I was eighteen when Bobby Kennedy was gunned down. I went to sleep before the news hit. My father woke me up the next morning. I stumbled upstairs thinking he couldn’t be saying what I thought I had heard him say, that there must be some mistake. I remember the huge and suffocating sense of "no!" that was building in my chest like an explosion of hatred for the injustice of it. I'd been thirteen when they shot John Kennedy, and it'd been barely two months since Martin Luther King had gone down. Both deaths had been traumatic, but Bobby's death felt personal—I'd seen him just two days before, been close enough to touch his hand.
Yesterday, when the whole thing with Hillary hit the airwaves, someone posted Ted Kennedy's eulogy for his brother; I listened and wept. I wanted, craved really, to hear Bobby Kennedy’s voice, to hear the sound of the man who had so inspired my political aspirations when I was young. Last night I wrote a diary about Bobby Kennedy. (It was not my first, my first was actually in 2006 in defense of Bobby Kennedy, Jr. who had just come out with a strong stance on voter fraud. I was impressed. I compared him to his father.)
So, last night I went hunting on YouTube and quickly discovered that the most inspiring words of Kennedy’s were spoken on the day Martin Luther King was killed. Kennedy was campaigning, he spoke extemporaneously. He spoke about ending division and ending political violence, about the responsibility of being an American in the face of such grave injustice and grievous injury. Please listen to it, but here's a couple of brief excerpts:
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.
...
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.
I hadn’t thought about the comparison between Barack Obama’s words and Bobby Kennedy’s before, but when I listened to him speak, I was struck at the continuation of a theme. I was touched by the possibility of completion. I saw that my quiet hope that Obama would win, which has become increasingly significant to me of late, had roots in the horrible events of June 6, 1968.
As I said, I saw Bobby Kennedy speak. He came to Portland, Oregon on his way to California. One of his campaign stops was actually quite small, at a synagogue somewhere in Portland. I went. I sat near the front. There weren’t more than 300 or 400 people in the audience. John Glen was with him. Bobby was young and charismatic; he was passionate and personable. He radiated confidence and hope. I was blown away. It was such an intimate setting. As we left, I was close enough to shake his hand. I remember how much I wanted to reach out and touch him, how powerful it was to be in his presence. I remember the winsome boyishness of his smile. I remember thinking that it was possible to make the world a better place—that my generation was the one that would do that, that we understood what was necessary, that we were sincere in our commitment to a just and peaceful world. I see the same thing in the faces and reach of the young people who often crowd around Barack Obama these days.
The diary I posted last night came under almost immediate attack. Someone took exception to my memories perhaps because they were sentimental and pro-Obama. The commenter, it seemed to me, was a classic troll, wanting simply to undermine the mood and meaning of the diary with ugly posturing. Eventually he told me to "fuck off" and when I troll rated one of his attacks on someone else, he hooted that he hoped I’d "gotten it up" by my action. There weren’t many people on board my diary. Folks were making a single comment and passing on. The only person sticking around was the troll who was getting great pleasure out of his success.
Ultimately, I abandoned my diary and went elsewhere myself, to another diary where I got into a fire fight with Hillary supporters over whether my objections to Hillary were sexist. The whole thing was disheartening and divisive, the opposite of what I had intended for myself.
This morning I discovered that after I left a few other people found my diary and made some powerful contributions and joined me in troll-rating the troll. I felt less alone after that, and because two different people linked to the song Abraham, Martin & John, I ended up crying over the death of Bobby Kennedy. No, over the death of my innocence, the death of my belief we could change this country and make it a better place, the loss of hope.
I realized this morning just how deeply I have been moved by the youth coming out for Obama, and how much I don’t want them to experience what I experienced back then, including the election of a cynically dishonest Richard Nixon (who brought many of the neocons who have served Bush into power). It brought back memories of the attack on the students at Kent State. I was twenty by the time that happened and went to Washington DC to protest it. Those were turbulent times. I was going to school in Detroit during the days of Kent State. I had never lived in a large city before and had never experienced racism up close, only on the TV. My parents were liberals. They had wept when Martin Luther King was murdered. I dated an African American man in Detroit and one night talked him into taking us to a film in Grosse Pointe, which was a very upscale suburb. He told me there’d be trouble. I couldn’t believe it. Finally, he said, okay. We went. There was trouble. It was frightening. We left quickly. The white boys in Grosse Pointe didn’t like seeing a young white girl with a black man in their movie theater in 1968. It was shocking to me. I was that naïve.
So.
What’s this all about? Just this: One thing Hillary’s done by bringing Bobby Kennedy into the conversation, is she’s reminded us all that it was forty years ago in June that he was killed, forty years ago that Martin Luther King was killed too. And whatever her intention was, for me, it’s been a real tumble. I mean, I wasn’t thinking about any of this until it came to my attention through the media frenzy that has followed her remarks. I’m sure that Ted Kennedy’s diagnosis has also added to my emotions. Obviously the torch is being passed to a new generation here.
But, what really came to mind, as the smoke began to clear, is the feelings I have about Obama’s safety.
I’ve been worried all along. The news that came out a couple of weeks ago about the Secret Service joking about Jesse Jackson and his family dying while under their protection, sent a shiver up my spine.
What really bothers me, when I think, "why did Hillary do this?" has to do with my experience last night. The fire fights on DailyKos, the angry and apparent hatred that gets stirred by the conflict.
Perhaps part of the reason Obama’s trying to cool this down is because of its potential to do damage, to increase the animosity between Obama and Hillary supporters. It certainly has aroused both sides to new levels of name calling and threats. Stirring hatred, that's a dangerous game. People say and do wild things when provoked by anger. That's what Bobby Kennedy was addressing the night Martin Luther King died. He said:
So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love - a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.
If you haven't listened to Bobby Kennedy, please do:
I, for one, am still hoping that my generation will live up to its potential to help the world to be a better, safer, more just place. It seems to me, that the best way to do that at this moment in history, is to make room for the young, charismatic black man who by circumstance, coincidence, and the fierce urgency of the moment, has picked up the baton Abraham, Martin and John each took up, one from the other—picked it up where Bobby laid it down.
How significant it will be if Barack Obama becomes presdient—not only for the young people of America who are tasting possibility for the first time, and for the people like myself, who saw it stolen from their grasp so many years ago, but for the world. It will change the world. It is our best hope, our best hope for environmental sanity, for human rights and dignity, for equity, justice, honesty and peace on earth.
Ted Kennedy said of Bobby,
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
We should neither idealize nor demonize Barack Obama. He himself admits to being an imperfect vessel. It will take a nation of women and men, not just one man, to make a difference in the world, but it will be very different to have the leadership of this country pulling for us, pulling for the people of this nation and this world, instead of for special interests who have as their goal amassing wealth and power to themselves at the expense of the entire planet.
It's time to move on. The torch has been passed to a new generation. Let us do what we can to see it stays lit.