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Understanding 9/11tv RFK Assassination 50th Anniversary CSPAN June 7, 2018 1:46am-3:20am EDT
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♪ mac ladies and gentlemen the indication one -- invocation mac let us pray. he in the moment of morning
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and an hour of hope. for this memorial not only remember things have also our present and the right dedication to our future. we gather here in the secret place with the memory of all fallen heroes with our hearts from the highest aspiration to proclaim our fellow citizens and to the world, bobby kennedy still. part and in millions of my and asked why not every ripple
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that we make this proclamation that only through human words or gestures, but you separately played in every soul with the grace of god to transform our heart to heart. where human weakness and hope we go and so the prey but the god that bobby kennedy served well said. to guide to guide and that disgraceful open our eyes and
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>> on behalf of my mother at all kennedy -- ethel kennedy in our large family thanks to the staff at arlington cemetery to be so kind and accommodating and flexible. i want to thank president clinton who graces us with his presence thank you so very much. [applause] [applause] and my family and i also those who devoted their time and talent to make this serviceo possible and to each of you to share in this commemoration. it is tough. it was very painful to my father. but yet half a century later if you have come here
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traveling as far away as italy, ireland, and australia. share our deep loss and happy memories. your presence is deeply moving and attribute to what my father fired and thank you for remembering. there is much to recall his room was next to mine and listen to shakespeare while doing push-ups.e i woke to run and shakespeare. in fact he was so good a challenge richard burton a shakespeare reciting contests in the course my father one. one of his favorite place was henry the fifth is the story of the key is enjoyed desolate
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that led the michigan some much larger force on a speeding day. the night before the battle the english were disheartened and thinking they were doomed to defeat harry curry to the shall never go by from the state beginning of the world remembered. he happy new. the brothers go shed his blood with me shall be my brother then shall gentle condition to
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think of themselves first and to hold them in good cheap that fought with us again. after president kennedy died, our father often recited the speech among his friends and children as we walked the grounds of hickory hill or in the woods nearby.th as he recited the sinking of the thousand days of the kennedy administration and what had been accomplished and as we come together with the devotion to justice and dedication to freedom although
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worthy goals not equal e.g. not just on saint crispin say that each hour in each day but the play inspires each of us to do what our father so admired and provided health and encouragement in the belief of what we do is urgent and noble troops to me but it brothers in and treatment and i would add the are happy that
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we are bound to one another to make our own pledge and with courage to gentle our to pursue justice and compassion for those around the world for lightening our burden and lifting our heart and please welcome the president and founder of the foundation 17 demand we must recognize the
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full human quality of all the people before god before the law and is not because it is economically a contingent because it is or the law of god means that although they do not because people in other man worship so that with the and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do. you be if he found the company 56. [applause]
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all of us from theal wealthiest children i have seen in this country loaded by starvation we all have one precious session that is the name american but in part the outcast and injure to come to theo exile country to know that he denies exile also deny america. [applause] may please welcome the former prime minister of italy. [applause]
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for too much and too long for the unity value gross national product into clear away or those of the people with them that counts as aou distraction and in the chaotic call of natural.
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every measure except that what makes life worthwhile and everything we think about america except why we are proud why we are americans. if this is true here at home, so it is true elsewhere in the world. march 18, 1968 university of councils. [applause] >> serving as an aid to rfk c4 through 68 and currently a professor of law at georgetown law center. [applause]
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but to lead greatly and act consistently with our belief in human freedom and equality. those are the seminole values of our entire history. there should be no doubt that we stand in africa or asia or latin america and in the united state states, on the side of the quality in increasing freedom never yielding that position demands of temporary for if we allow immediate considerations then
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we stand for nothing at all except ourselves. columbus day dinner october 1966 the 17. [applause] >> please welcome his accurac accuracy -- his excellency. [applause] >> the whole human experiment will fail unless it can find unity to mediate disputes. unless it can follow the path of economic growth and cooperation, unless and above all, it can realize the
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equality and brotherhood of. these are not species for anybody. but the bare essentials for us all. and on this small vulnerable planet, all of us are seeking solutions. under the potential or the shadow of potential destruction, we are one. our triumph and defeat. >> ethiopia 1966. [applause]
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>> the color of change executive director. [applause] this generation cannot afford to raise help with the struggle of the past were beyond these walls and a world to be helped for the welfare of mankind. 1966 university of mississippi. [applause]
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>> the next speaker served as secretary of the navy 2009 through 2017. former secretary of the navy ray navels. [applause] >> america was a great force in the world with it prestige and when we cannot do what comes not from mom's but from good ideas and a generous spirit. and this cannot be managed by the public relations specialist but a natural quality of people pursuing
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decency and human dignity in its own undertaking without arrogance or hostility or delusions of superiority. ideals that are firmly rooted in the realities of the society we have built for ourselves. university of indiana april 24, 1968. [applause] of internationally acclaimed tenor. [applause]
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♪ he will raise you up to six. ♪ he will make you shine. and to be in the shadow. fighting in the shadow my rock
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idealism and higher aspiration are not compatible with the most practical and efficient of programs that there are no basics between ideals and realistic possibilities no separation between the deepest desires of hearts and of mines and the application of human effort it is not realistic or hardheaded to solve problems and take action from the ultimate moral aims and values. for it ignores the realities and a passion and of unbelief more powerful than of our generals.
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[applause] >> the honorable nancy pelosi. [applause] >> i come to ask you to in the task of national reconciliation to place her energy and time strength in the first work of america building of a nation not united on every issue but where we are to be free. we are to have a chance for a decent life that the natural condition of humanity is not degradation but dignity. this is what binds us together as american and what shapes this nation and this state
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that shall preserve us. define the best within ourselves and within our fellow citizens. we shall win at the end of our labor as a new america. tuscaloosa march, 1968. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen please welcome civil rights icon congressman john lewis 17. [applause]
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>> and even in our sleep, pain cannot forget and it falls drop by drop and then comes the wisdom through the grace of god. what we need in united states is not division but what we need is not hatred. the love and wisdom and compassion for one another and the justice to those still suffer within our country. whether they are white or black, let us dedicate
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ourselves to what the greeks wrote many years ago and the lives of this world and in essence, 1968 during the announcement of the nation. [applause] from the american federation of teachers please welcome tee9. >> randi weingarten. >> not of that comes within the service of our ideals
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toward the order shaped to all of our people. not to forced of fear only through the understanding mind to the openness of knowledge in the fresh outlook that can only strengthen the most fragile and most powerful human gifts, the gift of reason. johannesburg south africa jun june 8, 1966. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen please welcome our next week or and let gonzalez representing march for our lives 2018 recipient.
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[applause] >> first is a danger of futility with the police nothing one man or woman can do against the enormous array against misery and ignorance and justice and violence if the protestant reformation and in the territory of france. the young italian explorer that shows a 32-year-old jeffersons that all men are created equal. so these men moved to that world. university of cape town south
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africa, june 6, 1966. >> congressman fred upton. [applause] uc berkeley october 22, 1966 the future does not belong to those who are content with today are apathetic to common problems for their fellow man and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects but rather, it will belong to those who can blend passion and reason and courage and a personal commitment to the
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ideology of american society and it will belong to those who see that wisdom and can only emerge from the clash of contending views that passionate expression of hostile beliefs. plato said a life without criticism is not worth living. this is the seminal spirit of american democracy and is spirit which can be found among many of you and it is the hope of our nation. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen please welcome kenny chesney. [applause] >> thank you.
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this song was written by william guthrie and it is a promise of everything that is good that our country has to offer all of us. in the last year i have gotten to know ethel and several of their children and their children's children and their spirit and their personality and in their heart. and that being said i believe in my heart of hearts that bobby kennedy carries the promise of the song in his heart until the day he died. ♪
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♪ [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen please welcome congressman joe kennedy the third. [applause]
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>> empathy. for those struggling and striving. indignation that the wealthiest country on earth with the children hungry, sick , abandoned, and alone. compassion. for the least among us. and that our nation and our world are capable of better. countless words have been used to remember my grandfather. poetry written about the work that he did in the life that he lived. but for a man who loves
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language the images that tell his story best, the caress of a child's face in the mississippi delta and his hands on the shoulder of a cool minor in kentucky. a small piece of bread he shared in the dusty fields. images of a father, son, brother. husband and uncle. a family home adorned to this day with photos of loved ones, graduations, weddings and silly moments and grandkids and great grandkids.
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his brood ever whirling with love ever enduring. of his extraordinary wife and partner, 50 years after his passing still wears her wedding ring. [applause] with a family who strives every day to make him proud. those images accumulate here today. with his kindred chicana spirit, john lewis, a brother and mentor. emma gonzalez, young activists
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such fearless stewards of the future my grandfather mentioned. and to robert f kennedy, this was a measure of a life well lived. people and human connections, touch and a look, in the moment between strangers and friends leaving aside expectations and egos to acknowledge each other's work and wisdom. where we posit and see each other. when we look past color or creed or class, to recognize a humanity or imperfections or contradictions.
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our hope for a truer and kinder tomorrow. that humanity anchored my grandfather and carried him to the field and the farmworkers to the appellation in country and the tenement where in the shadows, in the background, the quiet space that rarely got attention, robert kennedy found the arteries of our american heart. and he said of those forgotten , your country sees you. your country values you,
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america would not be america without you. he held their hands. he knelt by their side. he shared their sorrows. and he lifted their spirits. he wasn't radical or revolutionary but he was human. and willing to be vulnerable. this was his greatest gift to give. he felt so intensely the suffering of others and from that pain arose the moral force to relieve it. he saw their dreams and dared to ask why not? >> today we also remember a
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father who delighted in the laughter of his children and his long walks with his dogs, football with his family, the smile of his wife. we celebrate a leader who had potential and every child in 54 a a government that did the same. we we commit ourselves to his higher calling with everything at stake today, of the country who accepts for who you are. [applause] the 255 years ago and is very place a family friend stood
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and recalled the journey of my grandfather. then just ask months into his term, bill clinton eloquently recalled a man who went places most leaders never did and listen to people most leaders never hear and spoke a simple truth most leaders never speak. most of all, president clinton implored us to remember the power fall beautiful and simple faith of robert kennedy. we can do better. ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to introduce him once more here today please join me to welcome president clinton.
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[applause] >> thank you very much. >> thank you congressman for your remarks and your remarkable embodiment of what robert kennedy stood for. thank you mrs. kennedy, ethel, members of the kennedy family and i am delighted to enjoy you on --dash 45 years later from the first time we had this and 50 years since we
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lost senator kennedy. we have spoken before and it reminds me that the timeless wisdom of robert kennedy's words and all of you for the effort to have made over half a century to advance the work he could not finish. i think if he were here today, and as we were told in the invocation, he really is here today. he would remind us that perhaps the words he spoke are truer today than they were then. [applause]
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and another time of hope and heartbreak and division, it is important that we remember what he meant to us when we were young, and what he means today. in 1968, after those small twists years leading up to it, every day seemed to bring a new piece of bad news. with the deepening division america, it was my last semester in college here at georgetown. what do you do at the end of your college career? he was killed on april 4 a few days before that president
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johnson said he would not run again the country was so divided over vietnam everybody feared the whole thrust of the civil rights movement could be lost. as john lewis proved again after doctor king was killed then to be embodied in the annapolis, we went through months of turmoil and then he whine in california in the primary. i still remember the vote. he lost oregon by little bit then one in california. and god forgive me for being
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incorrect but i was glad to have the winner take all primaries back then. [laughter] [applause] >> what i say is we were also lofty because he was flesh and blood had fallen in real life and this time that drive is more important than anything else to require us to be divided from one another, he came as you see and did everything he could to increase it. [laughter] and as you have heard the kennedy clan was clearly an irish tribe.
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and those of us who share that heritage were proud of it. what was the difference? the difference was that he embodied the whole message of the faith of his fathers and mothers before his holiness pope francis calls us to engage in a culture that he would -- instinctively lived a life of encounter. of the outstretched hand and not the clenched fist. he lived in appalachia and mississippi delta and on native american reservations,
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among farmworkers who had no one else to look after them and all the way to the township of south africa still growing under apartheid. did he ever once give up his plan? or his tribe? no. he said what does that have to do with if we can live together or if we have to knowledge our common enemy is more important in our differences? and he did something unusual for a politician back then you cannot check every word every day he said the same thing everywhere he went. [laughter]
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he would go into a working class neighborhood and tell them exactly the same thing and say in the poor neighborhood. he would stand in the synagogue to say the same thing that he would say at the knights of columbus meeting. and if we had had the muslim population back then he would have gone to them and said you two can be part of america if you share our values and vision 17 the native americans american indians, 90 tribes for his work with them gave
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him a tribal name. his braveheart took him to california a 200-mile trip across appalachia to see the shacks where parents struggled to feed their children or to those in south dakota in the middle of the indiana primary race. and to enrage the apartheid government africa by going into the crowds to shake hand. he encountered people. and to challenge all of us to do the same.
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his message really, no matter how dressed up has not changed. we can do better. and because we can, we must. he gave it over and over and over and while the words were beautiful, look at the films if you are not alive them. but the energy was awesome. and the intensity burned away like a blowtorch with all those layers of complacency and comfort.
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so we can do better. and he didn't let anybody off the hook. he said i want to help you but you have to work hard. a middle people you have to serve your community and all you people who are rich like me you need to give more so we can work together and prosper together and by the way we will all be better off but you should do it because it is everybody to do. >> 50 years later, he would
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say i'm 92 now you have to listen to me from the distance. but we stood up for emma because she and her generation and not a voting issue. [applause] >> to pass the assault left alone -- weapons ban and we did it all. we couldn't make it a voting issue. where she and her colleagues said please do not leave me to die in school.
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school may not be a killing ground. robert kennedy would say nobody is trying to take away your right to defend your family. that we should take away the option to commit mass murder without adequate background checks for sure. that is the kind of thing he did this early. i never saw anything like it. and with our 50th reunion i was trying to determine what to say i kept thinking about bobby kennedy because when he died on june 6 my roommate was volunteering in his office now
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he's on my bed beating on me they shot him. and all i could think about was that robert said it is not too late to seek a newer world. it was perfect like i am 42-year-old cool guy people can relate to me. and to make america again. again. [laughter] but all of you that were there then you can join the young people today. to say you can't quit. there is still something good you can do your age is a state
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of mind and your commitment and stop hating each other it is bad for us. [applause] that includes, by the way. [applause] that includes the members of our plans and our tribes. the same as if he was 92 thanks for standing up to recite my words but to say we can do better and we must. so let us resolve to do better
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and calling his old gang together into sale beyond the western scars just one more time. some work may yet be done. in those days the earth and heaven that which we are we are. made week by time and faith is strong in will. here is robert kennedy. to strive and seek and find and not yield. we thank him after 50 years
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because we continue to feel the energy in the parade reaching across the convertible tops and in the shacks of appalachia, in the depths and all the way we can do it all again. so we have to do it the way he did, speaking to everybody to say the same thing to everybody. with a heart full of love and outstretched hands, his legacy has brought us here and will see us all. god bless you. [applause]
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>> few men are willing to praise the disapproval of their fellows in the center of their colleagues or the wrath of society. moral courage is a commodity from bravery and great intelligence but yet it is the one essential final quality for those seek to change the world that most painfully to change. aristotle tells us that at the olympic games it isn't the finest or the strongest men who are crowned but those who enter the list and enter the life of the honorable and good, they who act rightly to win the prize. i believe in this generation, those with courage to enter the conflict will find
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themselves with companions in every corner of the world. the day of affirmation address, university of cape town, june 6, 1966. [applause] please welcome ceo. >> through the history of the world, the boundaries of great empires has faded and dissolved their cities. their cities have fallen into decay and are well scattered. what remains is what they have accomplished of enduring value
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and what they stood for. what remains is the remains of the unity and the knowledge and understanding and what remains is what they added to the hope and well-being of human civilization and to its capacity for future progress. none of us here as individuals access. the for its own sake we hope to make a larger contribution to our families, occupation, profession and community and country. this must be true also for america as a nation. if we wish to take that lasting place in history which
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is now within our own grasp. the goals of american foreign policy columbus day dinner, new york city october 11, 1966. [applause] >> the ceo of patagonia. [applause] >> we live today in the area of challenge and this is the time of uncertainty and peril. also a time of great opportunity the decisions we make as a people and a government during the next few years will affect the planet
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for generations to come. i come to ask you not only for your understanding of these challenges but your active partnership in the efforts to meet them the government is your government and requires your ideas, your collaborations. your criticism and your support if it is to meet its responsibilities. we are most concerned about what type of america we want to pass on to our children come every inherits it does so it automatically a world that never made and as comes the trustee of that world for those who come after and in due course each generation makes its own accounting to its children. columbia south carolina,
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1963. [applause] >> from the international indigenous to counsel the recipient to the human rights award lauren howland. [applause] >> my name is lauren i coming from the hickory reservation in new mexico and this and carlos apache region of arizona i'm part of the indigenous youth council. [applause] our answer is the world's only hope to rely on use. love the swiftly changing planet will not yield to the dogma and the slogan it cannot
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be moved to those who claim to a present that is already dying that preferred the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that comes even with the most peaceful of progress this world demands the qualities of youth. and the state of mind with the temper of the wills and a quality of the imagination and dominance of courage overt humidity and the appetite for the venture over the life of bees, the revolutionary world that we all live in and thus i have said in latin america and asia and europe and in my own country, it is the young people who must take the lead. university of cape town june 6, 1966. [applause]
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>> ladies and gentlemen please welcome senator markey. [applause] >> it is from numerous acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts for the others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy, those ripples build which can sweep down the mightiest of walls of oppression and resistance. university of cape town south africa june 6, 1966, 62 years
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ago today. [applause] >> please welcome back to the stage the arts society of washington. [applause] ♪
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seventeen. >> and with these special memories so we pray. we thank you for the vision and compassion in the content -- commitment to justice to bring us together and challenges us to our very
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best robert francis kennedy. to share in the vision the inspiration of his words and the generosity of his actions. with the energy and creativity and generosity and love with the pursuit of the ideals that he worked so hard to bring our nation together. maybe share his compassion the poor, the needy, the oppressed, the forgotten. maybe share his ability to bring women and men together with barriers that divide us and build instead what unites us.
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and to heal those that are wounded to bring hope to the hopeless and to live our dreams for a better nation in a better world. to bless the kennedy family from bethel on bobby side to the youngest children. as they have roberts vision faith encourage and service to others. as we go forth from here, bless us all to unite and stir hope and we ask all of this in confidence that you are with us making possible but we cannot do ourselves.
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. [ applause ] >> ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the celebration of robert f kennedy's life and legacy memorial service. please remain in your seats while the family departs. [ cheers and applause ]
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