[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 3 (Monday, January 24, 2000)]
[Pages 91-92]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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 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

[[Page 92]]

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.