Tags
Assassination, Essay:Will Kirkland, Essays, Movies, Movies:America, Movies:Documentary, Robert Kennedy
In some part as a celebration after the elections, Lexie and I drove down to Santa Barbara to visit cousins who have shared the trials and tribulations, the calls to action, the anger, the financial contributions and growing hope of the past many months. With them we went to two events that brought to me the chill and tingle of that strange cocktail of grief and pleasure that is part of modern American life.
On Saturday we saw a film about the day of Robert F. Kennedy’s death. That day, in Los Angeles, at the Ambassador Hotel, was a day of massing excitement. California was voting in the Presidential primary and election fever was high. It was the fifth of June, 1968. Robert Kennedy died early in the dark hours of the sixth: bullet wounds to the neck and skull, shot at close range in a jubilant crowd after claiming victory in the primary. 6 others were also wounded, lay in their own blood, in the panic and the fear. A bus-boy knelt and cradled the dying man’s head. It was a day many of us will never forget, never, in a year in which the unforgettable was fighting everyday for our memory: the Tet Offensive in Viet Nam and the shattering of US claims to omnipotence; the assasination of Martin Luther King, Jr on April 14; the rage and turmoil in city streets, shootings, rioting, arson fires that consumed acres of homes and businesses.
Did I really want to see a film about this? At a festival? With happy, film-literate people? Should we bring our handkerchiefs is what I wanted to know; could I get an aisle seat so I could bolt?
The name of the film is Bobby and is directed by Emilio Estevez. Anthony Hopkins, Demi Moore, William Macy, Harry Belafonte and many others all make significant appearances. Without going into detail I’ll tell you to make room to see it when it comes around, though, for all the fine acting, you will likely be left filmically irritated. But the final crush of people in the Ambassador ballroom, the gun shots and Kennedy’s incredible “The Mindless Menace of Violence” playing over the credits will leave you shaken, and I think, further resolved.
Sunday night we went to one of the multiple annual dinners for Human Rights Watch. More than the film, the dinner served up that mixture of gladdness and grief, anger and pride, that strange cocktail shaken and warmed to body temperature, that takes days to sober up from. Human Rights Watch is the Defense Department for all that lives just seconds beyond our physical lives; rights so elementary that infants seem to know them: dignity, fairness, justice, the right to speak, to not be imprisoned without reason, to not be beaten into pain beyond imagining. And we were in effect, as the old bumper sticker used to say, having a bake sale to support them. Every government, every organization, every person of good will would, in a reasonable world, begger themselves to ensure Human Rights Watch, and a few others like it, are well funded. In the actual world of course, good hearted people tax themselves at dinners to provide a bare minimum of support.
Every year three people are honored. Declared to be Defenders they are brought to the dinners to speak (little) of themselves and (much) of their work. This year, Veronica Cruz from Mexico, Mandira Sharma from Nepal, and Arnold Tsunga from Zimbabwe were with us. No one was eating when their words were heard, the conditions they are trying to change are absorbed, the dangers they are in are understood. When Veronica Cruz spoke about her work with poor women who have been raped, and told us that under Mexican law incestual intercourse cannot be rape a gasp went through the audience. They each told us how important it was they they see us, and know that Human Rights Watch is with them as they confront the dangers of their work. How important for us to see them and to watch our own daily fears and worries spin back down to resonable size. How important for us to know that the little we do is enormously important to others, and to resolve to do more in the days that we have.
Yes, I too am reveling in reading and hearing the words “The majority party, the DEMOCRATS!” as much as I savor reading and hearing “The minority party, the REPUBLICANS.” God, what a long, nasty fight it has been and now our moment has finally arrived. Oh, how we deserve this! I pray it will bring about a sea change.
I am hesitant about seeing the film. I was at The Ambassador all those years ago with my husband and friends who had worked for RFK. Our friend, Joel Siegel, was a speechwriter for him and my (ex)husband, a photographer, was on the stage next to RFK and Rosie Grier. (Just this year, via e-mail, he told me he never got his film back from the FBI.) I will never forget the exuberance and hope that filled that room as Bobby left the stage. The camera lights had been turned off and I was shuffling through the crowd toward the exit to look for my husband. Suddenly I heard what sounded like firecrackers. Then a tsunami of panic and pain hit me and the people around me and then spread behind us in fan-shaped waves to the back of the room and out into the foyer. People were screaming that he had been shot. I recall so vividly watching the wave as it engulfed smiling, laughing people turning the smiles and laughter to screams and tears. People in the front of the room were crying and shouting while people in the back of the room were still innocently smiling and laughing. The present, the past and the future in the same moment, in the same room. It was amazing. I jumped up on a table to look into the kitchen. I was worried about my husband who I had last seen right behind Bobby as he walked into the kitchen. I could see a crowd of people standing and kneeling around something on the floor. I kept hearing howls of “He’s been shot, God-damn it, he’s been shot. Not again, God-dam it. He’s been shot.” The helpless anger, rage and anguish in those voices I will never forget, nor have ever heard again.
After the shots I found myself in a stupor in the foyer. Men were getting into fist fights over whether he was dead or not and were shoving each other into the fountains. Women were screaming and crying. I was holding some strange man as we sobbed together. Suddenly I heard loud shouts of “He’s got a gun, watch out, get down, he’s got a gun.” I was shoved to the floor. I heard lamps breaking, more screaming as the lights were going out. A sofa was overturned onto the man and myself. I managed to raise my head off the floor long enough to see Sirhan Sirhan being rushed through the crowd surrounded by police with long guns pointed outward like a moving human mace. I don’t recall how I found my husband or friends that night. I must have given my name and phone number to the FBI because they called me days later. I don’t know what I said. I wanted to say something helpful, something that would catch who had really done this because I just couldn’t believe, nor do I today, that 3 great men, all with similar dreams, were all gunned down in such a short time. I think that is when this new evil began.
Back at home with our baby son, mesmerized with horror, we watched over and over, as a 22-year-old mini-skirted me kept jumping onto the table. We heard over and over Walter Cronkite telling the audience to watch the young women jump onto the table and throw her hands over her face in horror and grief and then a hand reaches up to my back and I disappear into the crowd. My mother was on the phone when we got home(the FBI kept us there until early morning) as she had recognized me from the news and thought I had fainted and been hurt.
I remember waking in the morning and being devastated that he had died. I simply couldn’t comprehend that such a grand man could have been brought down even though we had just lived through the eerily similar murder of MLK and before that JFK. How could it have happened yet again I screamed. I grabbed my baby and ran to the elderly neighbor’s house and collapsed in tears. I cried for days. I gave up on politics for a long time after that. It was only this current poisonous administration that awakened that old passion in me. I wonder if we will ever return to something even close to what we had back then.I was watching the PBS special about RFK this year and burst into uncontrollable sobbing watching that scene again. It was grief not only for my lost youth but for a time when I had hope, when I never imagined anything like the administration we have(HAD!) today. The spectacular chasm between a man like RFK and bush was so overwhelming that it racked me with pain so deep, so profound and unexpected that I paced the floor and wept all night. Oh, God, what we lost that night!
I wonder who they interviewed for the crowd’s reaction to that terrible night at the Ambassador Hotel. It would interesting for me to know.
Thank you for your blog and for your dedication. Keep celebrating!!
Sharon Salisbury