Remembering RFK

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This morning, in a compelling conversation on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Pete Hamill noted that Bobby Kennedy had a compassion for ordinary Democrats and a keen sense of the urgency of now [my paraphrase] that has been lost for all these years. He further noted the Kennedys are a rich family with a passion for public service when they could have been living well in the south of France.

This morning, Bill Eppridge—author of The Time It Was, Bobby Kennedy and the ’60s―described the moments when he captured history. His was the iconic photograph of the busboy at Kennedy’s side, on the floor, moments after Kennedy’s victory speech that long ago night in Los Angeles.

It is tough to talk of that night.

Whether or not you are old enough to remember firsthand those times, I recommend this book to you, sight unseen. Because I intend to read it, myself. I think, after this long arduous primary campaign―which has renewed so many memories to me of that time, that night, MLK, Chicago―it is a book that will help those of us who must be part of a unified Democratic Party going forward from this week to heal.

I was a green kid who suspended her sophomore college year to work for Gene McCarthy, and when Bobby Kennedy joined the campaign, a late-comer in our eyes, a snatcher of the groundwork that McCarthy had done, there were resentments.

In Los Angeles that night we were at a different campaign’s election night event, then left and walked in the quiet darkness with co-workers through the long blocks to the McCarthy headquarters in Westwood, talking resolve and determination, coming to the red flashes of police car lights and the news.

Were there not that tragedy 40 years ago last night, lingering into the next day, those resentments would have been healed, the disparate party groups would have been reunited, and ….

Oh, but there was that tragedy.

And as much as it was the loss of one inspiring leader, it was also the breakdown of the best of what the Democratic Party can be, as Hamill noted. A breach that allowed "other priorities" to seize control, to take away that focus on the common good that serves ordinary Americans, and cede instead to the will of the fatcat global corporations and lobbyists. That is long past needing restoration.

That signal year began a long, slow slide into what we see now…Iraq and the grievous wounds that lies have brought us to, the corruption of the bedrock principles of justice of our government, the laid-off workers, foreclosures, Katrina, recession, hunger and homelessness … the list is long … you know it.

Right now, in this need-of-healing-and-unity time, we have another leader who has shown time and again his ability to inspire and lead and take charge to bring us together for a common, noble purpose.

It’s tempting to find metaphor in the Biblical journey of Moses…we have been wandering in our own wilderness these last 40 years.

For now, let’s reflect on what we lost, but only in the context of what we have yet to achieve, now, this fierce urgency of now. Let us pick up the threads of purpose that have lain in discord and distraction too long and set about rebuilding the best of what this nation can be. All of us united.