Let me tell you a story about responsibility -- and I'll tell you quickly. In 1992 I was asked to go to Harlem to visit a building on 118th Street, a brownstone building. And I went to visit it, and there were 15 kids in that building. Those 15 kids were working, rehabilitating the building, bringing it back from a crackhouse to a home, restoring the community.
Every one of those kids came out of an at-risk program, every one of those kids came out of a gang, every one of those kids came out of a diversion from the court system or off the street, alone, drop-out.
And they said to me, "Senator, this is the first time in my life I've had to be responsible for another kid. This is the first for myself. This is the first time I have to get in the morning and report for duty and be, sort of, working cooperatively with people. This saved my life."
I was so impressed by the conversations I had with those kids -- I was then chairman of the Housing Committee -- I went back to Washington here, and I just wrote it into the law.
KERRY: And I'm proud to tell you that today, ladies and gentlemen, it's in 173 cities, it's in 43 states. There are 25,000 graduates who are now full citizens in America, not inmates of a prison. It's called YouthBuild, and it works.
But, tragically, every time I've tried to raise the $65 million to $100 million, $120 million, to get more kids into it, I'm told we don't have the money.
But we have the money for a great big tax rate for the biggest companies in America. We have the money for a big tax cut, over $1 trillion too, for those who get dividends from their stocks and for the largest earners in America.
My friends, Bill Cosby's right, people in the community have to accept responsibility, and we need to empower people, churches and parents and schools, to further that.
But we also need to do the things that we need to do as a civil society to empower those people, to have places for those kids, to make the world safe. It's all of us together.
And that's the kind of president that I intend to be.
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QUESTION: You talked this morning about bridging the divide in America and being inclusive. And yet there are some people of color who believe that the Democratic Party has taken them for granted, especially after the votes have been counted.
What would make the Democratic Party different under John Kerry, especially compared to Bill Clinton's eight years in office? And how will you walk the talk?
KERRY: Well, I've done it for 35 years.
From the moment I came back from Vietnam and I stood up, and when I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 about the war, I didn't just talk about the war, I talked about what was happening to minority servicepeople who had been drafted in huge numbers out of the barrios and out of the inner cities, who didn't have the power to make the choices of other people, and how they were coming back to a country that was still divided, where they didn't have full opportunity. I talked about racism in 1971.
In every office I've ever run -- district attorney, lieutenant governor and senator -- my staffs have reflected the face of America, and my administration will.
KERRY: In every vote I have cast -- 100 percent NAACP rating last year -- I have voted to expand the rights, to enforce the rights, to be inclusive.
I worked with President Clinton to fix affirmative action so we didn't end it; we mended it. So there were a lot of questions about quota. I support affirmative action. I've practiced affirmative action.
I stood alone and fought to keep the minority-business set-asides in the Small Business Committee so that we could guarantee that we were trying to empower people and open the doors of opportunity. Today, those are being reduced. Those quotas aren't being met. Those goals aren't being met. The standards are being reduced. The lending is being cut.
I believe that what you need is somebody who record shows a demonstrated, persistent commitment to opening up those doors of opportunity.
I'm proud that my campaign has people like Bill Lynch and Alexis Herman and Aida Alvarez and Henry Cisneros and a host of others who are helping me to reach out to communities all across this country.
And we can always do better in America, but I'll tell you this: No one will ever have to twist my arm, ever, to know that you cannot possibly govern effectively if you don't meet with the Hispanic Caucus, the Black Caucus, the Civil Rights Conference...
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... and leadership, and bring people to the table to lead this country.
And that is exactly what I did in the Senate. It's exactly what I'll do as president.
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QUESTION: Speaking of defending our country, American Indian tribes are sovereign nations, yet currently tribes have to go through states or counties to access homeland security funds. Currently, there's legislation proposed to have funds go directly to tribes.
What is your position on that?
KERRY: I think some of the funds need to go directly to tribes. I think there are law enforcement, jurisdictional difficulties right now in the dealings with many of the tribal jurisdictions, and we need to work those through, particularly in the Southwest. I'm prepared to do that.
Some of the funds clearly ought to go directly. Some of them need to be used in coordination. And there are some coordinated efforts, but what we have to do, fundamentally, is a better job of coordinating, and that hasn't been taking place. So you've actually had resistance to mutual interest in border issues and others.
I think we have to recognize that the Native American community, which has not been recognized, has as much desire, has as much interest and is as prepared and is as capable and always has protected America with as much zeal as any other community, and we ought to trust it and provide the funding necessary as a separate jurisdiction where that coordination is not absolutely necessary.
(APPLAUSE)
QUESTION: If there is a clear line in the minds of many of the voters who are straddling the fence right now, it is on the issue of terror.
The question is, how would you lead as a president in the age of terror?
Specifically, what would you have done if you had been caught in a Florida newsroom -- or, I'm sorry, a Florida classroom on September 11, 2001? Would you, given the power of hindsight, have taken the nation to war, as President Bush has said he would, given hindsight?
And lastly, what would you do to get the nation out of Iraq, specifically?
KERRY: Great question. And I appreciate...
(APPLAUSE)
I'm going to take a minute on this question, because it's one of the most important questions facing the nation, obviously.
First of all, had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, "America is under attack," I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to...
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... and I would have attended to it.
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Secondly -- and this is important, ladies and gentlemen, because Americans want to know that the person they choose as president has all of the skills and the ability, all of the mental toughness, all of the gut instinct necessary to be a strong commander in chief. I'm asking you to trust our nation, our history, the world, your families in my hands, and I understand that. It's a big ask, and it's a tough judgment you have to make. But I believe, in this case, there is a very clear choice.
I come to the job of commander in chief with the rare, gratefully, but important experience of having fought in a war. And the war that I fought in was a war where we saw America lose its support for the war, where the soldiers came back having had to do what our soldiers are doing today, carry an M-16 in another country, try to tell the difference between friend and foe.
I know what it's like to go out at night on patrol and you don't know what's around the next corner.
KERRY: I know what it's like to write home to your family and tell them, "Hey, everything's OK," even though in your gut you're scared stiff and you don't know if it is OK.
And I believe we need a commander in chief who understands the test before you send young people to war. You got to be able to look parents in the eyes if they lose their son or daughter and say to them, "I tried to do everything in my power to avoid this, but we had no choice as a nation, as a people, because of the challenge to our country, to our fundamental values from a threat that was real and imminent."
I believe in my heart of hearts and in my gut that this president fails that test in Iraq. And I know this because I, personally, and others were deeply involved in the effort with other countries to bring them to the table. I met with the Security Council of the United Nations in the week preceding the vote in the Senate.
I voted to hold Saddam Hussein accountable, because, had I been president, I would have wanted that authority, because that was the way to enforce the U.N. resolutions and be tough with the prospect of his development of weapons of mass destruction.
But the president said he would go to war as a last resort. The president said he would exhaust the remedies of the U.N. The president said he would build a legitimate international coalition.
And here we are, several years later, having made an end-run around the United Nations, alienated our allies, put our soldiers at greater risk than they needed to be, asked the American people to pay almost $200 billion, because we didn't have the patience, we didn't have the maturity to exhaust the remedies available to us and truly build that coalition and understand the nature of the threat.
My friends, I believe there is a firm conviction with which I approach defending our country. And that is that the United States of America, through all of our history, has set up a standard: The United States doesn't go to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to. And that's the standard that I will apply to the presidency.
(APPLAUSE)
Now, might we have wound up going to war with Saddam Hussein? You bet we might have -- after we exhausted those remedies and found that he wasn't complying and so on and so forth. But not in a way that provides -- you know, 90 percent of the casualties are American, and almost all of the cost.
And the American taxpayer, just think of that $200 billion for the schools, for health care, for the things that we could be doing in America. The choice, it seems to me, is clear.
Now, what do we do to get out of there? What do we do to achieve our goals legitimately? Well, let me tell you.
Is there anybody sitting here in this room who doesn't believe that every Arab country in fact has a real and legitimate interest in not having a failed Iraq, in not having a civil war on its borders? But they're not at the table.
KERRY: Is there anybody here who believes that Europe, with its own Muslim populations and its own geopolitical issues, as well as its global responsibilities, doesn't have an interest in not having a failed Iraq and a civil war? But they're not really at the table.
And the fact that they're not, I believe, underscores dramatically the failure of diplomacy and statesmanship by this administration.
