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I have been involved in politics for most of my life. Thanks to my father's leadership in the Puerto Rican community here in New York City, I occasionally attending meetings with him at City Hall when I was very young.
My father (that's him in the middle) spent a lot of time with members of Congress, the City Council and other political leaders both before and after I was born. He died when I was 14, but I tried to soak up as much as I could during those limited years.
Among the most important lessons I learned from him was to view the world through a lens of compassion. To see people as the humans we all are -- with the challenges and struggles that come with that. To remember that no matter what I was going through at the moment, others had it worse. And those were the people we should worry most about.
We had many political conversations in my short time with him. We talked about the political leaders of his youth and the ones I was now growing up with. Those were among my favorite moments with him.
During my decades working in and around politics, I have come across only a small number of people who I would ever work for. Leaders whose values align with mine, who see the world in a similar manner as I try to. I was fortunate enough to work for one of them for four years.
But there's one politician, in particular, that I desperately wish I could have worked for. Volunteered for. Anything. He was one of my father's favorites too.
Robert F. Kennedy's evolution as a person and politician led him to a place of compassion. His 1968 presidential campaign was the best, but far from only, example of this evolution. His campaign stops, and what he learned about poverty in the deep south, in Appalachia, in western Pennsylvania and among migrant workers in California, are among the most memorable moments.
I always find it remarkable how words like his from 50 years ago could have been spoken yesterday. For all our advances, for all our wealth as a nation, some of our most troubling issues remain the same. And often in the same parts of the country, impacting the same people.
His words on race, too, seem pulled from today's news. From his famous speech on the night Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated:
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 or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black ... [We must] dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.
He spoke also of the responsibility those of us with privilege -- any kind of privilege -- have to use those tools to improve the lives of others. Something that also feels very relevant today.
From his 1968 speech at Indiana University:
If we use it just for ourselves ... then we can't possibly survive as a society … I don't mean just going and protesting. I don't mean just supporting a candidate for political office. But I mean just becoming actively involved yourselves, that you're going to make a change, make the change in the life maybe of a neighborhood, make the change in the life of some individual, that some individual or group of people are going to live better because you lived, that's the least that we can do.
He shared the same sentiment two years earlier at the University of Kentucky:
You can use your enormous privilege and opportunity to seek purely private pleasure and gain. But history will judge you, and, as the years pass, you will ultimately judge yourself, on the extent to which you have used your gifts to lighten and enrich the lives of your fellow man. In your hands, not with presidents or leaders, is the future of your world and the fulfillment to the best qualities of your own spirit.
His words serve as constant reminders to me of the ways I want to contribute to our world. They serve as reminders of both our own actions and the expectations we place on others.
As the final few races from our midterm elections continue to play themselves out, as a wave of first-time leaders gets ready to assume their new roles in 2019, for me, today felt like a good time to turn back to Kennedy's words for continued inspiration.
(cover image: Andrew Sacks/Getty)
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