Article 4712 of alt.politics.clinton: Path: bilver!tous!peora!masscomp!usenet.coe.montana.edu!caen!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!news.acns.nwu.edu!uicvm.uic.edu!u45301 Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago Date: Tuesday, 18 Aug 1992 23:30:57 CDT From: Mary Jacobs Message-ID: <92231.233057U45301@uicvm.uic.edu> Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton Subject: CLINTON SPEECH TEXT: ST. LOUIS EAST SIDE HIGH Lines: 250 SEND COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS INFORMATION TO THE CLINTON/GORE CAMPAIGN AT 75300.3115@COMPUSERVE.COM (This information is posted for public education purposes. It does not necessarily represent the views of The University.) 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)