Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Robert F. Kennedy

June 5th and 6th haunt me every year, but especially this year, the 50th anniversary of RFK’s passing.

I was 17 the year Bobby died; I was eleven when his brother, the President of the United States was killed, so the Kennedy brothers are intrinsically wrapped up in my earliest lasting memories. I remember them as well as if the events happened yesterday, so it hurts terribly.

I wasn’t among the first on the RFK bandwagon when he ran for President in 1968 because he took so blasted long to get into the race that by then, I had settled on someone else–or so I believed.

So I was mad at first. I thought he ought to wait another four years since he was so late out the starting gate. (Perhaps things would have turned out better for the nation–and for himself and his family–if he had. Alas, we will never know.) But as the campaign progressed and it seemed he was on the right track with sufficient trajectory to win despite the late start, I began to be hopeful.

As we all know, it was not to be. And the journey into darkness for America began its inexorable movement forward:

Watergate.

Reaganomics.

Gerrymandering.

Far-right radio madmen spewing conspiracy theories and nonsense.

Manufactured wars with the Bush-Cheney team.

Trump. Pence. Huckabee Sanders. DeVos. Bannon. McConnell. Ryan. The whole sordid bunch.

Carter, Clinton and Obama were in there somewhere, offering precious little light in the cave we found ourselves in. But overall, the strategy of divide-and-conquer-the-masses seems to be working well.

Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. wanted to bring us together, not split us apart so the oligarchs, plutocrats and corporations could rape and pillage indiscriminately.

Born in privileged surroundings, Bobby wasn’t a spoiled rich kid. His heart was too large to fit into a spoiled rich kid’s existence. He wanted to make things better for the people (especially for their children) that he saw in Appalachia, in the south, on Indian reservations and in agricultural fields. He went out and met them, and came away convinced that we as a nation could do better.

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article94893182.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQndvfZyf7w

https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/news/remembering-robert-f-kennedy/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N-WNZLZF5A

RFK’s The Enemy Within at Amazon

American Journey: The Times of Robert Kennedy: http://amzn.to/2FHtJYr

Robert Kennedy’s comments on the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated

Another of Bobby’s great speeches was this one in South Africa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp81OYCjXtU

I am left, as so many are, to ponder the trajectory that a President Robert F. Kennedy would have established for this nation. And I truly believe we would be in a far better place than we are right now.

But the dream and the possibility of getting there are not dead. That’s what continues to give me hope.

I miss him fiercely.