Off the coast of Somalia, former fishermen, robbed of their livelihood by commercial trawlers operating illegally in their waters, have banded with ex-militia and tech-geeks, and taken to acts dubbed by the world media as "piracy."

International cargo ships traveling off the Somali coast are often intercepted and hijacked by small boats and held for ransom.

The hijacked crews are usually well taken care of for the duration of their capture until an agreement can be reached between the so-called pirates and the shipping companies.

While the general media refer to the small bands of Somalis as "pirates," they refer to themselves as "Coast Guards."

The capital city of Mogadishu is practically a ghost town - devastated by war. The population is all but starving. There has been no stable government in almost 17 years. In the presence of this kind of despair, the international community has taken advantage of this country's inability to protect its maritime boundaries.

Enter the fishermen.

In the absence of formal authority and diplomatic power, the fishermen have taken matters into their own hands, using what is available to them to eek out a living. While affected companies and interested media may catalog Somali acts as criminal, advocates for national sovereignty might consider such acts justified and within the context of the defense of Somali national security.

In-fighting has been replaced with co-operation between clans. The "ransoms" they excise from various governments aren't much different than tariffs other countries impose (usually associated with protectionism), its just that there is no formal authority to regulate the amount.

In an era of malfeasance and greed dominating corporate interests, to the tune of exploiting those who cannot or do not know how to protect themselves, it is refreshing to see African patriots putting their foot down and calling the giants of global commerce to task.

Some may refer to them as "pirates" but they sound like Coast Guards to me.

My dad asked what the other parent had done. When I answered that he had called his ex to keep her appraised of what was going on, my Dad asked what I thought I should do. Reluctantly I picked up the phone with the eight year old boy sitting on my left and my daughter sitting on my right.

I was sitting on the couch, on the phone with my ex, explaining that one of the boys in my charge had just lost family members to a tragedy and that I didn't know what my immediate plans would be with our daughter who was with me. She asked if I knew about the Jennifer Hudson killings and I said that they were related to the boy I was referring to. She asked if I had learned that the grandmother had a stroke. I did but asked the boy if he had heard about his grandmother. He started crying assuming the worst and fell over onto my lap sobbing while I patted his back.

We went to church and my dad sat in a pew with one seat available, my daughter sat in a pew with one seat available a little further up, and I sat in a pew with many seats available a few rows back. I felt uncomfortable sitting away from my family but understood this to be a house of the Lord and that each of us has a unique relationship with God.

When it was time for alter call, the woman in front of me stood up - in the visage of an old principal, but in the spirit of my best friend's mother. She stood and walked to the front and turned to instruct me to follow her. I had already been baptized but she insisted. The minister mentioned another reason to come forward and so I acquiesced.

As I rose I felt the eyes of the church asking why I had risen from my seat because many of them had known me as having been baptized. I was worried that they thought I was doing it for attention.

When we got to the front of the church, we had to shake the hands of the deacons we passed. Many of them looked at me with surprise - as if I were picking the wrong time to be joking - as if I were being irreverent.

When we got to the stage, "my mother" stood at the pulpit to speak while the choir sang. I stood behind her underneath a beam that was hiding my face from most of the congregation. I remember my Dad still being in the congregation.

I resolved to tell the congregation that "my mother" had made me come up and initially felt the need to explain why she was "my mother." I decided against it so as not to exploit the name of my best friend, who belonged to the church and who was, by the way, deceased.

One of the ushers was upset with an officer in the church because she was so long in dismissing people from the restroom. I smiled and thought I should write down a prepared statement for the congregation - something about me being "thrice a grinch" and "a lewd adulterer." I also wanted to remind the church that none of us is perfect - how quickly we grow impatient with others and criticize them for their human frailties as if we have none ourselves.

I wish I could remember what the choir was singing.

Is it just me or does the world look a lot like an Ayn Rand novel (i.e., Atlas Shrugged)?

Blinded by the dim light, I sniffle and watch the curtain move. The flowers are dead, their petals mostly on the floor. Even if the most beautiful women in the world walked through my bedroom door wanting to do anything I had on my mind, I'd just roll over and go to sleep, hoping I wouldn't have to tell them to leave - that they would figure it out on their own.

I'd be happy I cleaned the room and maybe wonder as they left if one would stay behind, part of me wanting to be tempted. But I've been sick before. I know how useless it is to want with no energy to enjoy. It makes being sick even sicker.

Maybe the phone would ring and the love of my life would be on the other end. She'd tell me that she misses me and quiz me about what I've been up to. I'd almost tell her that I wish she was here, but realize there'd be nothing good in that. I think we've gotten stuck in what we're used to from each other, so I've grown comfortable fantasizing about things I'm resigned I'll never have.

Sometimes it sucks being in love. Like laying in bed at the hospital - and finding out they're going to have to take your big toe, or your foot, or even your leg. Life won't be the same, but it's better than dying. Life won't be the same - and sometimes living feels like too much trying.

So the bedroom door is closed, and its only me in here. The sun is playing hide and seek and I'll fall asleep before I count twelve hours worth of numbers. And somewhere in a bed I've laid in before, my lover is drowning in her dreams, no different than she'd do if she were here.

It's midnight now. There's some humming somewhere outside. There's some creaking in the walls and in the attic. The computer fan is the closest sound to me. The heat just came on and the curtain's moving again. Tomorrow's not so far away - I should close my eyes soon.

Cleveland, Ohio, April 5, 1968

Robert F. Kennedy
Cleveland City Club
April 5, 1968

This Web version of this speech was made for the convenience of readers and researchers. It was produced from a press release for the speech, which can be found in Robert F. Kennedy's Senate Speech Files.

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. 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.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.

Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence – whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men,” said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.”

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we known what must be done. “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 bothers 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. For all this there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember – even if only for a time – that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek – as we do – nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.