Remembering Robert Francis Kennedy:
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
Kerry Kennedy: Honoring
Her Father’s Tradition
By
Joan Baum, Ph.D.
It’s
appropriate that many who were politically active in the sixties
associate “speak truth to power” with demonstrations
to end the Vietnam War, but the now famous phrase (which actually
surfaced in 1955 as part of a strategy statement by the American
Friends Service Committee) also resonates as a rallying cry
for social justice and civil and human rights in this country
and abroad, no more so than as articulated by Robert F. Kennedy
(1925-1968), whose impassioned dedication to redress the lot
of the poor and the abused in this country and abroad was recently
honored in Washington at a special memorial on the occasion
of his 80th birthday. Much of his legacy, which
has become the heartfelt life work of his daughter, Kerry Kennedy,
can be seen in the extraordinary number of important action
committees she heads, to continue his drive for “a more
just world, where the powerless cannot be abused by the powerful.” Her
five-star, best-selling book, Speak Truth to Power: Human
Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World, since
its original publication in 2000, has become a play, a video,
a PBS documentary, a traveling photographic exhibit, and an
educational packet that can now be found in over 10,000 American
high schools and colleges and, by way of the Internet, around
the globe.
The
classroom, of course, can effectively inculcate and hone
a sense of fair play. Kids, Kerry Kennedy shrewdly observes,
know instinctively about justice. She recalls how, when she
was a small child, learning to tie her shoes, she would try
to be fair: if she began by putting on her left shoe, she
would then tie the laces of the right one first. “Listen to five-year olds,” she
says, “they talk constantly about what’s fair or
not fair.” Though she was only eight when Robert Kennedy
was assassinated, she has strong memories of his zest for life,
outdoor play, sense of humor. He was, she recalls “a
tremendously loving father and enormously present” in
her life. And obviously a strong influence at least by virtue
of the fact that there was little separation for him between
work and home. The constant flow of people to their house meant
constant talk at the dinner table. RFK was Attorney General
at the time and “equality was the seminal issue of the
day.”
Much
as the recent Washington birthday memorial made it clear,
in speech after speech about RFK’s heritage, Kerry
Kennedy also makes it apparent how much she has charted her
own course in fighting for social justice, tracing her abiding
interest in Amnesty International, for example, to an internship
she had one college summer, choosing the organization over
other sites because it responded to her stated desire to
be given a significant project and not push paper. And did
she get such a task: documenting abuses against refugees
from El Salvador committed by U.S. immigration officials,
a horrifying shocker that clearly marked out her future commitments.
After graduating from Brown, she went to Boston Law School,
impressed by a group of volunteer lawyers she had met who
were working with the indigent. Her membership on the board
of the nonprofit Robert F. Memorial and her founding of the
RFK Center for Human Rights are just two of many, many advocacy
organizations she actively works for and supports that seek
to speak truth to power. Her awards would take another article.
Though her
three children get first priority, Kerry Kennedy manages to
keep up with an amazing number of education initiatives, including
making presentations about Speak Truth to Power. She
has also become an ardent advocate of NetAid, an action-oriented
organization for the high school students (www.netaid.org),
but she suggests that teachers and parents can also do a lot
on their own. “Have
kids read a newspaper every day and count up stories on the
front page that have to do with human rights issues.” Be
informed. She notes that one of her daughters not too long
ago came home with a project to do a report on candy. Candy?
Did her daughter know that 43 percent of chocolate is made
by child labor in West Africa? Well, she knows now. Yes, much
as been accomplished in the last 25 years in providing better
conditions, especially for women, children, and the poor, but
much remains to be done. As RFK said—and Kerry Kennedy
needs no prompt to recall the words—“one person
can make a difference and each of us has an obligation to try. ”#
