Complete Bookshop/CompleteWorkshop.iso/politics/clinspch/clinmiss.txt

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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 <[e-mail]>
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton
Subject: CLINTON SPEECH TEXT: ST. LOUIS EAST SIDE HIGH
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(This information is posted for public education purposes.  It does
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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)