 
Paul Kanjorski from Pennsylvania. We thank them for being here. And I'm 
especially honored by the presence here today of a man who believes 
passionately in this cause and has worked on trying to give all of our 
children a better future, your former Governor and my former colleague, 
Governor Tom Kean, now the president for a university. Thank you for 
being here, sir.
    I want to thank Lew Katz, who will speak in a moment; and Ray 
Chambers the owners

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of the Nets and partners in the Yankees. Ray Chambers has been a real 
guardian angel of this city. He's never forgotten where he came from, 
and I thank Ray and Lew, and I'll have more to say about that in a 
minute. I thank Jayson Williams and the New Jersey Nets for being here 
today.
    You know, I thought I was a reasonably tall person until--
[laughter]--Bob Lanier of the NBA met me at the airport. And Paul 
Tagliabue, the NFL Commissioner, is here. He used to actually play 
basketball, and he feels short on this stage today. Wendy Lewis, from 
major league baseball, is here. Bill Milliken, from Communities In 
Schools, which has been active here.
    And we have some business leaders here: the CEO of Prudential, Art 
Ryan; COSTCO co-founder, Bob Craves; AT&T Network Services president, 
Frank Ianna; Bell Atlantic New Jersey president, Bill Freeman; Lucent 
general counsel, Richard Rawson. I thank all them for being here.
    And I'd like to introduce some of the other people who came here 
with me. First of all, a man who has believed in bringing economic 
opportunity to the poor communities of our country for many, many years 
and has worked for it, Reverend Jesse Jackson. Make him feel welcome 
here. [Applause] I'd like to thank Al From, from the Democratic 
Leadership Council; Hugh Price, from the Urban League; and Maria 
Echaveste, my Deputy Chief of Staff; and Gene Sperling, my national 
economic counselor. All of them have played a role in this day.
    Now, I want to be brief here because I want you to hear from all the 
people who really came to tell you what they're going to do to give more 
of our children a better future. But let me say, I am honored to be 
here, at Malcolm X Shabazz High School. I am honored to be a part of 
this day.
    We got the day off to a great start because I just met with a number 
of the Project GRAD scholars. And let me say that this is an 
unbelievable program. For those of you who are here who don't know what 
it stands for, it means, ``graduation really achieves dreams.'' And 
thanks to all the companies that have worked on it and the Communities 
In Schools program and the people here in the school, all these young 
people will have the guarantee that they can go on to college if they 
make their grades, they do community service, they take the right 
courses, and they make the right life choices. That's the kind of 
opportunity we need for every single child in the United States of 
America, and I thank you for giving it to these young people.
    Last July, I went around America to a lot of places that haven't 
participated yet in our economic recovery, the hills of Appalachia, the 
rural Mississippi Delta, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South 
Dakota, the inner cities of East St. Louis and Phoenix and Watts.
    The whole idea was to say to the rest of America, ``Look, we've got 
the lowest unemployment in 30 years, over 19 million new jobs, the 
lowest African-American and Hispanic unemployment ever recorded, a 20-
year low in poverty, a 30-year low in the welfare rolls, a 30-year low 
in the crime rates. If we can't now face the fact that in spite of all 
this prosperity there are neighborhoods, there are people, there are 
places that our economic recovery has still not touched and left behind, 
we will never get around to dealing with this.
    Now is the time to say the rest of America should be part of our 
prosperity, and they're our next great economic opportunity, the new 
markets of the 21st century. That was the purpose of the July trip. This 
is the second new markets tour. This time, we're focusing not only where 
to find potential but how to turn that potential in our inner cities and 
our rural areas into long-term economic partnerships. And there is no 
better place for America to look than right here in Newark.
    Newark went through a terrible period of economic decline and along 
with it, a lot of the social problems that inevitably occur when people 
can't get up and make a decent living every day to support their 
families. But look what's going on now: the young people being helped in 
Project GRAD; the unbelievable performing arts center that I visited 
last March here; Ray Chambers and Lewis Katz, the commitment to have the 
Nets here in Newark and to dedicate nearly 40 percent of the profits of 
the enterprise to reinvesting in this community, its children, and its 
future. We can see it in the Newark Alliance and the New Community 
Corporation.

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    Of course, there's still a lot of things that need to be done here. 
You need more jobs and new businesses and more opportunity and hope and 
more reconstruction. But wow, what a start you have made.
    And I can see it, most importantly, in the lives of those young 
people that I met with this morning from the Project GRAD group. And I 
went around and asked them all, where are you going to go to college? 
What are you going to study? What are you going to do with your life? 
And they all had an answer. And they're young; maybe they'll change 
their minds along the way. But the point is, they know. They know--
because of those of you who've been involved in this effort--that they 
can go to college and they can live their dreams, that they can have a 
chance in America.
    That's all any of these great athletes were given, a chance. There 
are a lot of guys this tall that aren't playing basketball. They got a 
chance, and they made the most of it. And that's what we ought to offer 
to every child and to every adult and to every community and every 
neighborhood in this entire country. And I will say again, if we cannot 
do this now, at the time of our greatest prosperity, we will never get 
around to it. Now is the time to create new markets in every place that 
has not yet been in the strong sunshine of this economic recovery.
    You know, we can do part of it with the Government, and I'll say 
more about that in a minute. But I think that people can make the most 
difference, visionaries like Ray Chambers and Lew Katz, who have seen 
that a sports team can not only thrill people while the game is going on 
but actually share the rewards of their popular support with the 
communities in which they live. This is an astonishing thing that they 
have done. I want all of you to hear me: This is an astonishing thing 
that they have done.
    And if every franchise in America would follow that lead, and some 
of the other things you're going to hear about in a minute, America 
would be a very different place. I have seen Jayson Williams dedicate so 
much of his time to being a role model for our young people and helping 
our young people, and more and more of our athletes are doing this.
    But the Nets have found a way to do it on a systematic and 
widespread basis that can change the lives of hundreds of people, maybe 
thousands of people, maybe the whole future of this community. And this 
is an amazing thing. Because what we want to do in America is to find a 
way for people to do well and to do good. And we always find that the 
more good we do, the more those of us who are fortunate do well. But 
they are living it, and they are living it with a plan, with a system. 
They worked the plan, and they have good people who believe in it. And 
we need to do that everywhere.
    Sports teams everywhere can make a difference. They can site their 
stadiums in urban areas as part of a comprehensive community economic 
development plan. They can set up mentoring partnerships with their 
suppliers to help small and minority-owned businesses get in the game of 
doing business. They can reach out to young people and lead them on a 
path to college and a better life.
    So today we are here, as much as anything else, to challenge all the 
sports teams in America to listen to and match the pathbreaking 
commitment of Lewis Katz, of Ray Chambers, of Paul Tagliabue, of the 
others from other athletic organizations who will speak to you in a few 
minutes.
    Think about the obligations owed to people in your city. Go beyond 
making appearances for good causes to change the cause for everyone in 
your community. Make investment in your community second only in your 
priorities to bringing home the championship trophy. That way, every 
single sports team in America can be a true champion for the children 
and the future of our country.
    I also want to briefly thank some of the other businesses 
represented here today for what they're doing. But let me just mention 
it, because if every business in America copied them, this would be a 
very different and better country. Prudential, one of the oldest and 
most generous corporate citizens in Newark, has just approved a $2\1/2\ 
million grant to help young people gain vital management skills. Yes, 
give them a hand. [Applause] Bell Atlantic and Ford Motor are

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going to build on an existing $5 million commitment to add a new 
distance learning laboratory to their youth automotive training center. 
AT&T is launching a new corporate mentoring program and a new 
information technology academy for young people. And the Mills 
Corporation, a major developer of shopping malls, has pledged to hire 
1,000 local residents and invest $1 million to provide training, 
transportation, and child care for these and their other new workers.
    What are we going to do in Washington? Well, we're doing our best, 
the Members of Congress who are here from New Jersey and other States 
and me and our administration, to try to give American companies and 
individuals more incentives to invest in the people and the places that 
are still not full partners in our recovery. We have asked Congress for 
bipartisan legislation to create tax incentives and loan guarantees to 
spur $15 billion in new investment. Congress has already taken the first 
step and passed initial funding for the plan. And I've worked very hard 
to make this a bipartisan, nonpolitical effort, because what I want to 
do in passing this program is nothing more or less than to give American 
business people and other investors the same incentives to invest in the 
poorer communities of America we give them today to invest in the poorer 
communities of South America or Africa or Asia or any other place.
    And let me say, I support giving Americans incentives to invest in 
other countries. I want us to be partners with people around the world 
who are trying to live their dreams. But we have a heavy obligation to 
take care of people at home who haven't been part of this recovery yet.
    One last thing I'd like to mention. I want to thank Reverend Jackson 
and others who are here for supporting community banks and a strong 
Community Reinvestment Act. That law helps to pump over $80 billion in 
investment into our communities last year. And there was a serious 
attempt to weaken it, even as we gave banks new powers. So we said, ``If 
you're going to expand the powers of banks, we want to expand the reach 
of the Community Reinvestment Act.'' People who have banks in 
communities ought to loan money in the communities where their 
depositors are and help to build their future there. And I want to say I 
thank them for that.
    Let me say one last word about Newark, because I hope the story 
coming out of this today will be, if they can do it in Newark, why can't 
we do it in our community. That's what I want the story to be. When 
people see pictures of those young people that I met from Project GRAD 
on the news tonight, I want people to say, ``If those kids are being 
given the help they need and the guarantee they can go on to college, I 
want our kids and our community to have the same guarantee to go on to 
college and the help they need to learn what they need to know.''
    A few years ago, a lot of people were ready to give up on Newark. 
Some people could only remember riots. But the people of Newark 
represented more than 300 years of remarkable contributions to our 
Nation, from the building of the Conestoga wagons that helped us settle 
the frontier, to supplying the equipment that helped us win two World 
Wars. Where some people saw an abandoned downtown, the visionaries of 
Newark dreamed of a performing arts center. Where some saw empty lots, 
the visionaries saw community centers. Where some saw a city in trouble, 
the people who bought the Nets saw a place of the future.
    And everybody here who believed in the children of this community, 
who believed that every child can learn and has a gift to give, not only 
to his or her own life but to all the rest of us as well, I want to tell 
you that I am profoundly grateful. And I just want the rest of America 
to see it. I want to help you succeed, and I want us to make these 
opportunities available to every single child in the United States.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 11:32 a.m. in the gymnasium at the Malcolm 
X Shabazz High School. In his remarks, he referred to Mayor Sharpe James 
of Newark; Jayson Williams, player, and Ray Chambers and Lewis Katz, co-
owners, NBA New Jersey Nets; State School District Superintendent Marion 
A. Bolden, Newark Public Schools; former Gov. Tom Kean of New Jersey, 
president, Drew University; Mayor Bob Lanier of Houston, member, 
Basketball Hall of Fame; Wendy Lewis, human resources director, Major

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League Baseball; former Gov. William E. Milliken of Michigan, founder 
and president, Communities In Schools; Al From, president, Democratic 
Leadership Council; and Hugh B. Price, president and chief executive 
officer, National Urban League.