[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 14 (Monday, April 10, 2000)]
[Pages 722-726]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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? 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

[[Page 723]]

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.
    We will visit Ship Rock, 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

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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 Nayla--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 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

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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 reprieve 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.
    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

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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 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.