16 March 1968, Washington D.C. USA
Elizabeth Warren: 'Robert Kennedy understood that America's national economy is not the same as the economic well being of its people', RFK legacy, 50th anniversary of campaign - 2018
15 March 2018, Washington DC, USA
I am here today to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's monumental campaign for President. Kennedy's brief, tragic run at the Presidency has had an enduring impact on so many generations of Americans. The reason, I think, is because Robert Kennedy had the courage to challenge a divided nation to face up to its failings. To challenge a divided people to acknowledge their own contributions to our nation's ills. To challenge us to step back from the stale, cheap politics of the moment. To challenge us to do better by each other.
History may not repeat, but it often rhymes. Conditions are different now, but a lot of the anxiety that swept through the country in 1968 echoes the anxiety of today -- especially the economic anxiety felt by millions of Americans who are working harder than ever but feel opportunity slipping away from themselves and their children.
Too often, our political and business leaders refuse to see this. Instead, they hide behind macroeconomic statistics, using them as a shield to dismiss the concerns of the American people as faulty, wrongheaded, or even nonexistent.
But Robert Kennedy understood that America's national economy is not the same as the economic well being of its people. In 1968, in a speech at the University of Kansas, he spoke eloquently about the differences between them. And here is what he said:
"Our Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country.
It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."
Consider three stats: corporate profits, the stock market and unemployment.
Today, corporate profits are up -- corporate profits that count gun sales from manufacturers whose weapons are used to massacre children in our schools and our streets. Corporate profits that count revenues from drug companies when they quadruple prices for the sick and the desperate. Corporate profits that count revenues of banks like Wells Fargo as they rip off millions of American consumers.
The stock market is up as giant companies pocket trillions in taxpayer money stolen from middle class families. The market is up as CEOs shut down plants and factories here in the United States and move them overseas. The market is up as business leaders flush with cash turn their backs on workers while they plow millions and even billions into stock buybacks to goose investors' returns and CEOs bonuses
Unemployment is down, but wages have barely budged in a generation. Unemployment is down, but for millions of people the exploding costs for housing, for healthcare, for childcare mean that it now takes two jobs to do what one job covered a generation ago. And unemployment is down, but the numbers fail to count the millions living in rural and urban American communities alike that have given up the search for a job.
Corporate profits, the stock market, unemployment -- these statistics tell us everything about the American economy. But they tell us very little about the lived experience of today's Americans. They do not speak to the citizen who fears police violence or the police officer who fears gang violence, or the immigrant who cannot speak out about sexual assault at the hands of her boss, or the toxic rhetoric flowing through our politics and seeking to turn neighbor against neighbor. They do not account for our devotion to our communities, to our churches, to our children. They tell us virtually nothing about our trials, or our challenges, or our hopes, or our principles.
Robert Kennedy understood this. He knew that we cannot simply run our economy for those at the top and assume that it will solve America's problems. In the intervening years since his speech, America ran that experiment anyway -- and watched it fail miserably.
It's time to try something different. It's time to challenge each of us to do better by each other -- to see the dignity in one another -- to put our values first. I believe we can make that Robert Kennedy's legacy, and I am proud to fight for it.
Robert Kennedy: 'What we need in the United States is not division', Death of Martin Luther King' - 1968
4 April 1968, Indanapolis, USA
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some -- some very sad news for all of you -- Could you lower those signs, please? -- I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.
We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with -- be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.
But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:
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.
So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King -- yeah, it's true -- but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past, but we -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
Thank you very much.
Here is a version without music