Clinton Tours Poverty-Stricken Areas
By KEVIN GALVIN, AP
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP), With a helping hand from corporate America, President
Clinton is offering a mix of public and private investment to spur economic activity in
some of the nation's forgotten communities.
Clinton was unveiling more than $60 million in community development grants in
Clarksdale, Miss., today before joining a Bank of America executive in East St. Louis,
Ill., to unveil a new $500 million capital investment fund.
The president stayed overnight in Memphis after visiting hardscrabble
Appalachian communities in Kentucky on Monday, the first day on a four-day tour of some of
the nation's poorest regions, ``untapped markets'' in Clinton administration parlance.
``We have to provide incentives for people to go there,'' he said. ``We know that
government can't solve these problems alone. We know that we'll never get anywhere
by leaving people alone either.''
A handful of corporate leaders are accompanying Clinton and several Cabinet
secretaries and politicians as they review successful local projects and deliver promises
of investment and technical assistance.
In the Mississippi Delta today, Clinton was announcing $60 million in grants
from the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund
to community development organizations across the country. The CDFI fund was created in
1994.
Later, a large corporate player was betting Clinton was right that investing in
poor areas would be good business: Bank of America Vice President Kathy Bassant, with
Clinton by her side, was announcing the formation of a $500 million capital investment
fund targeted at often overlooked communities.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo was presenting a study in
East St. Louis, where Clinton also was touring a new Walgreens, that estimates inner city
residents possess $331 million in purchasing power.
``This is not about charity,'' he said. ``It's about investment.''
In Tyner, Ky., on Monday, Clinton met with residents of the Whispering Pines
neighborhood, a cluster of small trailer homes with about 100 residents.
Residents who stood along their path told Clinton they desperately need for
better transportation and better housing. Most of the homes had broken windows, some
covered with cardboard or wood.
``My first electricity was in 1961. I didn't have running water in a bathroom
until five years ago,'' Jean Collett said.
The president traveled by helicopter to Hazard, Ky., where he told some 2,000
people who waited hours in the blistering heat to see him that it was time that former
coal mining towns like theirs began to share in the economic good times.
``I came here to show America who you are,'' Clinton said. ``At this time of
prosperity, if we can't find a way to give every single hardworking American family a
chance to participate in the future we're trying to build for our country, we'll never get
around to doing it.''
The message was welcomed by the people of Hazard, the seat of Perry County,
where the unemployment rate is 6.7 percent, compared with a national average that has been
holding below 5 percent. The county's per capita income, at about $16,000, is only 63
percent of the national average.
``We need help. We need hope,'' Hazard Mayor William Gorman said.
After a late-night dinner of ribs and catfish at the Blues City Cafe on Memphis'
famed Beale Street, Clinton toured the National Civil Rights Museum, located at the site
of the former Lorraine Hotel, where the Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated.
Clinton was accompanied by about 20 people who had supped with him, including Labor
Secretary Alexis Herman, Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, and Jesse Jackson, who
had accompanied King to Memphis on the day he was slain in 1968.
While visiting the museum, Clinton placed a telephone call to console the widow
of former Northwestern University men's basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong, who was shot to
death Friday near his home in Skokie, Ill. A white supremacist who took his own life late
Sunday was suspected in the killing.
