pd08my00 Statement on the Legal Framework Agreement for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan...

	Web GovRecords.org

else. I just thought I was trying to make democracy work.
    And we made a lot of progress. But I want you to know, there's one 
real problem we've still got that directly affects Michigan. When it 
comes to appointing judges, the United States Senate is not doing what 
it ought to be doing, especially with regard to women and minority 
appointees.
    Hey, I need your help on this. A blue ribbon study found that during 
the 105th Congress, women and minority judicial nominees took much 
longer to be considered than white males. It found that minority 
nominations failed at a much higher rate than the nominations of whites. 
Last year there was a disgraceful rejection of an African-American State 
supreme court judge from Missouri named Ronnie White, solely on the 
basis of party politics.
    I have nominated two people from Michigan to the sixth circuit, and 
neither one of them have even gotten a hearing so far. Judge Helene 
White, a highly qualified Michigan appellate judge, has been waiting for 
a hearing from the Senate Judiciary Committee for 3 years, longer than 
any other pending nominee.
    My other sixth circuit nominee, Kathleen McCree Lewis, the daughter 
of Wade McCree, is here tonight. She would become the first African-
American woman ever to serve on the sixth circuit. I think the Senate 
ought to give Helene White and Kathleen McCree Lewis hearings. Vote them 
up or down. Tell the American people how you stand. Let us here from 
you. Don't hide behind having no hearing.
    I had to work and work and work to get a distinguished Hispanic 
judge and a female attorney appointed out in California. They made him 
wait 4 years. Now, why did they

[[Page 956]]

do that? Because they didn't want to put him on the court. They just 
didn't want you to know they didn't want to put him on the court. 
[Laughter] So if you don't want to do something, but you don't want the 
people to know you don't want to do something, instead of saying no, you 
just never get around to it. [Laughter]
    Now, we're going to have a new election in November. And we'll have 
a new President and a new Senate, and I hope a new House, with John as 
the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. But I want you to know 
this: I am proud of the fact that my party has never been guilty of 
delaying nominees to this extent and particularly putting the burden on 
women and people of color. And it's a shame, and we ought to do 
something about it. And I hope you'll help me do something about it.
    Now, let me just mention one other thing, because we have lots of 
choices this year. You will have choices about whether to keep on 
changing in accord with this economic policy and bringing everybody into 
it while we keep paying down the debt, investing in education, give 
families tax cuts we can afford, or going back to the economic policy we 
had before I came in, with even bigger tax cuts that, once I get out of 
office, would benefit primarily people like me. [Laughter] But we won't 
have any money for education, and we'll start running deficits again.
    We'll have choices about education policy, health policy, 
environmental policy, a lot of other things. But I want you to think 
about the things that we choose that really define us as a community. 
John Conyers talked about one. I'm proud that gun crime is down 35 
percent. Anybody that thinks that America is safe enough is free to walk 
out on my speech right now. But we know we can make America safer, and 
we know the best way to do it is by preventing crime in the first place. 
That's why we want to close the gun show loophole and do other things to 
keep guns out of the hands of children and criminals. That's why we want 
more community police on the street. That's why we want more after-
school and summer school programs for our kids, to give them something 
to say yes to.
    But when three-quarters of the people in the penitentiary are people 
of color and they're more likely to be in the penitentiary than they are 
to go to college, there's something wrong still. I don't think we've 
done as much we can. I think we can make America safer and have more of 
our kids going to college at the same time. But we have a choice to 
make.
    I think we ought to pass the hate crimes legislation. There are 
still people in this country who are shot, who are abused, who are 
killed because of their race, their religion, just because they're gay. 
We've seen it over and over again--tragically. We saw it just this week: 
Five people in a suburb of Pittsburgh shot and killed for no other 
reason, it appears, than the color of their skin or the way they worship 
God.
    Now, you will hear all kinds of arguments about this hate crime 
business, but I have studied this. It is simply not true that we do not 
need national legislation making hate crimes against people, because of 
race or because of sexual orientation or because of disability or 
because of religion, a Federal crime. We do.
    And I have looked into the eyes of the brother and the sister of 
that Filipino postal worker that was gunned down in California. I have 
seen one of those little Jewish children that was wounded, and his 
family, at that community center in Los Angeles. I have talked to the 
widow of the African-American former basketball coach at Northwestern 
who was shot walking in his neighborhood. I have put my arms around the 
parents of Matthew Shepard, who was stretched out on a rack in Wyoming 
because he was gay. And I have seen the brother and sister of James 
Byrd, who was dragged to death in Texas because he was black.
    Now, if we want to be one America and we don't want any politics in 
it, the easiest way that we can do that is to join hands and unanimously 
say, ``We can argue about a lot of things, but one thing we're never 
going to argue about again is our common humanity. Here is this hate 
crimes bill. It is who we are. It is what we stand for. It is what we 
believe.''
    You know, we do have a lot of bridges to cross. As long as there are 
people without

[[Page 957]]

economic opportunity and we can give it to them, we ought to do it. As 
long as there are people who don't have access to world-class education 
and we can give it to them, we ought to do it. As long as there are 
working families who can't take care of their children, we ought to do 
it. As long as there--we ought to give them child care support and 
access to health care they can afford. We ought to do these things.
    There are so many challenges out there, but the main thing I want to 
tell you is this: If the good Lord came to me tonight when I walked out 
of this room and said, ``Mr. President, now I'm not going to let you 
serve the end of your term. I'm taking you home tonight, and I'm no 
genie. I'm not going to give you three wishes, but I will give you one. 
What do you want?'' I would wish for our country to be truly one 
America.
    I would wish for us to be able--you know, I have--you may have heard 
me tell this story on television, but I'm going to tell it one more 
time. I have got, on a table in the Oval Office--when you see me there 
with a world leader, and you see two chairs and two big couches and a 
table there--right on that table, you look next time--standing on that 
table in a vacuum-packed glass container is a rock that Neil Armstrong 
took off the Moon in 1969. That rock is 3.6 billion years old. And when 
people come in to see me, and they get all riled up, and they get all 
mad at each other, and they're thinking about little things, and they're 
all torn up and upset, ever since I've got that, I say, ``Wait a minute, 
look at that rock. You see that rock? That is 3.6 billion years old. Now 
chill out. We're all just passing through here.'' [Laughter]
    And I say that to remind you that, whether you're President of the 
United States or somebody serving us this dinner tonight, the most 
important things about us are not the differences between me and the 
people serving you dinner but the things we have in common.
    And when life is all said and done, the stories we really will be 
thinking about in our last moments were who liked us and who loved us 
and what moved us and the springtimes we remember and the moments of 
personal drama and courage and meaning that came into our lives. The 
purpose of public life, the purpose of citizenship, the purpose of the 
NAACP is to give people a sense of our common humanity and our common 
cause. You know, Wendell said that I learned that from my grandparents, 
and that's true. But I learn it every day, from all the stories of all 
the people I see.
    You have given me a memory tonight I will never forget. Your support 
has meant more to me than I can ever say. The people of Detroit and the 
State of Michigan have been with me through thick and thin. But the only 
thing that really matters now is, what are you going to do tomorrow? 
What do you propose to do with this magic moment?
    Let me tell you this: The last time we had an economy this good was 
in the 1960's. We broke the record of the 1960's for economic 
expansions. There are a lot of young children here who weren't alive 
back then, but I was. And I graduated from high school in 1964 in the 
middle of that great economic expansion, low unemployment, low 
inflation, high growth, everything booming. We thought the civil rights 
problems would be handled in Congress and the courts. We never dreamed 
we'd be caught up in Vietnam. We thought we would win the cold war, no 
sweat. We thought we were on automatic, marching into the future. And 
what happened? What happened?
    Within 4 years, when I graduated from college, it was 2 days after 
Senator Kennedy was killed, 2 months after Martin Luther King was 
killed, 9 weeks after President Johnson, the great civil rights 
President, couldn't even run for reelection because the country was so 
divided over Vietnam. And within a few months, the longest economic 
expansion in history was itself history.
    Life is fleeting. Things change. I have been waiting for 35 years, 
not as President, as an American citizen, for my country to be in the 
position you're in tonight, to build the future of our dreams for our 
children. That should be the mission of the NAACP in this millennial 
year.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

 Note:  The President spoke at 7:10 p.m. in the Cobo Convention Hall. In 
his remarks, he referred to Rev. Wendell Anthony, president, NAACP 
Detroit Branch; Gov. John Engler of

[[Page 958]]

Michigan; and Mayor Dennis W. Archer of Detroit, MI, and his wife, 
Trudy.


<DOC>
[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
 [frwais.access.gpo.gov]
                         

[Page 958]
 
Monday, May 8, 2000
 
Volume 36--Number 18
Pages 943-1020
 
Week Ending Friday, May 5, 2000
 
Proclamation 7299--Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, 2000

 April 29, 2000

 By the President of the United States

 of America

 A Proclamation

    Over the last two centuries, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders 
have contributed immeasurably to the richness of our dynamic, 
multicultural society. Whether recent immigrants or descendants of 
families who have been here for generations, Asian Americans and Pacific 
Islanders embody many of our Nation's core values, including devotion to 
family, commitment to hard work, and pride in their heritage.
    The people of this diverse and rapidly growing community have 
contributed to every aspect of our national life--from engineering and 
computer science to government, the arts, and sports. For example, Vinod 
Dahm helped to revolutionize computer technology through the invention 
of the pentium chip. Governors Benjamin Cayetano of Hawaii and Gary 
Locke of Washington have devoted their lives to public service. The 
talents of novelist Amy Tan have delighted readers across our Nation, 
while architect and sculptor Maya Lin's stirring memorials to the 
Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement have uplifted and inspired all 
who have experienced them. And diver Greg Louganis and football star 
Junior Seau have thrilled sports fans everywhere with their skill and 
athleticism.
    While many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders today are thriving, 
others are still struggling to overcome obstacles. Because of oppression 
in their countries of origin, some new immigrants have arrived without 
having completed their education; once here, some have encountered 
language and cultural barriers and discrimination. Pacific Islanders, 
too, must overcome barriers to opportunity caused by their geographic 
isolation and the consequences of Western influences on their unique 
culture. For these and other reasons, too many Asian Americans and 
Pacific Islanders face low-paying jobs, inadequate health care, and lack 
of educational opportunity.
    To assist this community in meeting these challenges, last June I 
signed an Executive order establishing the White House Initiative on 
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The Initiative's goal is to 
improve the quality of life for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders by 
increasing their participation in Federal programs--including health, 
human services, education, housing, labor, transportation, economic, and 
community development programs--which may not have served them in the 
past.
    My Administration remains dedicated to building an America that 
celebrates and draws strength from its diversity. Let us use this month 
to reflect on the many gifts Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have 
brought to our nation and embrace the contributions that Americans of 
all backgrounds make to our increasingly multicultural society.
    To honor the accomplishments of Asian Americans and Pacific 
Islanders and to recognize their many contributions to our Nation, the 
Congress, by Public Law 102-450, has designated the month of May as 
``Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month.''
     Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton,  President of the United 
States of America, do hereby proclaim May 2000 as Asian/Pacific American 
Heritage Month. I call upon the people of the United States to observe 
this occasion with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.
     In Witness Whereof,  I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth 
day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand, and of the 
Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-
fourth.
                                            William J. Clinton

 [Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 8:45 a.m., May 2, 2000]

 Note:  This proclamation was released by the Office of the Press 
Secretary on May 1, and it was published in the Federal Register on May 
3.

[[Page 959]]


<DOC>
[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents]
 [frwais.access.gpo.gov]
                         

[Page 959]
 
Monday, May 8, 2000
 
Volume 36--Number 18
Pages 943-1020
 
Week Ending Friday, May 5, 2000
 
Proclamation 7300--Loyalty Day, 2000

 April 29, 2000

By the President of the United States

of America

 A Proclamation

    In the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution, our 
Nation's founders first articulated the enduring ideals that have 
sustained our democracy--freedom, self-determination, justice, and 
equality. Each year we set aside this special day to reaffirm our 
allegiance to those ideals and to our beloved country.
    The power and promise of our country's principles moved men and 
women throughout the American colonies to declare their allegiance to a 
new country and a new form of government that respected the rights of 
the individual. Throughout the decades, millions of immigrants drawn to 
America's freedom proved their loyalty to their adopted Nation in the 
words of the oath of citizenship and in their daily lives--working hard, 
striving to build a better future for their families and communities, 

Other Popular 2000 Presidential Documents Documents:

Other Documents:

2000 Presidential Documents Records and Documents