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Bostonian Club 8/11/93
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Bostonian Club 8/11/93
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FOIA Number: 2013-0661-F
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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:
Bostonian Club 8/11/93
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S
66
2
8
1
REMARKS OF ELI SEGAL
Bostonian Club -- August 11, 1993
Thank you Ladi. It's good to be home.
My thanks as well to Tommy O'Neilland Pam McDermott.
I
We are all embarked on new ventures,
with
national
service
and
you with the Bostonian Club and I can only hope that your success
is contagious! I/V I can hardly weit to return home
and become a member. I can remember juit little wonther -
yea 270 what T O'N presided me to leave Woyled & BukBay. The
only proth is that I hok - Latour to L.R. 1 Bal what
I feel privileged to spend time with a group that
many
none more important than
has hosted distinguished visitors, from General
Senator Edward Kennedy. Senator Kennedy was the principal
sponsor of our national service legislation in the Senate. More than
that, he was an inspired and inspiring floor leader, expertly guiding
our Bill to adoption. In an arena of show horses, Senator Kennedy
again showed the ability to be a work horse, and for his effort, and
Boston
for his leadership, all of us from the Bay state should be most proud.
- 1 -
Senator Kennedy and I began working in earnest on this
legislation back in February, a month in which you hosted Red Sox
General Manager Lou Gorman. [Lou Gorman has to make tough
decisions, and then is judged on the basis of events he cannot possibly
control -- all under the eye of an unforgiving press and thousands of
self-anointed experts. If he's going to put up with all that, he might
as well be President but not in the foreseeable future!
I
think
both the Red Sox and the Clinton administration
have had difficult Springs followed by pretty good summers - and for
both teams, I have high hopes for the Fall. As you know, we were
able to pass a landmark budget agreement last week.
think
the
budget agreement is tremendously important not only in finally
addressing the deficit but in giving all of us a sense that gridlock is
not a permanent part of our political landscape. But I think that
landscape will be even more fundamentally changed by the
President's National Service initiative, which we hope will receive its
final Senate passage right after this August Recess.
- 2 -
Here in Boston, our landscape has always had more
dimensions than could be known by our five senses. When John
Winthrop, [aboard the Arabella and bound for the New World. told
his fellow emigrants that ["we must consider that we shall be a city
upon a hill, [for] the eyes of all people are upon us", he was
exhorting our forbearers to seize their opportunity to create a new
community in the wilderness.
That community was not easily achieved. Carved from the
forest and defended repeatedly by force of arms, it was still a place
that in Tommy's father's youth sported signs warning that "No Irish
Need Apply".
Today, our desire for community is buffeted by problems
of which John Winthrop or even a young Tip O'Neill-- could
never have dreamed: illegal drugs and the crimes that surround their
use; homelessness and endemic poverty; an environment so befouled
that we can not trust the water we drink or the air we breathe.
- 3 -
And while Tommy's ancestors and yours and mine
muscled their way to the common table, today we see chairs at that
table being demanded by an astounding new array of immigrants. "If
current trends continue,' [writes demographer Martha Farnsworth
"the United States will become a nation with no racial or
ethnic majority" within our children's lifetimes E indeed, in many
our major cities, this is already the case.
How, then, are we to find common interest amongst such
diversity? The day after Martin Luther King was killed, Robert
Kennedy warned us what happens when societies fragment: "We
learn, to look at our brothers as aliens, men people with whom
disters
people
we share a city, but not a community; Kien bound to us in common
dwelling but not in common effort. We learn to share only a
common fear, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with
force."
- 4 -
No government, no matter how vigorous or well
intentioned, can legislate us into community. And, unlike our
grandparents's time, it is no longer sufficient to expect the non-white,
non-Western portion of our population to assimilate into a dominant
majority. CAS demographer Riche has written,1 "in the future, the
white Western majority will have to do some assimilating of its own."
Fundamentally, creating community will require the
concerted efforts of all of us, allied with a focused and effective
government. And therein lies the power of national service, and my
message in fact, my appeal -- to you today. National service does,
it's true, offer a number of benefits. But far more than that, it poses
a series of challenges.
To our young people, the challenge is to rise above the
false and flip characterization of their generation as uncaring, and to
take a lead role in creating their own futures through revitalizing their
own communities.
- 5 -
To those in Washington D.C. -[and keep in mind, I have
been a taxpayer in Boston far, far longer than I've been a Presidential
Assistant in Washington]- to our government, the challenge is to
meld the best practices of the private sector with the reach and
responsibility of government.
And to you and your colleagues in businesses
communities around the country, the challenge is to redouble your
and your companies' public involvement. Your efforts are critical to
your neighborhoods, to your city, and to your country.
The first of these challenges is an echo of the call to public
service made by our most famous local son thirty-two years ago. For
many of you, as for President Clinton and myself, President
Kennedy's call is an indelible part of our personal history the But for
and th Pera Corps join shortly threatk
our children, the 1961 inaugural speech consists of mere words in a
dusty history book. It has been too long since any of us were
challenged to serve our country - -- but for our children, it has been a
lifetime.
- 6 -
President Clinton has now called America's youth to
service. In his inaugural address, he mentioned only one government
program -- national service - and said "you too must play your part
in
our renewal. L challenge a new generation of young Americans to
a season of service [and] to act on your idealism.
1
we in P.C.
I am certain that our young will answer this call, as each
gineet. 1001 parch in CCC did liferedhat.
generation of Americans before them did. We plan to unleash the
energy and enthusiasm of our young people on our critical national
challenges. Our new Americorps volunteers will:
ensure that infants are immunized;
tutor in our grade schools;
channel teenagers away from gangs and drugs;
promote recycling and conservation; and
help make sure that our streets are safe for the elderly.
Flood revyl
We'll send then to tha medweil w her other the
comero) leove they'' be w vaky in homalos, shelter.
Filim
rebuildy efforts, essistay ... loan applications in Suppence to ame
- 7 -
They will receive the minimum wage while in the
program, and an educational benefit of nearly $5000 after each a
year's service-. d will receive somethy even mare inportal :-
a
thors-,l grounly in citizenship.
The second challenge of national service is directed at my
office and the organizations running local service programs. [we We must
accept and embrace the radical notion that our efforts have to be as
entrepreneurial, efficient, and professional as your daily work.
There is a very simple reason for me to insist upon this
approach. I've done two things over the past twenty-five years. In
one -- trying to elect Democratic presidential candidates - I have lost
seven times before Bill Clinton's victory. In the other, I've started
and run several businesses. Thankfully, for my family's sake, they
have been somewhat more successful - and they've taught me a
lesson. National Service will be run like a business.
- 8 -
Our legislation creates a corporation: the Corporation for
National Service. This Corporation will operate like a venture capital
firm, seeking out and funding initiatives that will maximize returns to
the public. [For the most part, we will be funding local non-profit
organizations, who will compete for funding based on their business
plans and track records. [TO keep decision-making where the rubber
meets the road, most applications will first be judged by nonpartisan
state Commissions.
- 9 -
Once a program has been funded, it will be rigorously
evaluated. We will demand results -- not rhetoric. We will demand
good performance -- not good intentions. If a program doesn't work,
we will cut our losses. And let me stop there for a minute: When I
was in business, we tried many things, and some of them just plain
didn't work. I never found that surprising. But for some reason,
when it comes to government, the expectation (at least by some
elements of the press) is that any failure is attributable to fraud or
mismanagement. I hope you can help us communicate to the press
that innovation means taking risks -- and that means the risks of mis-
steps, not the prospect of an unbroken series of triumphs.
But when a program does work, we'll help expand it. The
new Corporation will be relentless in seeking out the most profitable
uses of its scarce resources. We are committed to proving that a
federal program can be soft-hearted and hard-headed at the same
time.
- 10 -
This new approach will be seen as a burden by some local
organizations and as an opportunity by others. Competition for
resources will force them to think clearly and carefully about their
goals and the most efficient way to reach them. Our focus on results
will mean that their next year's budget depends upon this year's
performance. And any program seeking federal money must first
obtain 25% of their program budget and 15% of their participants'
local
wages from other sources. Let me say that again: no federal
money will be spent unless the community has committed its own
money to the effort. This will ensure that service programs grow
locally instead of being transplanted from Washington.
- 11 -
Perhaps most importantly, this program will be
nonpartisan, at all levels. Republican Congressman Steve Gunderson
recently praised our program as combining "the idealism of the
Democratic Party with the pragmatic realism of the Republican
Party." I deeply appreciated those words but I hope that our
program will eventually escape even those labels. Ultimately,
national service must fuse America's realism with America's
idealism.
(
There's an old joke in Washington about the difference
between Democrats and Republicans. Picture a man drowning fifty
feet offshore. The Republican would throw him twenty-five feet of
of the way
rope and tell him to swim the rest because it would be good for his
character. The Democrat would throw him a hundred feet of rope
and then run off looking for more people to save.
- 12 -
There's a lot of truth in that. President Clinton was
elected to steady the pendulum that has swung between federal
callousness and federal bossiness. The programs of the 1960s and
'70s proved that Washington does not have all the answers. But the
last twelve years have proven that even a thousand points of light
leave a lot of people in the darkness. We have got to find a third
way, one that coordinates the invisible hand of capitalism with the
helping hand of community organizations.
Which brings me to the challenge before you. If we are to
make our community service programs more business-like, we will
need businesspeople to show us how. If we are to demand that
programs be community-based, we are going to need community
leadership. If we are going to tell our youth that their service will be
valued, we will need for the business community to help make good
on that promise.
- 13 -
To begin, I ask you to provide financial resources. As I
mentioned before, each Massachusetts program that seeks federal
money must first obtain private funding. That means you.
But I know from my twenty-five years as a businessman
how frequently you are asked for money. So let me be unique, and
ask for far more than money. Service requires that you give of
yourself.
Boston is the perfect place to make this request. We are
only steps away from Faneuil Hall, where a businessman and a
lawyer - John Hancock and Sam Adams -- led the public outcry
against the Stamp Act. But those two patriots recognized that
leadership consists of much more than protesting taxes. They
understood that the city's professionals must take the lead in fostering
a sense of community -- here in Boston and throughout the country.
- 14 -
And they knew that their actions would likely end up
costing them money - in fact, commodities trader Hancock probably
lost profit from every barrel community of tobacco his followers threw into the
Bay. From that time on, Massachusetts has been blessed by a private
sector that elevates the community's interest above short-term,
personal interests.
That tradition is at work within Boston's City Year
program - which is in many ways a model for our national efforts.
City Year has shown us all how to recognize and utilize the private
sector's community spirit. Lawyers provide pro bono legal
assistance. Consultants help with strategic planning. Computer
companies have provided equipment. A clothing manufacturer
provided uniforms. Banks provide free checking accounts to
volunteers. A host of other firms loan out experienced managers to
take on leadership roles within the organization. And business
sponsorship underwrites the costs of the teams of corpsmembers themselves.
- 15 -
The business community's leadership with City Year
makes me certain that Boston will meet the new challenge of our
national service program. There will be a host of additional ways to
Youthwild, PBH come tominal right owing
participate. Businesses can help fund local programs, or underwrite
or excoupse their almo miths
additional participants in programs being federally funded. They can service provide
scholach
encourage service by their employees - -- or better yet, allow their
already ends
employees to use release or paid leave to assist local programs. And
was him in
Bushan.
every company or firm has expertise that service organizations need;
products or equipment that could comprise in-kind contributions; or as
one Hollywood blend enketament compon Les aliaha committed lo:
the ability to offer employment opportunities to graduates of service
programs.
- 16 -
Let me close by noting how differently I would have
addressed a group like this twenty-five years ago. In 1968, I was
deeply involved in the presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy. I
was sure then that I had all the answers, and that what America
needed was for me to go to Washington and provide those answers to
a waiting nation. Thankfully -- for me and the country - I have had
a long time to rethink my ideas. Those twenty-five years taught me
that I did not have all the answers, and neither did anyone else. So
when I finally participated in a winning campaign, I was not sure that
I wanted to go to Washington after all.
What brought me into the government was the opportunity
to be part of President Clinton's national service initiative. This
program made sense to me. It fit not only with my idealism, but with
the lessons I learned as a businessman, and a father, and a citizen. I
no longer believe that government, acting alone, is the answer. I
know that together, we are the answer.
- 17 -
The great civil rights worker Fanny Lou Hamer used to
WOMAN
tell the story of the wise old and the two little boys who thought
they were very clever. They decided they would fool the old
by
catching a small bird and cupping it in one boy's hands. They would
then bring it to the old and say: "old man, we have a bird in our
hands. Is it alive or dead?" Their plan was that ifshe said the bird
was dead, they would release it and let it fly away. Ifshe said it was
her
alive they would crush it and show the dead bird. But when the
her
she
boys brought the bird to the old and asked their question,
answered "it's in your hands."
In many ways, the fate of Massachusetts' part of national
service is in each of our hands. Let us celebrate the opportunity in
this responsibility, so that this city and this nation finally discharge
our debt to our forbearers -- and our promises to our children.
- 18 -