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DECEMBER 2005

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. ”#

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