By Marian Wright Edelman
The day after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was running for President, appeared at a Cleveland event and said instead of talking about politics he had to speak about the “mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.” He said: “The victims of the violence are Black and White, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one—no matter where he lives or what he does—can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on. Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by his assassin’s bullet . . . We seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike.”
Of course he was also alluding to the violence that had killed his own brother, President John F. Kennedy. At the time our deep despair at Dr. King’s death was leavened only by the fact that we still had Robert Kennedy. But two months after giving this speech, Robert Kennedy was shot by an assassin at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He died the following day, June 6, 1968.
This year, June 6 is also National Gun Violence Awareness Day. This day is observed on the first Friday of June, Gun Violence Awareness Month, and signals the start of Wear Orange Weekend. Wear Orange honors Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old honors student and drum majorette who was shot and killed on a Chicago playground in January 2013, days after she had performed in President Barack Obama’s second inaugural parade. Along with other gun violence prevention advocates, Hadiya’s friends began wearing orange in her memory because it is the color hunters wear in the woods to protect themselves and others from guns and signal don’t shoot.
The first national Wear Orange Day was held on June 2, 2015, the day that should have been Hadiya Pendleton’s 18th birthday. Today, people across the country will wear orange and take part in rallies, marches, and social media campaigns all weekend calling for an end to gun violence in all of its forms, including domestic violence, suicide, and community gun violence. As Everytown for Gun Safety puts it simply, “Every day, 125 people in the United States are killed with guns, twice as many are shot and wounded, and countless others are impacted by acts of gun violence”—and this weekend is an opportunity to honor every person whose life has been changed forever by a gun and build community with others saying no more.
It is a critical moment for coming together. In his speech after Dr. King’s assassination, Robert Kennedy also said: “When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies—to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered. We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear—only a common desire to retreat from each other—only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.”
How deeply resonant those words are again right now. This day and weekend are one more opportunity for people to stand together in solidarity with others in our nation who reject pervasive violence and hate and are determined to create a better way forward.