"Slowly, Robert F. Kennedy began to emerge from his despair, a deep brooding melancholy that even his wife was unable to pierce. In January of 1964 President Johnson asked him to talk to Indonesian President Sukarno. Bobby met Sukarno in Japan. He also visited Waseda University in Tokyo. The last time he had visited the school, in 1962, he had been met by screaming, hostile crowds. This time he was met by screaming, friendly students. He told them: ‘If President Kennedy’s ;ife and death are to mean anything, we young people must work harder for a better life for all the world’s people.’
"Afterwards, Japanese Professor Gunji Hosono tried to analyze the change in Bobby Kennedy: ‘Two years ago he looked boyish and full of go. Today he looks older, far more mature and full of signs of deepening wisdom.’
"By late spring his depression was lifting. He increased his participation in public affairs. He went all over the country, speaking of civil rights, of war, of peace. And everywhere he went, we was mobbed by the people. He visited West Germany and told a huge, friendly crowd, ‘The hope President Kennedy kindled is not dead but alive ….. The torch still burns.’
"And then a flame began to burn inside of Robert Kennedy. He began to think about himself in these terms: as the surviving symbol of an unfulfilled promise. Wrote Penn Kimball in his book ‘Bobby Kennedy and the New Politics’: ‘He has become, in his own right, the symbol of the restoration, not only of the Kennedy name in the highest places of power but of a Kennedy approach to the responsibilities of power.’
"Bobby Kennedy was free once again, liberated from despair. And he looked to the future."
--Bobby; 1968 Campaign Magazine; Macfadden-Bartelli Co.; page 69.
Every so often, I like to take some time and look through some of the things I have from Robert F. Kennedy's 1964 campaign for the senate, and the 1968 campaign for the presidency. There are times when something on DU reminds me that the hope that he and his brother kindled is not dead, but alive. That torch still burns, though we might not always recognize it. It burns when DUers write LTTE, call the offices of the congressional representatives, and participate in meetings and marches in the towns and cities across the country.
Today, I had the pleasure of witnessing that spark when DUer Shadowknows69 called C-SPAN's Washington Journal, and spoke his mind. I was mighty proud of him, and mighty happy that I have the opportunity to be on the same team as him. It reminded me of Elizabeth de la Vega saying that we are all ordinary citizens who become extraordinary citizens when we exercise the democratic muscles defined in that Bill of Rights.
"Come, my friend, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world." -- Alfred Lord Tennyson