Remarks to the Community in Newark

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 8, 1999

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 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.