Bill Clinton: “We can't be responsible unless our streets are safe. I have fought against the efforts by my opponent and Mr. Gingrich…”

“We can't be responsible unless our streets are safe. I have fought against the efforts by my opponent and Mr. Gingrich to cut back on the safe and drug-free schools money, to cut back on the funds we give to schools to stay open later because our kids need something to say yes to, not just something to say no to. We shouldn't leave children out here on the street raising themselves. If we need to keep the schools open, we need more funds to keep them open, not less. We need to be supporting our teachers, not tearing them down. We need to be bringing them in here. Well, I'll tell you something, folks, one big reason--you can ask the mayor here, you can ask any mayor in America--one big reason this crime rate has come down for 4 years is that we're putting more policemen back in the neighborhoods where they can know the folks, they can know the children, they can be partners. They can not only catch criminals, but they can stop crime from happening in the first place. Now, they all voted against, the other folks did, including my opponent--they all voted against creating 100,000 policemen. Then they tried to take it away. Now they're trying to restrict it again. I say to you, why would we stop something that's working? We've got the crime rate coming down for 4 years. We need it coming down for 4 more years and it might be low enough to be tolerable. Will you help me stay with 100,000 police on the street? [Applause] The last thing I want to say is we've got to go forward as one community. And that starts with strong families. A lot of people talk about family values, but as the First Lady said in our convention, it's time we advocated things that show we value family. We've got to help people succeed, raising their children and going to work. I propose to expand the family and medical leave law so that you can take a little time off without losing your job to go to a parent-teacher conference or take your kid to the doctor. I propose letting people choose how to take their overtime. If they've got problems at home, if a child needs some care, if the parent has Alzheimer's, if there's some other trouble, I think people who earn overtime ought to have a choice to take it in money or time with their families, depending on what they need. Will you help me build that kind of pro-family policy as a bridge to the future? [Applause] Finally, let me say this: The Vice President and I have worked as hard as we know how to prove you can protect the environment and grow the economy. And I can't thank Al Gore enough for all the things he's taught me about how to protect the environment and grow the economy. But we passed the Safe Drinking Water Act. We passed an act to purify our food from pesticides that every farm organization in America supported. We have upgraded the meat standards of this country. We improved the clean air laws. We cleaned up all these toxic waste dumps. We've still got a lot to do. You want to know one way you can grow Memphis' economy and every other city? If we cleaned up every environment problem in every city in this country, we would make those places prime targets for new investments and new jobs. We're going to clean up the environment of the cities and grow the economy. We're going to clean up--there are 10 million kids in this country that live within 4 miles of a toxic waste dump. We're going to clean up the two-thirds worst ones if you'll help us so that our children can grow up next to parks, not poison. Will you help us build that bridge to the future? [Applause] Finally, let me say again, you think about the bridge that connects Memphis and West Memphis, Arkansas. You imagine that being a bridge to the future. That bridge has got to be strong enough and wide enough for all of us to walk across. That's why, when Tipper and I celebrated our birthdays, Al and Hillary and the two of us came out here to Tennessee to try to rebuild that church that had been burned. Every time somebody burns a church or defaces a synagogue or a mosque, they deface the idea of America. And as I said Thursday night, the real flame that embodies America is the flame on the Statue of Liberty, the flame that the Olympic torch--carried by citizens, heroes all across America--embodied. You've got this Olympic Gold Medal winner. Why do we love the Olympics? I'll tell you why. Because everybody has got to play by the rules. You can't get a gold medal by breaking in your opponent's room the night before and breaking their legs. [Laughter] Nobody brags on you if you stand up behind a microphone and bad-mouth your opponent. You can only win if you reach down deep inside and do your best and give your all. And then if you do that, even if you don't get a medal you're better off. And we think the world ought to work that way. That's why we liked the Olympics. That's why we liked the Olympics. So I tell you, my friends, you just think about that. The United States cannot afford to let racial bigotry get back into our lives. We cannot afford to let religious bigotry back into our lives. We cannot afford any kind of discrimination. We need to say to the whole world-- and most important, in the privacy of our own rooms at night as we say our prayers to God, we need it to be true in our hearts--if you believe in the Declaration of Independence, if you believe in the Constitution, if you believe in the Bill of Rights, if you get up tomorrow and do your work and you obey the law and you play by the rules, you're my kind of American. I don't care what else there is about you. We're going to cross that bridge together. Will you help me build that kind of bridge to the future? Audience members. Yes!”