Last night, Shaun and I watched the movie "Bobby" which depicted the assassination of presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy. It was really interesting for me to watch since I really didn't know much about "the other Kennedy". I can't really say the film was that spectacular...the plot was sort of choppy and didn't really lead you anywhere. But there were some great clips of real news coverage of his candidacy and speeches. The speech given at the very end by Bobby was particularly moving to me. I would encourage you to read it, when you have the time.
Speech
by Robert F. Kennedy - Cleveland City Club, Cleveland Ohio - April 5, 1968
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 the 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 has ever been
stilled by an assassin's bullet.
No wrongs have
ever been righted by riots and 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 the 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 the 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 wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are
willing to build their own 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 own conduct invited them.
Some look for
scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence
breeds violence, repression brings 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 at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not
a 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 can 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. | 
