CLINTON SPEECH TEXT: ST. LOUIS EAST SIDE HIGH

 

Article 4712 of alt.politics.clinton:

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Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago

Date: Tuesday, 18 Aug 1992 23:30:57 CDT

From: Mary Jacobs <U45301@uicvm.uic.edu>

Message-ID: <92231.233057U45301@uicvm.uic.edu>

Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton

Subject: CLINTON SPEECH TEXT: ST. LOUIS EAST SIDE HIGH

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Governor Bill Clinton

Speech at Eastside High School

St. Louis

5 August 1992

Introduction:

Senator Al Gore

I told Bill here that with an introduction like that of me, I'm the

one who's going to introduce Bill. I think Bill's getting the short

end of the stick on this deal. That was really lovely and I

appreciate it so much.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are so proud to be here at Eastside High.

It is wonderful to be here in East Saint Louis and here at Eastside

High. We are beginning today a bus tour that will take us to many

locations as we head north up along the Mississippi River. We've

been very much looking forward to coming right here.

I heard the mention of Jackie Joyner Kersee. I too would join you

in cheering that and I know that East St. Louis is proud of Jackie

Joyner Kersee not only for that gold medal but because of who she

is as a human being. And where is Bob Shannon? There he is. You,

sir, are a hero, and all of the United States of America is proud

of your life, your career and your dedication. Ladies and

gentlemen, I truly believe that Bill Clinton and I could do no

better than to adopt Bob Shannon's slogan and attitude for this

country: Get it done. It's time to get it done.

We're going to be taking questions shortly, and we're looking

forward to that. Before I introduce Bill Clinton I'd just like to

say a brief word about him to you. His father was killed in a

tragic accident three months before he was even born. If anybody

here has been raised with the help of his or her grandparents,

well, that's part of Bill Clinton's story as well, and the

community pitched in to help him get what he needed to grow up

healthy and strong. But he himself pulled himself up by the

bootstraps. He worked his way through college and got one of the

finest educations you can possibly get. And then he faced a choice

in life. Would he take that education and go out to make a great

personal fortune? Would he think primarily about himself? Or would

he do something else with the education and talent he had gained?

He decided to go right back to his home to help the families who

were in the circumstances from which he came. And his whole career

has been dedicated to exactly that.

Just as the emphasis here is on education, he has put his emphasis

on education and was the one person who really started the

education reform revolution in this country and is acknowledged

throughout the nation for his innovative new ideas to try to

improve our educational system. He also introduced innovative

health care programs and created good manufacturing jobs in his

home state at ten times the national average. Those are some of the

reasons why all of the other governors, all 49 of them, Republicans

and Democrats together, when they were asked to vote on who is the

best and most effective governor in the country--I think some of

the Republican governors in an election year probably wish they had

their votes back for political reasons--but they voted on a bi-

partisan basis to name Bill Clinton the best governor in the United

States of America. (Applause) And now he wants to introduce some of

those ideas to the nation, and he has put forward a program to tell

every boy and girl who wants to go to college that you will not

have to worry about where the resources are coming from because he

wants to introduce and pass and make the law of the land a program

that will allow every boy and girl who wants to go to college to do

so and then pay it back, not the way it's done now which costs the

taxpayers billions of dollars and doesn't work and excludes a lot

of people--but to pay it back by either having it taken off of your

paycheck the first few years of your working career, or if you want

to come back for two years and work in a domestic Peace Corps and

come right back to East St. Louis and work in education or policing

or health care to help build this community and help lift this

community, you can pay your college loan back that way. (Applause)

Now the basic choice in this election that we have facing us is

very clear. We can have either more of the same (no). Do you want

more of the same (NO!)? Do you want four more years of a "Read my

lips" recession? (NO) Do you want four more years of a phony

education president? (NO) Or do you want real leadership for

change? (Applause)

Do you believe it's time for Bush and Quayle to go? (YES) What time

is it? (Time for them to go.) One more time: What time is it? (Time

for them to go.) One more time: What time is it? (Time for them to

go.) Alright, well, ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce to

you the next president of the United States of America, Bill

Clinton.

Remarks

Governor Bill Clinton:

Thank you, thank you very much. (Applause) Thank you. Thank you

very much, Senator Gore. I did a pretty good job selecting my

running mate, didn't I? (Applause)

I want to say a word of thanks to Dr. Parks for opening the school

for us today. This is the biggest crowd I've ever seen in a gym in

the summer time. I want to say a special word of appreciation to

your mayor, my good friend, Mayor Bush, who (Applause)--on him I

like that last name, it sounds good--I believe he really wants to

do good things for this community and after this election I'm going

to help him to do good things for this community.

I can't help noting, too, when you all cheered for Jackie Joyner

Kersee, you know, four years ago her brother Al won the triple

jump. He went to school in Arkansas, that's how come he won it.

(Applause) I want to spend as much time as we can just answering

questions. Al Gore and Tipper Gore, my wife Hillary and I, we've

gone together across this country trying to reach out to America's

heartland. I want to spend most of my time answering questions.

But first I want to say just a couple of things to you here in East

St. Louis.

You know, everybody knows all the economic statistics and the

social statistics. I've heard about it. I know that this area has

a high unemployment rate, and the minority unemployment rate is

worse. I know the school funding is inadequate. I know the crime

rate is high. I know that all these problems exist. What I want you

to know is I knew that a long time before I ran for president.

Several years ago I agreed to head a commission studying the lower

Mississippi River area from southern Illinois, where the counties

have unemployment rates in the 20 percent range, all the way to New

Orleans down the Mississippi River and including East St. Louis is

the poorest part of America. That includes a lot of my home state,

Arkansas. The eastern part of my state was getting pummelled and

hurt so badly in the 1980's and all the way into the 90's while the

western part of my state was growing. I spent a lot of time in

schools like this with people like you and I want you to know two

things. Number one: It does not have to be this way. We can do

better. We can do better.

But the second thing I want to say is: I've got a job to do and so

do you, and we're both going to have to do that job in order to

make it better. Coach Shannon, Al and I were going over the

football team's exploits on the way over here today, and I thought

to myself on that slogan, "get it done," you know, at some point

all of us have to make decisions in our lives to take control: to

take our lives back, to take our families back, to take our

neighborhoods back, to take our futures back. And believe you me,

I don't think you can do it alone. I think you need a president and

a national government that is caring, that works, that is committed

to helping you and investing in our people. But I also think you

need to know there have to be some grassroots changes, too.

The same kind of spirit that enables the football team to win is

what enables people to win academically, what enables people to rid

their streets, their blocks, their gyms of crime and violence. I've

got a plan that puts the American people first again. I've got a

plan that takes on the way the government has failed us. For the

last 12 years we've been in the grip of a "trickle down" economics

theory  that believed if you just helped the rich and got out of

the way that everything would be fine. We've had a government that

responded to lobbyists and special interest groups so that we are

spending more money on health care than any country in the world

and doing less with it because we're giving more to insurance

companies, and bureaucracies, and regulations, and other people are

spending more on health care.

We do a lot of talking about family values but we make it harder to

raise a child in this country than any other advanced country in

the world. Whether you're talking about child care or Head Start or

smaller classes in the early grades or the ability to go to college

or the ability to get at least two years of apprenticeship training

if you don't go to college. We don't do a very good job of that.

We talk a lot about free enterprise, this administration does. But

we haven't done what it takes to have government be a real partner

with business and labor to get investments back into communities

like East St. Louis and put the people back to work again. And if

people aren't working, it's hard for good things to happen.  So

I've got a plan. And Al Gore and I are going to implement it. We're

going to put our people first. We're going to invest again.

I also want your streets to be safe. That is, I want your streets

to be safe. One of the things we need is more police officers on

the street who come from the communities they represent, who can

relate to people and work with people. You heard Al say we're going

to make it possible for young people in this community to borrow

the money to go to college and then pay it off by coming back here

and working for two years as police officers. I also want to make

it possible for people that are going to be moved out of the

service in the aftermath of the Cold War with defense cuts. If we

trim our services, I think we ought to allow men and women who are

in the military service to transfer and train to become law

enforcement officers here at home and earn time on their retirement

while keeping their streets safer.

So I want to do these things. But here's what I want to say to you

also. For the last 10 or 11 years as governor, I've had the

privilege to travel America, looking for things that work, looking

for schools that work, looking for poor communities that generated

jobs and started businesses, looking for people who have taken

their streets back and made them safer. And I want you to believe

this: just as you have a football team that is the best high school

football team in the country, you can have academic excellence. You

can create economic opportunity. You can take your streets back and

make them safe.

How do I know that? Because with my own eyes I have seen it in this

country under terrible circumstances. And what I want you to

believe is that if you had a president who cared, and if you had a

government that worked for all of the people instead of the

privileged few, if you had somebody who said "I'm going to put you

first," then if you were willing to organize and work and change

and take responsibility and get it done--we could do in academic

and in business and jobs and in crime what you can do in football.

There is no difference. You got to organize and focus and work and

change. And we have to do these things together. Who's going to

invest in this community if they think their kids are going to get

shot on the street? You want businesses here, we've got to make

your streets safe again. Right? (Applause) We want business

investment here, we've got to help this school to succeed

academically and every way.

My friend Jonathan Kozol wrote a book called "Savage Inequalities"

in which he featured this school. I hope you read it. It talked

about how you get the shaft in funding in education. Well, I want

to do something about that, and I'm going to if you give me a

chance to serve as president. But you're going to have to make the

most of the money. We got to do these things together. If Al Gore

and Bill Clinton go to Washington and the White House, our job is

to create opportunity. Your job is to come up with the

responsibility to seize that opportunity and make it work and find

out exactly how to win in this global economy. (Applause) We've got

to take some tough steps. We can't have these kids getting killed

in our schools and walking our streets and our laundromats, we

can't have that. We can't keep a country going and we ought to

recognize that the best things we can learn from the Jackie Joyner

Kersees of the world is that if you apply that level of effort to

other areas of life we can all succeed. Not everybody can be an

Olympic gold medalist, but everybody can succeed in life with

organized effort in an environment where they can succeed. That's

the lesson to learn. (Applause)

I want you to know that after this election's over, I'm not going

to hide out in the White House. I'm going to keep coming out here

to communities like this, listening to people, answering questions,

being accountable, and challenging you to make the most of the

opportunities we're going to do our best to create. And if you want

that kind of partnership and that kind of challenge, and you're

sick and tired of things the way they are, give us a chance. And

together, you and I, we can change the course of history.

(Questions)