Clinton Volunteers for Classroom ‘Cover-Up’

President Clinton did his part to promote volunteerism on Martin Luther King Day by helping paint a classroom at a local high school.

While he was doing that, Vice President Al Gore was in Atlanta, where, accompanied by King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, he delivered a sermon-like speech from King’s pulpit to outline a plan to increase civil rights spending by $86 million.

Clinton wore blue jeans, brown cowboy boots and a gray Stanford University T-shirt donated by daughter Chelsea as he helped 65 members of AmeriCorps and 300 community volunteers repair and paint classrooms at the District of Columbia’s Cardozo High School.

“We really wanted to emphasize that Martin Luther King’s birthday is a day of service--a day on, not a day off,” Clinton said as he applied beige paint to the walls of a third-floor classroom.

Cardozo’s third-floor classrooms had not been painted in 15 years and were damaged because of a leaky roof.

“It was an amazing experience to help out and serve next to the president,” said Jen Brindisi, 23, a full-time AmeriCorps worker from Struthers, Ohio, who helped Clinton paint Room 306.

Gore told the crowd at Ebenezer Baptist Church that the Clinton administration will propose spending $602 million to enforce civil rights laws in the 1999 budget, up from $516 million this year.

“This is a priority. That is why it received such an enormous increase when almost everything else in the budget is being decreased,” Gore said.

Gore said the proposed civil rights spending boost will include a $22-million increase for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to fight housing discrimination.

Details will be included in the fiscal 1999 budget Clinton submits to Congress next month.