RFK

[kairos12]

Murdered 52 years ago today.

[lastlib]

1. Died on this date.

Last edited Mon Jun 8, 2020, 08:32 AM - Edit history (1)

Shot on previous day.

My personal political hero. --- --- ---

[a kennedy]

2. Mine as well......I did not get over that killing for a long time, longer then

when his brother died........I absolutely loved Bobby Kennedy.

[lastlib]

4. I don't think I'm "over it" yet......

Just learned to live with the hole in my heart...kinda filling it with resolution to see his dream fulfilled.

[electric_blue68]

17. I wish that more people could have seen this thread

Important to show prior political people who displayed such compassion, and did their best to act on it. It gives hope.

In RFK's case his childhood gentliness and empathy was reawakened after his father quashed it.

[colsohlibgal]

3. Curious

JFK, MLK, then RFK. Wonder (not) what they had in common.

[Lifelong Protester]

5. He was shot on my sister's birthday.

Died the next day. I haven’t gotten over it. I was an ardent RFK supporter.

[Moostache]

6. The last convulsion of the death of the republic...

The most profound political speech of the 20th century, or at bare minimum one of the top 3...

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one—no matter where he lives or what he does—can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause can ever be stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots or civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily—whether it is done in the name of the law or in defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence—whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their very conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression breeds retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look to our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

Where are the leaders of today who can lift that mantle, raise it up high? Are our wounds now so gangrenous and rotted that they cannot be bound? Is amputation inevitable? It feels like it more than ever since Monday...

[Martin Eden]

7. "Why? What has violence ever accomplished"

It robbed us of the better future we hoped for, but evil men did not want.

[Bradshaw3]

9. Great post

The thing is it wasn't just that his words were so eloquent but it was also obvious that he spoke them from his heart that made such a lasting impression.

[EarnestPutz]

8. I can't tell you how many times over the last fifty years I've thought about ....

....what a different country this would be today if Robert Kennedy had not been shot and had gone on from his California primary win that day to win the presidency. We'd be a better people living in a better country.

[NBachers]

10. My heart was stabbed anew when I saw those letters.

It really never goes away.

History turned into the republican / fascist nightmare of the last 50 years on that day.

I have no words to adequately express the dread, the pain, and the regret. What could have been . . .

[LessAspin]

11. What the World Needs Now

Tom Clay (August 20, 1929 -- November 22, 1995) was an American radio personality and disc jockey. Clay is best remembered for his single on Motown's MoWest label "What the World Needs Now Is Love"/"Abraham, Martin and John" (MoWest MW5002F), a compilation of clips from the two popular records, interviews, and speeches of Jack and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King emphasizing tolerance and civil rights. It went to #8 on the Billboard Hot 100. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.

[LessAspin]

12. Thank you, Bobby Kennedy, for caring when others didn't

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[electric_blue68]

15. Thank you for these

Hi

Thank you so much for these additional items. Of course, in one way they make it more sorrowful; AND they show the deep empathy that radiated from him and that is so beautiful!

[electric_blue68]

13. My sorrow and how Bobby changed

Hi
Been trying to get on here to this thread since Fri (trouble w making my account).

In the past 6 days I realized I needed to have a further outlet for my political passions. Then I remembered DU and wondered if the site was still around (I'm talking a long time back).
Because of the timing I immediately looked to find anything commemorating RFK. And found you folks!

Well, as some said - I never totally got over it either. After losing MLK so many people pinned their hopes on Bobby.
I was 15, already being somewhat politically active. I was hoping to catch seeing him in the NYS Primary (obviously didn't happen), and I would have done volunteer work had he won the nomination!
I was absolutely devastated!!!!
Went to St Patrick's, and next watched the funeral procession on 34st to Penn Station. Watched The Train to DC on tv.
-----------------------------

I knew about the Tough Bobby as some described him bc things were floating around, and written about him prior to 68. I knew he'd changed, and I remember my mom saying "he's changed!". People knew that JFK's assassination devastated him, and that sorrow seemed increase his empathy, plus important black people when he was AG read him the riot act about the lives of black people back then, and we See that some serious issues have't changed (or not much).

What I didn't know (I know the author of the following has been in hot water recently) that was written about in "A Raging Spirit - RFK ....." by Chris Mathew who did tons of research -it turns out that Bobby was a gentle, empathetic child. His father however Hated that! So he began to hide that part of him. Became tough physically (football), and mentally, etc.

So it had been mostly put away till time after Nov 22.

Now I'm going to see the several later posts I haven't seen yet.

[fleabiscuit]

14. Welcome to the DU.

[Corgigal]

16. Oh,

Damn it. Of course, he was.

RIP good man.