Ahhhh.... What if. In this moment I feel your nostalgia - I too have fond memories and deep regrets that will go forever unrequited. But I also feel you have found a way to explain a great divide between people in this country, between those whose nostalgia defines their world view and those whose aspirations exceed those of the past. The nostalgic contingent identifies those bygone times, those potentials and those visions with something lost, or something taken away. They want to go back. They blame the diverse and diversifying population of our country for their feelings of being submerged, forgotten, disempowered. By contrast, the aspirational contingent also remembers, honors and wants to emulate the best of the past. But they also understand that not everything was so rosy back then as our best memories tell us. No. There was much in Robert Kennedy's time that motivated him, and others, to go into public service with a burning passion to fulfill the promise that was, and is, the American Dream. He, and others, wanted to expand the Democratic tent to include all Americans, to enable the fulfillment of more and more dreams, and to perfect a flawed, but perfectible, Nation. I still mourn for Bobby Kennedy, and others, both on the level of humanity for the lives they lost but also on the level of being a citizen who was robbed of what might have been. Then I shake my head in the realization that if we want to see that better version of America, we have to get back to work.
Jun 3, 2022·edited Jun 3, 2022Liked by Robert Reich
Hi Dr. Reich. I too remember the moment of Bob Kennedy's death. I stayed up late to catch the election returns from the primary. This was the first election campaign I worked as I had just become a US Citizen. I still recall the joy of his victory and despair of his death. But I want to mention another chance encounter. I met you once. I was volunteering at the Democratic Convention in Sacramento. You were a guest speaker but I had missed your talk as I was assigned to another area. I was on an elevator when you and 2 others entered. I was so startled I asked "You're Robert Reich aren't you" and when you responded positively I blurted out "I have all your books, I've read them even." To which you responded, "So you're the one" The laughter of all on the elevator broke the tension of my inane comment and I have always been grateful to you for easing my embarrassment. I'm not usually so inept. So thank you.
This is a moving and, indeed, inspiring account. Thank you! But, no, thinking about the "might-have-beens" are not a waste of time. Those thoughts might help inspire us to constructive "okay, what can we do now to make a better world" thoughts -- and it is those that we need.
You get to nourish that memory. It’s built into your vision of who Bobby Kennedy was and your vision of who you are—and your vision of who we could be as a people. In this time of revolting corruption in politics, thanks for the memory.
The truth is, we would have been better off with Robert Kennedy for president. But the same energy from the same forces threaten our dreams today. We must call out every lie and point to every crime that harms the promise of our future. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Which side are you on? Can't pretend to be neutral. It's life or death.
Jun 3, 2022·edited Jun 4, 2022Liked by Robert Reich
This is a "Do you remember what were you doing when . . ."-type discussion. At that time, I was functionally politically illiterate, or unconscious, if you prefer, and a "recovering juvenile delinquent." I was about to finish my public education, such as it was. (I was a rotten student - at >that< time.) I thought it peculiar that a a Palestinian would shoot Bobby Kennedy - why, I wondered, but let it pass. It elicited the memory of his brother, which I could never figure out, either. I only remembered the announcement came about JFK being shot as I was sitting on my bed, in my room at home, hooking school feigning illness. It's all part of a blur of labor strikes, civil rights marches, MLK and >his< assassination, George Wallace, and the Houston Bell Tower Sniper, and - of course - Vietnam statistics announced on the daily news, all portending a dark future before me. For me, Dr Reich's experience - as well many others here - might as well have happened on Pluto.
In that time frame, I was attending a high school undergoing the transition from an academically modestly reputable suburban high school serving mostly children of working class WWII veterans from the Amvets Village area, with a focus on academics and arts and the promise of a college education, to an inner-city school serving the Black community and shifting its focus to sports and industrial arts with the promise of learning a job. That transition came about as a result of several lawsuits challenging the practice of "red-lining." (I didn't know squat from red-lining at the time.) That meant Black folks were now "allowed" to move into the community my high-school served. At the time I was there, my high-school had a 50/50 "salt & pepper" demographic.
I told you that to tell you this. In the weeks following graduation I found myself delivering pizzas and passing myself off as over 21 so I could play jazz in the many nightclubs of the day. At the time, I was playing at the "El Diablo," a cheesy little nightclub on the bad side of a fashionable area of town. It looked like the kind of place whose only reason to exist was to appear like a legitimate source of someone's income - it was usually nearly empty, although a few regular ladies frequented, who would frequently "meet someone new" and leave early - then come back a couple of hours later. It was considered "bad form" to notice. It was an "upmarket" version of the kind of place you'd see in an old "Peter Gunn" episode. I would play many clubs like that in my life as a "jazz" musician. (Of course, you could summarily get canned from a gig if you inadvertently called the music you were playing "jazz" - particularly if it was to a customer!)
However, my pizza delivery job was instructive, as well. My delivery turf was the area local to my high-school, where the demographic was changing drastically. I had no issue with it, since I was frequently delivering pizza to people I knew from school. Retrospectively, it's entirely possible I might have delivered pizza to Buster Douglas' folks when he was a kid. (He later graduated from my high-school!) What was slightly disconcerting is that I replaced an unfortunate fellow who had been shot to death as he approached a delivery address - just the week before I was hired! And here's the story. I eventually had to deliver to the address where my predecessor lost his life. My boss admonished me to be >very< careful! I was ready for just about anything - but what actually happened.
Standing waiting for me at the delivery address was a large, young, Black man. (I wondered if my number was up!) Turns out, his mother had posted him to guard me as I delivered their pizza. (If we were school-mates, I didn't know him. My senior graduating class alone was of a size equivalent to the total population the building was designed to accommodate in the first place! I by no means knew everybody.) Not only did he greet me politely, he conducted me up the steps of the two-story, twin-single stick house into the living room, where I met his mother. For several minutes, we spoke politely as she expressed her concern for my well-being - and it moved me. But the thing that sticks most clearly in my memory, on the wall in the kind of prominent place where one usually sees hung religious totems and pictures of Jesus, there were no pictures of Jesus or religious totems. There were only 3 simply displayed portraits: one of JFK to the left, flanking one of MLK in the middle, and one of Bobby Kennedy flanking to the right. To me, it was a true revelation. That's what I recall from that time.
Wow… that was really touching and inspiring and also sad. (Though your nose letter cracked me up…) - I have thought about and wondered the same thing about both Kennedy’s. It kinda feels like when we lost them, we started losing compassion in our government. There is no more mentality of “what we can do for our country…” - I hope we can get that back someday. Thank you for everything you do. You are one of my (few) political idols who I learn so much from.
Mr. Gilbert a high school teacher in Snider New York said way back when, it takes so very much to develop a human with a brain for copassion and understanding and it all can be blowen away by a jerk and a three cent bullet.
wow. yes, indeed. although i do not have a crystal ball, it seems your proposition that, had bobby kennedy been elected president instead of nixon, the nation might be better off today. although bobby kennedy was not perfect (not in the slightest! based on my reading & documentary watching), he certainly appeared to be the progressive/social idealist of the kennedy clan, and his ideals would have served this country well.
really wonderful that you were lucky enough to meet bobby kennedy and that you found inspiration from working with him -- even in a menial task!
I am old enough to have felt the wrenching losses of John and Robert Kennedy. Being a white teenager growing up in a white neighborhood, I must admit I didn’t feel the assassination of MLK with the same pain as I did for the Kennedys, and the killing of Malcolm X hardly registered at all with me. Now I know that all of them represent terrible losses for the United States, in so many ways. They spoke to our failings, and were pointing us in a more moral direction.
Well Robert, you and I are close in age II should my RFK story. That same year Bobby came to Detroit, and went to the long hair enclave of Wayne State University (I believe Cass Avenue) where he stopped at the apartment of a young man running for President called President Dave and asked him about his position on several issues. It put me away. Of course not to long after came the end. To this day Robert I wish we had all keep it together for Hubert Humphrey. But, so many stayed home. As I was only 18 I couldn't vote but just imagine.
A Lakota man once told me how to ensure that a person's good deeds are remembered: tell people who did not know the person of his or her good deeds and emulate them. Tell the children stories about the good person and say "Be like him."
I grew up in D.C., in a political family. RFK was regularly in the news (frequently in a bad light), and when President John F. Kennedy named him Attorney General, our social circle was elated and elevated. But Bobby had inherited not only his family's unethical legacy and his own mistakes, he also inherited FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's undying enmity.
As Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy was the FBI director's boss. But Hoover believed he was the King of the United States government. And Hoover was deeply racist. He loathed black people and did everything in his considerable power to block, punish, and torment the civil rights movement and its supporters.
In June 1963, Medgar Evers was murdered in Mississippi; the civil rights movement was both growing and encountering murders, mobs, and police-led violence, and the FBI agents sent to the South - Alabama and Mississippi in particular - were photographed standing by, just standing there, watching. Student protestors picketed the Justice Department building, demanding that the Attorney General investigate the FBI's behavior and send out the National Guard, to stop the murders and mobs and punish the perpetrators. I was one of those protestors.
The June sidewalk in front of the Justice Department was so hot it glittered. The air was stinking hot. We spent 2 hours going around in a circle in front of that marble building. At 6 p.m. a small, thin man in a rumpled white shirt came out on the steps. It was the Attorney General of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy.
He had no coat or tie. His hair and face and shirt needed washing. He looked to have been up and working for 12 hours. He addressed the crowd, with only a small microphone. He told us he was working on it, learning what had happened, conferring with J. Edgar Hoover. He told us he would, as Attorney General, assure that the laws of the United States were rigorously adhered to by the FBI, and that he was looking at all possible means. And then he took questions.
He listened, he answered, he took a question from a drunk black guy leaning on a 19th century D.C. lamppost, and he listened hard to hear us, because we had no microphones, and he wanted to hear us. He said so, and he said he worked for the people of the United States.
And I believed him.
On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles. He died on June 6, 1968.
Thank you for sharing this memory of Bobby Kennedy - I think his death did change America's path for the worst. Too few real leaders who truly inspire these days. I just wanted to throw up when I heard Biden say "if we can't ban assault rifles...." "If"??? Talk about having worse than low expectations. I'm watching the Queen's Jubilee celebration feeling sad I am not a British subject!!
I was a sophomore in College when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, and now, at 75, I still feel, and have always felt, that had he been elected president, his ability to inspire love and values would have led us in a totally different direction than the one we are now on. See, guns change everything. Justice Earl Warren was right when he said: "If I were writing the Constitution today, there would be no Second Amendment." He also said that the right's view of the second amendment can only be called "FRAUD" !!!!!
Mitch McConnell has stated, “The future will take care of itself”.
In my opinion, only an ignorant slob would make such a statement. I believe what we do today not only influences our forever tomorrow’s, but directly sets the course. Those that have vision work today to achieve what is needed for tomorrow.
Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. So, let us view our National situation and lay out a plan to save tomorrow.
Ahhhh.... What if. In this moment I feel your nostalgia - I too have fond memories and deep regrets that will go forever unrequited. But I also feel you have found a way to explain a great divide between people in this country, between those whose nostalgia defines their world view and those whose aspirations exceed those of the past. The nostalgic contingent identifies those bygone times, those potentials and those visions with something lost, or something taken away. They want to go back. They blame the diverse and diversifying population of our country for their feelings of being submerged, forgotten, disempowered. By contrast, the aspirational contingent also remembers, honors and wants to emulate the best of the past. But they also understand that not everything was so rosy back then as our best memories tell us. No. There was much in Robert Kennedy's time that motivated him, and others, to go into public service with a burning passion to fulfill the promise that was, and is, the American Dream. He, and others, wanted to expand the Democratic tent to include all Americans, to enable the fulfillment of more and more dreams, and to perfect a flawed, but perfectible, Nation. I still mourn for Bobby Kennedy, and others, both on the level of humanity for the lives they lost but also on the level of being a citizen who was robbed of what might have been. Then I shake my head in the realization that if we want to see that better version of America, we have to get back to work.
Hi Dr. Reich. I too remember the moment of Bob Kennedy's death. I stayed up late to catch the election returns from the primary. This was the first election campaign I worked as I had just become a US Citizen. I still recall the joy of his victory and despair of his death. But I want to mention another chance encounter. I met you once. I was volunteering at the Democratic Convention in Sacramento. You were a guest speaker but I had missed your talk as I was assigned to another area. I was on an elevator when you and 2 others entered. I was so startled I asked "You're Robert Reich aren't you" and when you responded positively I blurted out "I have all your books, I've read them even." To which you responded, "So you're the one" The laughter of all on the elevator broke the tension of my inane comment and I have always been grateful to you for easing my embarrassment. I'm not usually so inept. So thank you.
This is a moving and, indeed, inspiring account. Thank you! But, no, thinking about the "might-have-beens" are not a waste of time. Those thoughts might help inspire us to constructive "okay, what can we do now to make a better world" thoughts -- and it is those that we need.
You get to nourish that memory. It’s built into your vision of who Bobby Kennedy was and your vision of who you are—and your vision of who we could be as a people. In this time of revolting corruption in politics, thanks for the memory.
The truth is, we would have been better off with Robert Kennedy for president. But the same energy from the same forces threaten our dreams today. We must call out every lie and point to every crime that harms the promise of our future. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Which side are you on? Can't pretend to be neutral. It's life or death.
This is a "Do you remember what were you doing when . . ."-type discussion. At that time, I was functionally politically illiterate, or unconscious, if you prefer, and a "recovering juvenile delinquent." I was about to finish my public education, such as it was. (I was a rotten student - at >that< time.) I thought it peculiar that a a Palestinian would shoot Bobby Kennedy - why, I wondered, but let it pass. It elicited the memory of his brother, which I could never figure out, either. I only remembered the announcement came about JFK being shot as I was sitting on my bed, in my room at home, hooking school feigning illness. It's all part of a blur of labor strikes, civil rights marches, MLK and >his< assassination, George Wallace, and the Houston Bell Tower Sniper, and - of course - Vietnam statistics announced on the daily news, all portending a dark future before me. For me, Dr Reich's experience - as well many others here - might as well have happened on Pluto.
In that time frame, I was attending a high school undergoing the transition from an academically modestly reputable suburban high school serving mostly children of working class WWII veterans from the Amvets Village area, with a focus on academics and arts and the promise of a college education, to an inner-city school serving the Black community and shifting its focus to sports and industrial arts with the promise of learning a job. That transition came about as a result of several lawsuits challenging the practice of "red-lining." (I didn't know squat from red-lining at the time.) That meant Black folks were now "allowed" to move into the community my high-school served. At the time I was there, my high-school had a 50/50 "salt & pepper" demographic.
I told you that to tell you this. In the weeks following graduation I found myself delivering pizzas and passing myself off as over 21 so I could play jazz in the many nightclubs of the day. At the time, I was playing at the "El Diablo," a cheesy little nightclub on the bad side of a fashionable area of town. It looked like the kind of place whose only reason to exist was to appear like a legitimate source of someone's income - it was usually nearly empty, although a few regular ladies frequented, who would frequently "meet someone new" and leave early - then come back a couple of hours later. It was considered "bad form" to notice. It was an "upmarket" version of the kind of place you'd see in an old "Peter Gunn" episode. I would play many clubs like that in my life as a "jazz" musician. (Of course, you could summarily get canned from a gig if you inadvertently called the music you were playing "jazz" - particularly if it was to a customer!)
However, my pizza delivery job was instructive, as well. My delivery turf was the area local to my high-school, where the demographic was changing drastically. I had no issue with it, since I was frequently delivering pizza to people I knew from school. Retrospectively, it's entirely possible I might have delivered pizza to Buster Douglas' folks when he was a kid. (He later graduated from my high-school!) What was slightly disconcerting is that I replaced an unfortunate fellow who had been shot to death as he approached a delivery address - just the week before I was hired! And here's the story. I eventually had to deliver to the address where my predecessor lost his life. My boss admonished me to be >very< careful! I was ready for just about anything - but what actually happened.
Standing waiting for me at the delivery address was a large, young, Black man. (I wondered if my number was up!) Turns out, his mother had posted him to guard me as I delivered their pizza. (If we were school-mates, I didn't know him. My senior graduating class alone was of a size equivalent to the total population the building was designed to accommodate in the first place! I by no means knew everybody.) Not only did he greet me politely, he conducted me up the steps of the two-story, twin-single stick house into the living room, where I met his mother. For several minutes, we spoke politely as she expressed her concern for my well-being - and it moved me. But the thing that sticks most clearly in my memory, on the wall in the kind of prominent place where one usually sees hung religious totems and pictures of Jesus, there were no pictures of Jesus or religious totems. There were only 3 simply displayed portraits: one of JFK to the left, flanking one of MLK in the middle, and one of Bobby Kennedy flanking to the right. To me, it was a true revelation. That's what I recall from that time.
Wow… that was really touching and inspiring and also sad. (Though your nose letter cracked me up…) - I have thought about and wondered the same thing about both Kennedy’s. It kinda feels like when we lost them, we started losing compassion in our government. There is no more mentality of “what we can do for our country…” - I hope we can get that back someday. Thank you for everything you do. You are one of my (few) political idols who I learn so much from.
Mr. Gilbert a high school teacher in Snider New York said way back when, it takes so very much to develop a human with a brain for copassion and understanding and it all can be blowen away by a jerk and a three cent bullet.
wow. yes, indeed. although i do not have a crystal ball, it seems your proposition that, had bobby kennedy been elected president instead of nixon, the nation might be better off today. although bobby kennedy was not perfect (not in the slightest! based on my reading & documentary watching), he certainly appeared to be the progressive/social idealist of the kennedy clan, and his ideals would have served this country well.
really wonderful that you were lucky enough to meet bobby kennedy and that you found inspiration from working with him -- even in a menial task!
I am old enough to have felt the wrenching losses of John and Robert Kennedy. Being a white teenager growing up in a white neighborhood, I must admit I didn’t feel the assassination of MLK with the same pain as I did for the Kennedys, and the killing of Malcolm X hardly registered at all with me. Now I know that all of them represent terrible losses for the United States, in so many ways. They spoke to our failings, and were pointing us in a more moral direction.
Well Robert, you and I are close in age II should my RFK story. That same year Bobby came to Detroit, and went to the long hair enclave of Wayne State University (I believe Cass Avenue) where he stopped at the apartment of a young man running for President called President Dave and asked him about his position on several issues. It put me away. Of course not to long after came the end. To this day Robert I wish we had all keep it together for Hubert Humphrey. But, so many stayed home. As I was only 18 I couldn't vote but just imagine.
A Lakota man once told me how to ensure that a person's good deeds are remembered: tell people who did not know the person of his or her good deeds and emulate them. Tell the children stories about the good person and say "Be like him."
I grew up in D.C., in a political family. RFK was regularly in the news (frequently in a bad light), and when President John F. Kennedy named him Attorney General, our social circle was elated and elevated. But Bobby had inherited not only his family's unethical legacy and his own mistakes, he also inherited FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's undying enmity.
As Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy was the FBI director's boss. But Hoover believed he was the King of the United States government. And Hoover was deeply racist. He loathed black people and did everything in his considerable power to block, punish, and torment the civil rights movement and its supporters.
In June 1963, Medgar Evers was murdered in Mississippi; the civil rights movement was both growing and encountering murders, mobs, and police-led violence, and the FBI agents sent to the South - Alabama and Mississippi in particular - were photographed standing by, just standing there, watching. Student protestors picketed the Justice Department building, demanding that the Attorney General investigate the FBI's behavior and send out the National Guard, to stop the murders and mobs and punish the perpetrators. I was one of those protestors.
The June sidewalk in front of the Justice Department was so hot it glittered. The air was stinking hot. We spent 2 hours going around in a circle in front of that marble building. At 6 p.m. a small, thin man in a rumpled white shirt came out on the steps. It was the Attorney General of the United States, Robert F. Kennedy.
He had no coat or tie. His hair and face and shirt needed washing. He looked to have been up and working for 12 hours. He addressed the crowd, with only a small microphone. He told us he was working on it, learning what had happened, conferring with J. Edgar Hoover. He told us he would, as Attorney General, assure that the laws of the United States were rigorously adhered to by the FBI, and that he was looking at all possible means. And then he took questions.
He listened, he answered, he took a question from a drunk black guy leaning on a 19th century D.C. lamppost, and he listened hard to hear us, because we had no microphones, and he wanted to hear us. He said so, and he said he worked for the people of the United States.
And I believed him.
On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles. He died on June 6, 1968.
Oh, wouldn't it be great to turn Bobby or Ted Kennedy loose on some these R's today.
Thank you for sharing this memory of Bobby Kennedy - I think his death did change America's path for the worst. Too few real leaders who truly inspire these days. I just wanted to throw up when I heard Biden say "if we can't ban assault rifles...." "If"??? Talk about having worse than low expectations. I'm watching the Queen's Jubilee celebration feeling sad I am not a British subject!!
I was a sophomore in College when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, and now, at 75, I still feel, and have always felt, that had he been elected president, his ability to inspire love and values would have led us in a totally different direction than the one we are now on. See, guns change everything. Justice Earl Warren was right when he said: "If I were writing the Constitution today, there would be no Second Amendment." He also said that the right's view of the second amendment can only be called "FRAUD" !!!!!
Mitch McConnell has stated, “The future will take care of itself”.
In my opinion, only an ignorant slob would make such a statement. I believe what we do today not only influences our forever tomorrow’s, but directly sets the course. Those that have vision work today to achieve what is needed for tomorrow.
Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. So, let us view our National situation and lay out a plan to save tomorrow.
If not us, then whom?
If not now, then when?