I watched the film, "Bobby" last evening. It is a retelling of the last day in the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, before the assassination of Robert Kennedy on 4 June 1968. I must say that I have never been a great fan of the Kennedys, but I have always had an attachment to Bobby, who seemed to me to be the idealist, the orator, the philosopher of the clan, always reaching out to find the best in each of us. In the film, after he is shot, one hears his voice reading the speech he gave in Cleveland on the day Martin Luther King was shot. It is about violence, and last night it was, for me, more pertinent than ever. Here it is. Decide for yourselves.
Remarks of Senator Robert F. Kennedy to the 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 to speak briefly to you about this 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.
Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No
martyr's cause has ever been stilled by his 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 the people.
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 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 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 weapons and ammunition
they desire.
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the 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 nonviolence abroad
fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots
have by their own conduct invited them.
Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is
clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a
cleaning 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 a 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 now 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 human 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 all. 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
vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those who
live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short
movement of life, that they seek - as we do - nothing but the chance to
live out their lives in purpose and 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 hearts brothers and countrymen
once again.
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