1968 = 2008

I watched a great deal of the Democratic National Convention last week, and became extremely excited about the possibilities for change in our nation that are right ahead of us. Not the idealistic notion of change that one talks about but never sees, but a sweeping, real-life shift of ideology that makes each of us as Americans more equal to our brothers and sisters and sets our children up for a more prosperous, worthwhile experience. Immediately after watching Senator Hillary Clinton's speech, I stumbled upon a History channel special called '1968'. It chronicled the year in American history and in doing so, touched a particularly important figure in American history, Robert Kennedy.

Because I've never been a history buff, a lot of what I learned about him was new and exciting to me, and as I watched the special, I began to feel more and more passionate about what he stood for, as if he was alive now, poised to take charge of this sycophantic, bureaucratic administration and revitalize the US into a nation synonymous with advancement, freedom and equality. I watched his speech that night at the Ambassador Hotel, and I watched in horror as they announced his assassination. I cried with my grandmother and grandfather, and with every other American who watched a huge beacon of hope pass. I cried and cried and cried. When I was done crying, done soaking in the reality of behavior like this, I felt inspired. And for this reason, I am now violently aware of the parallels in our time now. Exactly forty years later, our economic and social situations as a nation are very similar. We are engaged in a war that most of the country opposes. We're facing economic recession. The rights of gays and immigrants are being diminished. We need a leader to change all of that. It was one of the saddest things I've thought to imagine that Barack Obama might be taken away from us as Bobby Kennedy was- I don't mean to draw lofty parallels this early in the game, but nonetheless realize the reality of everyone's mortality. Needless to say, this election is special to me. It's pivotal. And I sincerely hope that my family, my sister, my mother, my friends- even people who say they don't care- will GET informed. Will read. Will decide, and will help elect a person that is committed to the kind of change we as a young generation have been waiting for.

I hope you actually read this, because it's incredible. If you'd rather hear him say it himself, go here:

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballots 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.

-Senator Robert F. Kennedy, On the Mindless Menace of Violence
City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio April 5, 1968

The beauty of this nation is that there are people like this among us, wishing to be the change we all see in ourselves. We simply have to acknowledge them.