In terms of politics, I don't know if I have ever recovered. It’s not that I don’t continue to fight for social justice - I do. I have kept the faith. But I don't put too much faith in politicians to affect real change.
The hope that is within me is stirred whenever I recall the three speeches that were given in the space of three days in April of 1968, the first by MLK, the last two by RFK.
MLK's speech of course was prophetic (Link). It inpired me much more than his more popular "I have a dream" speech. Perhaps because it is so hopeful:
He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!
What many people forget was that, like Kennedy, King was also evolving. He had come out against the war. His Poor People’s Campaign called for economic justice for all people. He was challenging the system on multiple fronts.
Yesterday, another diary highlighted RFK's speech at Indainapolis the night of King’s murder. It may be the best extemporaneous speech I have ever listened to (Link). In the wake of MLK's murder, I doubt there is another politician who could have made the connection that Kennedy did. The wonderful thing about RFK is that he spoke to people as equals. He didn’t talk down to them.
He quoted Aeschylus:
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.
While the previous two speeches have been often cited, with good reason, the speech that Kennedy gave on April 5, the Mindless Menace of Violence speech (Link), is not as well known, but IMO equally important.
He speaks of violence to the spirit, which can be just as harmful as physical violence.
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.
Like King, Kennedy was challenging the essential framework of status quo. Nonetheless he concluded his speech on a hopeful note:
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.
Two months later Kennedy was dead.
Perhaps there is a political figure out there today who can unite people across class, racial and ethnic lines as did RFK’s campaign. I hope so.