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Speech to Staff of ONS [Office of National Service], ACTION, CNCS [Corporation for National and Community Service] 9/24/93-OEOB [Old Executive Office Building]
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Speech to Staff of ONS [Office of National Service], ACTION, CNCS [Corporation for National and Community Service] 9/24/93-OEOB [Old Executive Office Building]
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FOIA Number: 2013-0661-F
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MARKER
This is not a textual record. This is used as an
administrative marker by the William J. Clinton
Presidential Library Staff.
Collection/Record Group:
Clinton Presidential Records
Subgroup/Office of Origin:
National Service
Series/Staff Member:
Eli Segal
Subseries:
OA/ID Number:
1295
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Folder Title:
Speech to Staff of ONS [Office of National Service], ACTION, CNCS [Corporation for National and
Community Service] 9/24/93 - OEOB [Old Executive Office Building]
Stack:
Row:
Section:
Shelf:
Position:
S
66
2
8
1
ELI SEGAL
ALL HANDS' MEETING
OEOB - SEPTEMBER 24, 1993
Good afternoon. For those of you I haven't yet met, I'm Eli Segal.
While I will work as the CEO of our new Corporation and therefore your
boss, I hope I'll prove to you as you will to me that I'm actually nothing
more than your colleague, friend and fellow service warrior as we begin our
awesome responsibilities.
It's been quite a week, hasn't it?
Years from now, in the quiet moments of our own personal winters, we
will remember having been a witness to history -- remembering that we were
there, on September 21st of 1993, when with the instruments of our history
President Bill Clinton made the National and Community Service Trust Act
the law of the land. Today, with the memory of that triumph fresh in our
minds and hearts, I want all of us to turn our attention toward the road ahead.
Much of what I want to say I covered with some of you Wednesday night at
the state structure meeting, but I feel so strongly about it that I want to make
1
certain that everyone from ACTION, from the Commission and from ONS
heard it at the same time. That huge tent on the South Lawn was supported
by three giant columns -- and the immense enterprise of national service must
be similarly supported by each of the three organizations as it moves surely
toward one, acting in harmony -- or the Corporation -- and national service
itself will not stand.
Whether you have been a service warrior since Bill Clinton was a
teenager, or whether you are just out of your teens yourself, you are part of a
historic experiment. More will be called for from you than attending
ceremonies and cheering others. We have before us -- before each and every
one of us -- a series of challenges. Whether we can rise together to meet
them will determine whether this effort, in which the President and the
American people place so much hope, will succeed. We are aiming to make
citizen service bigger and better than it has ever been. This will be a
challenge of mind and spirit more than an exercise of arithmetic.
Nevertheless, let me place our work in its starkest terms: by the end of our
first full year of operations, we aim to have more Americorps members on
the streets and in the classrooms of this country than ever served in any year
2
in the Peace Corps' 32 years existence. And then we intend to increase
Americorps -- and VISTA -- and the National Senior Volunteer Corps -- and
ServeAmerica -- in each of the following years, all without creating a new
federal bureaucracy.
When Sarge Shriver, Harris Wofford and the other founders of the
Peace Corps began that project, the sense of Camelot was at its height.
Today, after assassinations, break-ins, and credibility gaps, the public is far
more suspicious -- indeed, cynical -- about any assertion that government can
help them. So we have our work cut out for us.
3
Each of us will need to do more -- far more -- than we have before.
For those of us from ACTION, you will need to move from survival to
creative energy. For decades you have brought committed volunteers -- the
young and the young in spirit -- to serve the most pressing needs of our
communities. The evolution of the agency and its programs from its
founding in the 1960s to the turbulence of the 1970s and the neglect of the
1980s, to a visionary and effective service powerhouse for the 21st Century,
must now be completed. On this most experienced of the three columns, a
particular burden will be placed -- a burden to have the courage and rigor to
examine old ways in light of new challenges, and make reinvention not a
slogan, but an ethic and an operating principle.
For those of us affiliated with the Commission, stimulators of so much
good in the field without the support structure to follow your investments as
fully as you would like, the Corporation for National Service also opens a
new chapter. From an era of developing models, we move into a time for
requiring results. The Commission has brought a fierce independence to
community service; now, those from that structure must harness that spirit in
the service of a new community -- the broader roof of the Corporation.
4
And for those of us who come from the White House, the transition
may be most jarring of all. In the first place, we may have to get used to
individual offices and phones that actually work! But our challenge, after the
luxury of a White House cocoon, will be to find real collaboration with those
who were guiding the development of service long before we knew what that
meant.
And by the way -- we will all by under one roof soon. We aim to have
all of the Corporation housed at 1100 Vermont Avenue within the next
month. We may all move again early next year, if we can locate space
within which we can work together even more easily. But the key is, soon
and for as long as the Corporation exists, we will be officed together and will
be working together.
Each and every one of you will have the chance to play key roles in the
Coporation. In fact, we are beginning a collaborative process to determine
how we can est make ranges of opportunities open to all of us. I honor your
past efforts -- and I want you to take this moment to applaud yourselves and
your neighbors for those efforts.
5
And for those of you who don't yet know them, I want to introduce
five people who have been working with you and me, and who will be among
the senior executives of the Corporation. I'd like them to stand up and be
acknowledged: Shirley Sagawa, Catherine Milton, Gary Kowalczyk, Rick
Allen and General Don Scoot, who joins us to head up the new Civilian
Community Corps.
We are, all of us, on the front-lines of change. The ancient Chinese
character for change was written by combining the brush-strokes for "danger"
with "opportunity", and so it will be for our collective work. If we can write
together the story of the next few years, we can truly transform America.
That's why we will give you the "reinventing government" credo when
you leave today -- to keep us clearly focused on that task. And why you will
be among the very first actual rego cardholders in the federal government.
Maybe that won't get you the same notoriety as those American Express
cardholders you see in the magazine ads -- but being the first to have these
cards is a clear indication that the President and the Vice President regard the
Corporation as a critical model for reinventing the entire government. We
6
are first for a reason -- and we have good reason to make sure we stay the
best.
In a minute, we will watch a brief video that was put together for the
state structure meeting -- it depicts a compelling view of what national service
is. In a way, the video is a visual reflection of our Corporation's mission
statement, which we've developed collaboratively with a team from
ACTION, the Commission and ONS. That mission statement, which you
will also receive when you leave today, and the video say the same thing in
different ways. They indicate three basic principles of national service:
7
First, national service programs should get things done. We want to
show the American people what national service can accomplish for their
neighbors and in their neighborhoods in the four areas of education, health
and human services, public safety and the environment. Americans of every
persuasion must feel that this program improved their communities and their
country -- whether it was by tutoring children, bringing healthcare to infants,
policing the streets, or cleaning up our parks. That is why we will be
working to establish meaningful performance goals for programs -- then we'll
fund the programs that reach them, and improve or eliminate those that don't.
Second, national service programs should bring diverse Americans
together and improve their lives. National service has the capacity to heal
some of the pain of racial injustice and economic inequality in America. But
to do that, it has to unite Americans in all of our magnificent diversity --
including rich kids from the suburbs, poor kids from the inner city, rural
elderly and urban yuppies, high school dropouts and law school graduates.
The program really should look like America. With all of these diverse
Americans working together for a single cause -- not to advocate a political
8
position, but to serve their communities and help themselves -- it'll be the
best education in citizenship we'll ever get.
Third and finally, national service should be a truly national program.
Whether you're a teenager tutoring in Tallahassee or a senior serving in
Sacramento, you should know that you're part of a single effort to improve
America. And that will take more than t-shirts and hats.
It will take shared standards and shared commitments by all of us. And
it will take a special brand of courage -- a courage to think and act anew.
Few are given the opportunity to participate up close, as the play of history
unfolds. Only a figurative handful in each generation, out of a nation of
almost 250 million, is given the chance each of you has been afforded.
In mid-June, the President met in the East Room of the White House
with representatives of AFSCME. In front of union members who had been
among his strongest supporters, he could have spoken about any topic -- from
healthcare to reinventing government. He chose to speak about the challenge
of history. He reflected on his meeting with the President of Namibia, the
9
first African head of state he had welcomed to the White House. President
Clinton noted that the President of Namibia talked, not about increased aid or
the struggles of multi-ethnic diversity, but about the heroic role 83 Peace
Corps volunteers were playing in his country.
And, President Clinton told his visitors from AFSCME, three decades
after John Kennedy's death, his transcendent legacy is the Peace Corps.
"Thirty years from now," the President concluded, "that's what people will
say about the young people in national service -- that they will be in the
streets of America solving the problems of Americans." We will help create
the legacy of this administration -- and this generation.
To succeed in that task, every ounce of dedication and energy will be
called upon in the days and years ahead -- demands on each of us.
But one demand is the most critical of all: to move -- immediately and
forever -- beyond mindsets that I can only describe as tribal. The
Corporation is a single team -- and that means we will not have anyone on
our payroll who will elevate the perceived interest of ACTION -- or of the
10
Commission -- or of ONS -- above the interests of the Corporation and of
national service.
Machiavelli won't be on our payroll. Empire-builders won't be on our
payroll. Information-hoarders won't be on our payroll. There is no room for
"us" and "them" thinking. We are now, each and every one in this room,
"us".
11
This will be à difficult transition. To put it in the business lingo I'm
used to, we are embarking on a merger, and a start-up, and establishing 50
franchises, and making a host of venture capital investments -- all at the same
time. And we are doing it all with the eyes of an expectant nation -- and a
none-too-forgiving press -- on us. Some outside of this gathering already
expect us to fail. And we will make mistakes. We must if we are to be
bold. We will encourage risk taking, and we know that means
disappointments as well as triumphs.
But I am confident that we can -- and must -- succeed.
And I'll tell you the three reasons why we must succeed: Pricilla
Aponte, Derek Gottfrid and Reshard Riggins -- the three young people who
spoke Tuesday. They and the two CCC veterans -- Owen Davis and Billy
Bailey -- and all the VISTA volunteers and corps members, and all the
Retired Senior Volunteers and Foster Grandparents and Senior Companions in
the audience -- are and must remain the real stars of national service. They
will shine if we do our supporting roles.
12
There was magic in the air at Tuesday's bill signing. The President
gave us all a sendoff we will never forget. And if we go to work with the
strains of "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" in our ears, we should
also have in our heads the story that the great civil rights worker Fanny Lou
Hamer used to tell, of the wise old man and the two little boys who thought
they were very clever. They decided they would fool the old man by
catching a small bird and cupping it in one boy's hands. They would then
bring it to the old man and say: "old man, we have a bird in our hands. Is it
alive or dead?" Their plan was that if he said the bird was dead, they would
release it and let it fly away. If he said it was alive they would crush it and
show him the dead bird. But when the boys brought the bird to the old man
and asked him their question, he answered "it's in your hands."
The future of service, my friends and colleagues, is now in our hands.
The energies we can release; the standards we can set; the purposes we can
inspire, will guide the movement in which we have long believed, for years
to come.
13
With appreciation for your past efforts and excitement about our mutual
future, I thank you.
14
Allhand. spic
ELI SEGAL
ALL HANDS' MEETING
OEOB - SEPTEMBER 24, 1993
Good afternoon. For those of you I haven't
yet met, I'm Eli Segal. While I will work as the CEO of
OUR new CORPORATION and therefor your LOSS. I hole I'll PROVE to YOU
as you will to me the I'm acdually nothing mon their you. CO lleasue,
It's been quite a week, hasn't it?
friend + tellow
service WARRIOR.
as we byles OUR awesome
Years from now, in the quiet moments of our own
responsibilities
better
personal winters, we will remember having been a
witness to history -- remembering that we were there,
instruments
on September 21st of 1993, when with the pens of our
history President Bill Clinton made the National and
Community Service Trust Act the law of the land.
Today, with the memory of that triumph fresh in our
and hearts,
minds I want all of us to turn our attention toward the
road ahead from legislation and ceremonies toward
implementation and integration.
1
Much of what I want to say I covered with some of
you Wednesday night at the state structure meeting, but
I feel so strongly about it that I want to make certain
that everyone -- whether you come from ACTION,
from the Commission or from ONS -- heard it at the
same time That huge tent on the South Lawn was
supported by three giant columns -- and the immense
enterprise of national service must be similarly
as
supported by each of the three organizations in
the
harmony -- or, Corporation -- and national service itself
-- will not stand.
2
Whether you have been a service warrior since Bill
Clinton was a teenager, or whether you are just out of
your teens yourself, you are part of a historic
experiment. More will be called for from you than
attending ceremonies and cheering others. We have
before this new Corporation -- before each and every
one of us -- a series of challenges. Whether we can
rise together to meet them will determine whether this
effort, in which the President and the American people
place so much hope, will succeed. We are aiming to
make citizen service bigger and better than it has ever
been.
3
This will be a challenge of mind and spirit more
than an exercise of arithmetic. Nevertheless, let me
place our work in starketerms: by the end of our first
full year of operations, this Corporation aims to have
more Americorps members on the streets and in the
classrooms of this country than ever served in any year
in the Peace Corps' 32 year existence. And then we
intend to increase Americorps -- and VISTA -- and the
National Senior Volunteer Corps -- and ServeAmerica
-- in each of the following years, all without creating a
large new federal bureaucracy.
4
When Sarge Shriver, Harris Wofford and the other
founders of the Peace Corps began that project, the
sense of Camelot was at its height. Today, after
assassinations, break-ins, and credibility gaps, the
public is far more suspicious -- indeed, cynical -- about
any assertion that government can help them. So we
have our work cut out for us.
Each and every one of us will need to do more --
far more -- than we have before. For those of us from
ACTION, you will need to move from survival to
creative energy. For decades you have brought
committed volunteers -- the young and the young in
spirit -- to serve the most pressing needs of our
communities.
5
The evolution of the agency and its programs from
its founding in the 1960s to the turbulence of the 1970s
and the neglect of the 1980s, to a visionary and
effective service powerhouse for the 21st Century, must
now be completed. On this most experienced of the
three columns, a particular burden will be placed -- a
burden to have the courage and rigor to examine old
ways in light of new challenges, and make reinvention
not a slogan, but an ethic and an operating principle.
6
For those of us affiliated with the Commission on
so
National and Community Service, stimulators of much
good in the field without the support structure to follow
your investments as fully as you would like, the
Corporation for National Service also opens a new
chapter. From an era of developing models, we move
into a time for requiring results. The Commission has
brought a fierce independence to community service;
now, those from that structure must harness that spirit
in the service of a new community -- the broader roof
of the Corporation.
7
And for those of us who come from the White
House, the transition may be most jarring of all. In the
first place, we may have to get used to individual
offices and phones that -- we/hope 1 -- actually
work! But our challenge, after the luxury of a White
House cocoon, will be to find real collaboration with
those who almost without exception -- were guiding
the development of service long before we knew what
that meant.
8
And by the way -- we will all be under one roof
soon. We aim to have all of the Corporation housed at
Avenue
1100 Vermont within the next month. We may all
move again early next year, if we can locate space
within which we can work together even more easily.
But the key is, soon and for as long as the Corporation
exists, we will be officed together and will be working
together.
Each and every one of you will have the chance to
play key roles in the Corporation. In fact, we are
beginning a collaborative process to determine how we
can best make ranges of opportunities open to all of us.
to lake this
I honor your past efforts -- and I want you to
appleved
neybloss
efforts.
9
And for those of you who don't yet know them, I
want to introduce 5 people who have been working with
you and me, and who will be among the senior
executives of the Corporation. I'd like them to stand
up and be acknowledged: Shirley Sagawa, Catherine
Milton, Gary Kowalczyk, Rick Allen and General Don
Scott, who joins us to head up the new Civilian
Community Corps.
Applause
We are, all of us, on the front-lines of change.
The ancient Chinese character for change was written
by combining the brush-strokes for "danger" with
"opportunity", and so it will be for our collective work.
If we can write together the story of the next few years,
we can truly transform America.
10
the
That's why we will give you "reinventing
government" when you leave today -- to keep us
clearly focused on that task. And this in mind
among rego
you will be the very first cardholders in the federal
government. Maybe that won't get you the same
notoriety as those American Express cardholders you
see in the magazine ads -- but being the first to have
these cards is a clear indication that the President and
Vice President regard the Corporation as a critical
model for reinventing the entire government. We are
first for a reason -- and we have good reason to make
sure we stay the best.
11
In the last nine months I have had the chance to
meet many of you. But whether we' re old friends or
destined to become new ones, we ve really worked
together behind the scenes of service for a long time.
It's good finally to meet in the same room -- a kind of
founding shareholders meeting of the new Corporation
to plan the next steps together.
In a minute, we will watch a brief video that was
put together for this week's state structure meeting -- it
depicts a compelling view of what national service is.
12
In a way, the video is a visual reflection of our
Corporation's mission statement, which we've
developed collaboratively with a team from ACTION,
which also receive when
LipA
the Commission and ONS. That mission statement and
the video say the same thing in different ways. They
indicate three basic principles of national service:
First, national service programs should get things
done. We want to show the American people what
national service can accomplish for their neighbors and
in their neighborhoods in the four areas of education,
health and human services, public safety and the
environment.
13
Americans of every persuasion must feel that this
program improved their communities and their country
-- whether it was by tutoring children, bringing
healthcare to infants, policing the streets, or cleaning up
our parks. That is why we will be working to establish
meaningful
measurable, demonstrable performance goals for
programs -- then we'll fund the programs that reach
them, and improve or eliminate those that don't.
14
Second, national service programs should bring
diverse Americans together and improve their lives.
National service has the capacity to heal some of the
pain of racial injustice and economic inequality in
America. But to do that, it has to unite Americans in
all of our magnificent diversity -- including rich kids
from the suburbs, poor kids from the inner city, rural
elderly and urban yuppies, high school dropouts and
law school graduates. The program really should look
like America. With all of these diverse Americans
working together for a single cause -- not to advocate a
political position, but to serve their communities and
help themselves -- it'll be the best education in
citizenship we'll ever get.
15
Third and finally, national service should be a truly
national program. Whether you're a teenager tutoring in
Tallahassee or a senior serving in Sacramento, you
should know that you're part of a single effort to
improve America. And that will take more than t-shirts
and hats.
It will take shared standards and shared
commitments by all of us. And it will take a special
brand of courage -- a courage to think and act anew.
participate
Few are given the opportunity to watch, up close, the
play of history unfolds. Only a figurative handful in
each generation, out of a nation of almost 250 million,
is given the chance each of you has been afforded.
16
In mid-June, the President met in the East Room of
the White House with representatives of AFSCME. In
front of union members who had been among his
strongest supporters, he could have spoken about any
topic -- from healthcare to reinventing government. He
chose to speak about the challenge of history. He
reflected on his meeting with the President of Namibia,
the first African head of state he had welcomed to the
White House. President Clinton noted that the
President of Namibia talked, not about increased aid or
the struggles of multi-ethnic diversity, but about the
heroic role 83 Peace Corps volunteers were playing in
his country.
17
And, President Clinton told his visitors from
AFSCME, three decades after John Kennedy's death,
his legacy burns brightest through the Peace Corps,
even in far-distant lands. "Thirty years from now," the
President concluded, "that's what people will say about
the young people in national service -- that they will be
in the streets of America solving the problems of
Americans.
"
We will help create the legacy of this
administration -- and this generation.
To succeed [in that task] every ounce of dedication
and energy will be called upon in the days and years
ahead -- demands on each of us.
18
But one demand is the most critical of all: to move
-- immediately and forever -- beyond mindsets that I
can only describe as tribal. The Corporation is a single
team -- and that means we will not have anyone on our
payroll who will elevate the perceived interest of
ACTION -- or of the Commission -- or of ONS --
above the interests of the Corporation and of national
service.
Machiavelli won't be on the Corporation's payroll.
Empire-builders won't be on our payroll. Information-
hoarders won't be on our payroll. There is no room
for "us" and "them" thinking. We are now, each and
every one
in this room, "us".
19
This will be a difficult transition. To put it in the
business lingo I'm used to, we are embarking on a
merger, and a start-up, and establishing 50 franchises,
and making a host of venture capital investments -- all
at the same time. And we are doing it all with the eyes
of an expectant nation -- and a none-too-forgiving press
-- on us. Some outside of this gathering already expect
us to fail. And we will meke mistakes. We mvit
if we are to be bold. We will encorrage risk
taking 0 we know that means as will
as triumpts.
But I am confident that all of us are as certain as I
am, and as the President of the United States is, that we
can -- and must -- succeed.
20
the
And I'll tell you three
reasons why we must
s
not-fail:
Pricilla Aponte, Derek Gottfrid and Reshard
Riggins -- the three young people who spoke Tuesday.
They and the two CCC veterans -- Owen Davis and
Billy Bailey --all the VISTA volunteers and corps
members
and all the Retired Senior
Volunteers and Foster Grandparents and Senior
Companions in the audience -- are and must remain the
real stars of national service. They will shine if we in
the Corporation do our supporting roles.
21
There was magic in the air at Tuesday's Bill
signing, combined of equal parts history and energy.
The President gave us all a sendoff we will never
forget. And if we go to work with the strains of
"Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" in our ears,
we should also have in our heads the story that the
great civil rights worker Fanny Lou Hamer used to tell,
of the wise old man and the two little boys who thought
they were very clever.
22
They decided they would fool the old man by
catching a small bird and cupping it in one boy's hands.
They would then bring it to the old man and say: "old
man, we have a bird in our hands. Is it alive or dead?"
Their plan was that if he said the bird was dead, they
would release it and let it fly away. If he said it was
alive they would crush it and show him the dead bird.
But when the boys brought the bird to the old man and
asked him their question, he answered "it's in your
hands."
23
The future of service, my friends and colleagues, is
now in our hands. The energies we can release; the
standards we can set; the purposes we can inspire, will
guide the movement in which we have long believed,
for years to come.
East Room
With appreciation for your past efforts and
excitement about our mutual future, I thank you.
24