SWD 28

Bobby Kennedy & my teen-years parakeet

Gun rights victim Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy, 1925-1968, and my teen years pet parakeet, Monty, 1965-1970

Art: 2018
Media: Ink, colored pencil
Framed, 20 in. H x 16 ¾ W [50.8 cm. H x 42.5 W]

Monty was my first real pet. I got him when I was 15 in 1965. He passed in 1970. Parakeets live about 10 years on average so he passed young but he had a good life. Most of his life was in the family house in Queens, NY.  For a while he lived with my dog and me in a small apartment in Little Italy, lower Manhattan.

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A few years earlier, when Robert’s older brother John was president, I avidly followed news of the first family. I saw John Kennedy speak when I was around 11 or 12.   I went with my mom and her parents to see Kennedy speak at some sort of seniors program at Madison Square Garden. I actually have small Kodachrome photos I took at the program. I forget who the sponsor was.

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One or two years later I was in 7th grade, and thirteen years of age in 1963 when John was assassinated.

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A year later, in 1964, when I was 14, I volunteered, evenings and after school, stuffing envelopes for Robert’s campaign for US Senator, N.Y., at the Eastern Queens Young Democratic Club, NY. Once I bused to Jamaica, Queens and ran up and alongside the convertible car Kennedy was seated in, while  in a motorcade, and I managed to touch the fingers of one my hands on his shoulder. It was a fleeting moment I always remembered! Hey, I touched Bobby Kennedy’s shoulder!

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Four years later, 1968, I was a senior in high school when Rev. Dr. King was assassinated, that April, and then that June Bobby Kennedy was shot-to-death. Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary for the presidency, June 1968. Both Dr. King and Senator Kennedy were victims of America’s “pro-life” gun-rights genocide, terrorism. Fifty years later, in 2008, American gun violence continues on as a public health catastrophe.

I missed the parakeet after he died; but I still miss Kennedy.

One can replace and buy a new  pet such as a parakeet, dog or cat, but one can’t replace our civic, community, faith and political leaders when they are shot-to-death.

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There is no “pro-life” in the political agenda of “gun rights,” no matter how many times so-called “pro-life,” “pro-gun rights” candidates spout their obscene, immoral, unethical and anti-faith claims. There is only the opposite of life: Death. Thirty-three to thirty-four thousand shot dead every year in the U.S. is legislatively-enabled terrorism.

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In  the name of “pro-life gun-rights,” one million, four hundred thousand Americans have been shot dead in the U.S. between 1968 and 2018.