Video & Multimedia
Related: About this forumRemembering our unimaginable loss, 47 years ago today. Bobby.
&feature=fvwrelThis really cost our nation and the world. Another one of those memories that I recall exactly when and where I was. Just damn.
49jim
(560 posts)home after my first year. I remember waking up and thought it was a dream.....thought it was JFK.
For Freddie
(79 posts)We had just come through the MLK loss and the riots. We lived in the "ghetto" of Poughkeepsie New York. We were community organizers.
Poughkeepsie had a beautiful and well established black community.
I had my infant daughter who I was nursing. As soon as I heard Bobby was gone I went down to the campaign office at Market and Main St.
I sat there and nursed my baby and talked to my friend who ran the office at that time. It was also the summer we worked with Pete and Toshi Seeger on the first concert for the Hudson River.
We got an invitation to Bobby's funeral at St. Patrick's as representatives for the Model Cities project. As we were waiting in the heat I passed out holding my baby. I woke up on a gurney in the lobby of an air conditioned building with many others who had crashed in the heat and humidity. We never got to go into the funeral. But we did feel great unity and comfort with the huge group of people there in the streets of NYC. I will always remember this.
BeyondGeography
(39,382 posts)In addition to everything else, I remember the weather in the NYC area that week. Coming up on 50 years (!).
Thanks. Glad you have joined us here.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)marym625
(17,997 posts)potone
(1,701 posts)I will never forget the day he died. Had he lived, we might have been spared the presidency of Richard Nixon. What is saddest to me is that the compassion he showed for the poor has disappeared from our political discourse. The Republicans express contempt and even hatred for the poor, and the Democrats for far too long have only talked about the middle class; nobody talks about the problems of the working class and the poor.
Faygo Kid
(21,478 posts)He would have crushed Nixon, no matter how many dirty tricks Nixon the candidate would have employed. And we would have been out of Vietnam within a year, and much more.
RufusTFirefly
(8,812 posts)I'm struck by the selfish, vindictive, and overall mean-spirited cancer that has spread through much of society since Bobby was killed. It is even in evidence here.
potone
(1,701 posts)This mean-spiritedness, I think, began with the election of Reagan, and it has been downhill from there.
LibDemAlways
(15,139 posts)The students were being their typical obnoxious selves that day when it was announced that RFK had died, and one of the teachers, Mr. Armstrong, was very upset. He called out the class for their joking around and said something to the effect of "A good man is dead. Show some restraint and respect."
1968. What a horrible year that was.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)faith I had in people that day. Now I know that is exactly what they wanted - for us to give up.
Boomerproud
(7,968 posts)Hugs to Ethel and the children (and now grandchildren)-and as the OP gently said...the world.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Where would he stand on the TPP? On the candidates for 2016?
mahannah
(893 posts)colsohlibgal
(5,275 posts)Oh yeah, just lone nuts, nothing to see here, they just all happened to be liberal icons.
Now Reagan did get shot by a psycho but he didn't die. The other three - the only one that even lingered for a few hours was Bobby.
mahannah
(893 posts)cascadiance
(19,537 posts)yuiyoshida
(41,864 posts)never knew that, the things you learn on DU!
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)Much good DNA in that one We lost so much also, his brother, MLK and so many civil rights leaders.
WillyT
(72,631 posts)americannightmare
(322 posts)RFK was no longer a politician. Watch some of the speeches and you get a sense that he was just trying to understand the human condition and address it from a more personal perspective. Read "The Last Campaign" to really get a feel for how this was playing out in those final months...
This short clip is an example - he's at times a little incoherent, and even seems lost, but it's so heartfelt...
Faygo Kid
(21,478 posts)I think he may have had a premonition in how his message transformed after MLK's death, who definitely had a premonition. What a better nation and world we would be if both had lived, but it was not to be.
Please post this.
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)niyad
(113,581 posts)Va Lefty
(6,252 posts)ailsagirl
(22,899 posts)Still hurts
randys1
(16,286 posts)wendylaroux
(2,925 posts)I thought there was a death in the family.My Mom told me the reason.
And then when the Dion? song came out, the tears started again,mine too.
LiberalElite
(14,691 posts)deutsey
(20,166 posts)when the chattering classes pontificate on how unlikely it was that RFK would win the '68 election is that he appealed to urban and rural people, black, white, Hispanic, men, women, poor, middle class, affluent, college educated and manual laborers.