Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 15, 1994                   TAG: 9405150009
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
DATELINE: INDIANAPOLIS                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON CALLS ON AMERICANS TO EMULATE KENNEDY, KING

Decrying the nation's rampant crime and violence, the growing social divisions and the "incivility" of public life, Clinton called for renewal of America's promise and said it was up to our people, in our shared values and attitudes, to make it happen.

Government programs can create jobs, reform health care and help fight crime, the president said, "but in the end, America must be changed by you, in your hearts, in your lives every day, on every street in this country. And you can do it."

Clinton's speech was the second in a weeklong string of high-profile public events in which he intends to stress the importance of individual moral values, personal responsibility and commitment to shared communities as the keys to renewing American life.

This effort will test Clinton's ability to offer the nation moral leadership after the battering his reputation has taken in recent months from the Whitewater real estate controversy and allegations of sexual improprieties.

Clinton spoke at the same inner-city site where Robert F. Kennedy told a predominantly black crowd on the night of April 4, 1968, that Martin Luther King Jr. had just been assassinated.

Speaking without notes, Kennedy delivered what many consider his finest speech that night, as he appealed to the grief-stricken crowd to rise above hatred and violence and instead practice love and wisdom, compassion and justice, as King had done.

Unlike most big cities across the United States that night, Indianapolis did not burn "because people's hearts were touched," Clinton said. "Miracles begin with personal choices."

Speaking beneath a hand-held black umbrella and standing in front of two giant photographic portraits of the slain '60s leaders, Clinton told of a public housing project in a poor neighborhood in Washington, D.C., that recently was enclosed by a huge fence erected by its own residents to keep out criminals. The residents hired security guards, Clinton said, "just like they were rich folks in a planned development."

"And they got exactly the same result - people could go outside and sit on the park benches, and the children could walk and play." Clinton said one neighborhood resident told the press: "I guess this is freedom in the '90s."

"Is it freedom in the '90s?" Clinton asked rhetorically. "Is it freedom in the '90s when we have to put up walls between our own people, even as we celebrate the walls coming down from Berlin to South Africa? Is that our freedom?"