MOTHERHOOD: Speech - San Francisco - 5/10/92 Remarks Governor Bill Clinton Glide Memorial Church - Reverend Cecil Williams San Francisco, California May 10, 1992 I want to, if I might, say that my party and I are all grateful to be here today. I would like in particular to recognize one person who came here with me, your wonderful Secretary of State March Fong Eu. Thank you for being here. I would also like to tell you that my wife said to me, privately, that this was the best Mothers Day present that I had ever given her - bringing her here today. We have already heard the message. But, today on this Mother's Day, I would like to tell you that I think the decisions we confront as a people might be told in the tale of two mothers. One I know very well. Forty-five years ago, as a young widow, she gave birth to me. And then, after I was born, she went off to nursing school so she could make a living for me, and left me with my grandparents. Over the course of her life, she has been widowed three times. But, through it all, she loved me and my brother. She gave us a mother's love - unconditional love - and discipline and values and the sense that we were the most important person in the world to somebody. The world is full of people today who think that they are not the most important person in the world to anybody. But my mother, on this day, throughout all of the failures of my life, can look back and say she did a pretty good job because her son is in San Francisco looking at America's rainbow asking for the chance to bring a mother's love back to this country. Let me tell you a story about one other mother - although there could be millions - who is grieving today. I read about her a week ago in Washington. Thirteen years ago she gave birth to a little boy, his name was Joey. He lived in a neighborhood that was not very well off with a lot of gangs and shootings and drugs. But she took him to her church and taught him right and wrong and made him believe that he was the most important person in the world. And by the time he was thirteen he was an honor student and the Saturday before last he gave a speech in his own church. And on the way home with his brothers and sisters and his mother driving the car they happened to drive through an area dominated by guns and drugs and gangs. And they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Two people were shooting at one another, and little Joey was killed. The tale of those two mothers, shows the gap between America's promise and its reality. It is an America denying its problems until they can't be denied, and blaming other people instead of embracing the cause of change. And in the grip of a selfishness that would kill any nation - oh to be sure it was heartbreaking to see some little children going into the stores in Los Angeles and stealing from their neighbors. But, they live in a country where the top one percent of Americans have more wealth than the bottom ninety percent. For the first time in seventy years, that has happened. And, we want people to be able to make money in this country. But, we want people to be able to make money by putting the rest of us to work and healing the rest of our wounds, and binding us up together - one nation under God. That is what we are facing. The pastor mentioned AIDS. AIDS is a subject that comes up when a famous person gets it. When Magic Johnson has the guts to come forward or Arthur Ashe becomes the victim of a prying story, then we all talk about it. But every day, people die in silence. And so it is time to embrace it. It is time to do more work in every way. And pastor, even those who say it is a behavior modification problem - when I try to get them to help me to modify behavior, by putting sex education in the schools and teach the children to protect themselves and keep themselves alive, most of those folks can't be found. Still, more women die of breast cancer every year. And if you look at the way we do our medical research, it is hard to find any attention paid to the medical problem of women, of mothers. For all of the talk of family values of those who have governed this country for twenty of the last twenty-four years, we don't do anything like we should in the rearing and educating of children - society's most important job. Nation after nation is better at it than we are. All of the people who thump their convictions and religions and pretend to be so righteous, where are they when the family values can't be found on the streets of this country? When there is no health care for pregnant women, when too many little children are born with low birth weight, when more die here than in twenty-two countries, when so many have no preschool, when they are coming from homes with no education and they get no individual attention when they begin their education, when we have a laughable system of child support so that people can bring children into this world and then cross the state line and hope that government will do what they should have done for their own children - where are they? So, I ask you today, in this wonderful church, to remember the tale of those two mothers and all of the mothers that they might represent and all of the mothers in between. The purpose of life is to live up to your God-given capacity. And that requires, according to the scripture, change from the inside out, which is what the pastor talked about, and change from the outside in, which is what politics is all about. Now, the pastor helped me today, because people are always trying to define politicians too, and it is usually not very pretty. Only you can do that for yourselves. But I am honored to be here today. I felt elevated. I thought of my favorite Old Testament scripture when I was listening to this sermon, "Those that wait upon the Lord shall have their strength renewed. They shall mount up with wings, as eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and not faint." That is what we should want on Mother's Day. God bless you.