“Bobby Kennedy has just been shot,” I said as I opened the office door where our candidate for district attorney of LA sat alone. It was a little after midnight and the party to watch June 5 1968 election returns had become abruptly silent, and gloomy. I was in tears. He motioned me inside.
At age 19, I was such an enthusiastic workaholic that the Peace and Freedom Party in LA had hired me as an office assistant. So for months I had stuffed envelopes and run off mimeograph flyers that said Mike Hannah for district attorney but to be honest he kind of scared me. He was a socialist openly socialist, and I was a girl from the suburbs who had never seen a socialist so I wondered if he was Russian agent, Actually he was a Meek little balding man with wire rim glasses and a quiet demeanor.
***
RFK Jr was 13 going on 14 that night when his dad was shot not far away from me at The Ambassador Hotel, both of us watching with people full of excitement as was everyone in U.S. politics.
Imagine.
His father was such a rapid-rising star that even the roomful of radical left wingers I was with were celebrating.
Imagine what the Earth's condition would be now if only....
There was not a Democrat in the building where I was, but everyone liked Bobby Kennedy and saw him as a sign of Hope. He'd only entered the race a few months earlier and he was coming up fast about to have more delegates than Hubert Humphrey so everyone was hoping to see him be the Democratic candidate, and now he was lying dead on the floor at the Ambassador hotel.*
RFK Jr that night went from almost becoming the president's son to becoming what he is today, ah emotional trauma that likely had lasting effects.
At a psychological level that even he doesn't know, Junior may have wanted to kill Americans since that night because we let his dad get shot; and he’s getting to kill us now as Trump’s Health & Human Services Secretary.
Ain't America getting great?
***
I don't know why I turned to our DA candidate for consolation that night, but it was an early warning of what was to come in my life. The door closed behind me and the meek little bald man with wire rim glasses was touching me all over my body and chasing after me when I was trying to get away and I did get away and I don't remember if I continued working there after that or not.
The incident left me shaking.
I was still innocent.
The monster didn't get set loose until one year later.
Not completely innocent-
I had survived the time I was kidnapped in Paris and almost sold to Arabs in 1966 but escaped to the Hilton hotel (see below); also June 1968 was one year after the Aussie woman trafficked me out to the mystery movie star man whose identity I'm still waiting to confirm. (also see below)-
The monster got let loose a year later.
Writing this reminded me, shortly before going to work for Peace and Freedom, I answered a casting call for extras who looked like hippies to show up in Griffith Park for a love-in scene for a movie someone was shooting called Free Grass. I showed up in full costume.
That same naivete that had led me into Mike Hannah's office the night RFK was shot drew me to a tree where these two straight guys in suits were standing just watching.
I went up to them and said wow, you guys need to get in the groove, and I handed them a joint..
That got me arrested.
I only spent that one night in jail in my life, and as I was falling asleep several women came out of the television room saying, “Martin Luther King was just shot Martin Luther King was just shot.”
1968 was a rough year.
***
By Kay Ebeling
***
RELATED: Tuesday, June 7, 2022 I was a teenage anti Vietnam war activist Memoir by Kay Ebeling, featuring Nancy Pelosi and the Black Panthers- In 1968 at age twenty, I was probably the youngest paid staffer in the Peace and Freedom Party. A few years earlier riding around San Gabriel Valley passing joints with a car full of friends, one fellow who’d just returned from Vietnam badly damaged went on a rant … https://cityofangels25.blogspot.com/2022/06/encountering-black-panthers-and-nancy.html
***
Photo taken by Boris Yaro for the Los Angeles Times. [1] republished by Gatehouse Media. [2], Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18586822
ALSO RELATED
Who was that mystery man? I will find out in early February-
https://cityofangels25.blogspot.com/2026/01/who-was-that-mystery-man.html
AND

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