Why Bobby Kennedy Matters

In 2005, I was applying to a master of divinity program to become a Buddhist chaplain. As part of my application for financial support, I had to write an essay on "Engaged Buddhism." I was casting about for material for my essay and I started watching the PBS series Eyes on the Prize that documents the history of the civil rights movement. I've read two newspapers a day since I was a teenager and was a political science major in college. Yet I was shocked to discover that I knew very little about the history of the civil rights movement. I couldn't believe that in 16 years of education I had never been told this remarkable story.

The speeches of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were unlike anything I had ever heard before. They were speaking on a moral plane that was vastly more advanced than anything in our current political discourse. I remembered hearing cartoonist Aaron McGruder say that no one had dared speak truth to power in this country since 1968. Watching King and Kennedy speak, I realized that McGruder was right -- that the political and moral development of this nation stopped in 1968 and we've been living in the shadow of a 40-year political eclipse.

I didn't end up going into the divinity program. In the end, American Buddhism put way too much emphasis on passivity for my taste.

Having been introduced to Bobby Kennedy through Eyes on the Prize I was hungry for more. I was hungry for a real political conversation in this country -- not the petulant, lowest common denominator, god-gays-and-guns pandering required by all politicians ever since. Listening to Bobby Kennedy I realized that a different world was possible. I realized that America was not just facing a crisis of political courage -- it was facing a crisis of IDEATION -- we had lost the capacity to form new ideas -- our brains had been colonized by the narrow limits of what is deemed permissible in our current political climate.

I started to wonder, what would it be like if Bobby Kennedy were alive today? What would he say? What issues would he be leading on? What would our country have been like if Bobby had survived? Where would we be as a nation today if we had been able to enjoy 8 years of a Kennedy administration followed by 8 years of a Martin Luther King administration? Picture that!!!

So I started this website, RFK Action Front. I named it RFK Action Front to pattern it after revolutionary movements in Latin America who name their struggle in honor of a fallen martyr (such as the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional in El Salvador and the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional in Nicaragua). I intentionally choose to invoke revolution because I believe we need to dismantle the oppressive economic, political, and religious structures in our country and start anew. I believe it starts with overthrowing the colonization of our own minds -- discarding the pop up messages of "no you can't /this is the way it is" and starting to dream and work towards a world of limitless possibilities again. I started RFK Action Front to try to inject Bobby Kennedy's vision back into the political conversation in this country. Sometime I live up to that challenge, other times I write about cats and pop singers.

It's been striking to see that just within the last few weeks, many people have started to talk about Bobby Kennedy again. Mostly I think this renewed interest in Bobby Kennedy is driven by Barack Obama's candidacy. For the first time in 40 years people are feeling hopeful again. For the first time in 40 years a political leader is calling on all Americans to find our moral core as a nation and to act upon our highest values. I also think we are living in a unique historical moment. We are all waking up from our collective PTSD as a result of the trauma of 1968. I think it was only a matter of time before people began to demand genuine courage and moral leadership in our country again -- and with the decline of the Republican party and the rise of people-powered publishing on the internet, that deep national yearning has been made evident. Obama is no Bobby Kennedy -- he's still young, still learning, still finding his moral core. But in many ways his campaign has picked up the conversation started by Martin and Bobby. And he's injected aspiration politics back into our political discourse and for that we own him an enormous debt of gratitude (and our votes).

Here are some of the articles that have come out on Bobby Kennedy in recent days:

"The Last Good Campaign" in Vanity Fair. Bobby Kennedy was also on the cover this month. They also have 18 photos by Bill Eppridge that will break your heart into a 1000 pieces.

Christy Hardin Smith at Firedoglake links to a series of videos on RFK that are extraordinary.

Also, the Washington Post did a piece today on Charles Guggenheim who designed RFK's TV commercials during the 1968 campaign. The photos and videos they compile on their website are amazing.

I believe Bobby Kennedy lives as long as we hold him in our hearts and allow him to remind us of the angels of our better nature. Long may he live.
















Bobby Kennedy campaigns in Indianapolis during May of 1968, with various aides and friends, including (behind and left of Kennedy) former prizefighter Tony Zale and (right of Kennedy) N.F.L. stars Lamar Lundy, Rosey Grier, and Deacon Jones. Photograph by Bill Eppridge.

It's New Year's Day 1969, Go!

This past Thursday I attended a fascinating workshop at the Conference on World Affairs. The workshop was called, "1968 and the Death of Aspirational Politics" and included 3 panelists--Terry McNally, Sanho Tree, and Joe Wilson.

For a long time, I've felt that the United States is facing a crisis of ideation--we seem to lack the ability to imagine a world at peace, to come up with innovative solutions to the vexing problems we face. This workshop helped put this crisis of ideation in context. The panelist argued that the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy dramatically reshaped America and helped contribute to the small minded politics we see today. To their credit the panelists also proposed ways to return to an aspiration politics.

Inspired by the workshop, I want to propose an ideation exercise. Perhaps better questions will lead to better politics? Here goes:

It's New Year's day 1969. Both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. are alive. Bobby Kennedy has been elected President in a landslide. What happens next? What policies emerge? What does America look like after 8 years of a Bobby Kennedy administration? Then what does the world look like after 8 years of a Martin Luther King, Jr. administration?

Please post your ideas in the comments. The best idea will be featured in a future blog post.

Pelosi Blocks Bush's Boob Grab

High after giving the State of the Union, Bush somehow managed to fumble a handshake with Speaker Pelosi and almost caused an incident.

So why exactly was Bush trying to hug the Speaker of the House? Did he ever try to hug Speaker Hastert after the State of the Union in prior years?

Winner of the Huffington Post Contagious Festival, Jury Prize!!!

Robert F. Kennedy Video

I think this video is brilliant. You can see the director's myspace page here:
www.myspace.com/kingston_chick

What Would RFK Do? (About 9/11)

It seems to me that there is only one question any Democratic presidential hopeful needs to answer and it is: If Robert Kennedy had been President, what would he have done after the attacks of September 11? (You can also substitute Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, the Buddha, or Jesus Christ into this scenario if you prefer). It seems to me that if you can’t answer this question, you have no business running for office. Heck I’ll go a step further—it might be a good idea to answer this question before stepping into the voting booth.

So here’s my answer:

What Would Robert Kennedy Do (in response to 9/11)?

1. Bring charges against Osama Bin Laden (if he actually did it) and all co-conspirators in the International Criminal Court in the Hague. This was a crime against humanity and it should properly be tried in the International Criminal Court. Bringing charges in the Hague creates a dynamic of the entire world verses the conspirators. (Wesley Clark urged just such an action when he was an analyst at CNN—before he ran for President.)

2. Find out who did it, get them, and bring them to trial. This would require international diplomacy (if dude is hiding in Pakistan for example), first rate intelligence gathering and investigative work, and if necessary, targeted military action to capture the suspects (all of which the current administration is completely incapable of doing). Pursuing criminal investigation rather than engaging in an eye for an eye, sends the world the message that “we are a world of laws not of men.”

3. Say to the oil barons—“That’s it, we’ve had enough and we’re done with Middle East oil!” Double fuel economy standards immediately. Require all cars to be hybrid within 5 years and all cars to be fueled with renewable energy sources (hydrogen, electric, biodiesel) within 10 years. Remember in the days after September 11 when people would have done anything to prevent this from happening again? People would have gone for this plan on September 12 without any hesitation.

4. Then, invest $100 billion dollars a year (the current cost of the Iraq war) in renewable energy research. Essentially it would be setting up an equivalent of the National Institutes of Health but in this case it would be a National Institutes of Renewable Energy. It would fund pure research, applied research, and improved distribution networks. It would fund scientists and management consultants to go into Ford, GM, and Chrysler to help them adapt. It would fund scientists to work with cities and home builders to redesign how energy is generated, transported, and stored. It would fund scholarships to get high school and college students into the sciences to prepare the next generation of renewable energy scientists.

Following recommendations 3 and 4 would ignite a tremendous economic boom in the United States. Fuel costs would fall (benefiting everyone) and the United States would be poised as the world leader in renewable energy. The rest of the world would then have to purchase the technology from us which would create millions of American jobs.

5. Have a Middle East Summit at the White House. Sit down with the heads of every single country in the Middle East and ask, “Why’d this shit happen?” and listen to what they have to say. If they have legitimate gripes, great, we’ll fix them.

In any case we would explain that, “This shit is never gonna happen again. You’re gonna have democratic elections (internationally monitored). You’re gonna close the fundamentalist schools. You’re going to give equal rights to women, people of color and people who are homosexual. Israel and Palestine are going to stop their war immediately.

If you don’t do these things, the entire world is going to stop trading with you and you will slowly wither and die. Any nation that fails to follow these rules will be kicked out of the U.N., the W.T.O., the Olympics, your ambassadors will be sent home, your embassies closed, your bank accounts will be frozen, and no one from your country will ever be allowed into our country (or Europe).

But if you do everything that we ask, we’ll come in and help you build roads, bridges, ports, airports, and schools. We’ll trade with you. We’ll enable you to become first world countries and join in the international community.

It’s your choice.”

6. Make the case that the problem with terrorism is fundamentalism not Islam. The enemy of terrorism is pluralism, not the United States. And then crack down on fundamentalist groups in both the United States and abroad (including violent anti-abortion groups, the KKK, the Taliban, Islamic Jihad, etc…)

7. Reduce global warming (which will actually be covered by 3 and 4). Rising global temperatures cause crop failures in the Middle East which causes hunger, unemployment, and shame (which then makes young men ripe for recruitment as terrorists.)

Terrorism is not a country, it’s an idea—that one person can impose their will upon another through violence. We win the battle against terrorism when we show that we have better ideas.

The current Bush strategy of fighting an eye for an eye, resorting to torture and secret detentions, holding people indefinitely without trial, and using terrorism as a subtext to advance our oil interests in the region shows that he doesn’t have better ideas.

Following the What Would Robert Kennedy Do? plan would unite the world and demonstrate through our actions that we have better ideas than they do—ones that will convert poor people in the Middle East to our way of thinking and prevent this from ever happening again.

But the truth of the matter is—if Robert Kennedy had been President, the attacks of September 11 never would have happened in the first place.