Those were likely Robert F Kennedy’s last words, spoken to Juan Romero, the 17-year old busboy who cradled his bullet-shattered head.

“Is everyone okay?” Kennedy asked.

“Yes,” Juan Romero, replied.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Kennedy said. And then lapsed into unconsciousness.

That was June 5, 1968, shortly after midnight. He had just won the California primary. “On to Chicago,” he concluded his speech and minutes later, as he made his way through the kitchen, a bullet ended the dream.

He died on June 6^th at 1:44 in morning.

I remember a friend coming into my darkened dorm room and waking me to tell me Bobby had died. I was a freshman at San Francisco State. We were going into finals. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been killed two months earlier—April 4, the day before Spring break.

I thought of the night of June 5, 1968 as I waited for the results from the California primary on Tuesday, 48 years later.

Everything’s going to be okay.

Bobby was no saint. But one had the feeling that especially after his brother John’s death he had transformed. It was not merely political expediency for him to embrace civil rights. I believe he had come to a soul-deep commitment to guiding America to its true greatness

But, something died that night in 1968.

A dream.

A hope.

A belief that everything was going to be okay.

That we could make our way out of Jim Crow, lynchings, young men dying in a war that had no meaning, young and old. men and women dying to secure the right to vote.

Instead, the Chicago convention happened. Hubert Humphrey, who had not participated in any primaries, was given the nomination. Richard Nixon was elected president in November, promising he had a secret way to end the Vietnam War. Instead, it dragged on for another 7 years—for political purposes. And in 1972, George McGovern, an honorable man who served in the military and opposed the war in Vietnam, was buried in a landslide by Richard Nixon, who two years later resigned in disgrace.

Everything’s going to be okay.

It was hard to believe that.

I was at a rally at the Federal Building in San Francisco in the late 1980s. Ronald Regan was president. I don’t remember the purpose of the rally right now—probably protesting our involvement in El Salvador. I had been to so many rallies. Someone began singing “We Shall Overcome,” which always choked me up. But this time, I couldn’t join in singing it. I did not believe we could overcome.

George H.W. Bush succeeded Reagan and appointed Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall, a lion of civil rights. Thomas was confirmed after a hearing that brought into the open the insidiousness of sexual harassment professional women endure. I was the sole woman manager in a small technical company. After those hearings, my colleagues made fun of me in meetings I was charged with and when I finally got frustrated and angry, asked me if I was on the rag.

Everything’s going to be okay.

It was hard to believe that.

And then the election of 2000 happened. George W. Bush got appointed to the presidency, in part because some thought Al Gore wasn’t pure enough. And so we got the Supreme Court that gave us Citizens United and eviscerated voting rights.

Everything’s going to be okay.

It was hard to believe that.

And then, Barack Obama was elected. For a brief moment, I thought we had crossed the threshold. Obama brought the economy back from the brink, and laid the foundation for health care to be a right. It wasn’t perfect. It was flawed. But it was a start.

From the moment he took office, the festering racism that lingered in the soul of our country took hold and the Republican Party welcomed it, using it to gain power and delegitimize Obama’s presidency—for the sole purpose of making him fail so they could retake the White House. They succeeded because too many of those who voted for Obama failed to vote in 2010 because they were disappointed that he wasn’t perfect.

And so we got a Congress that has eviscerated a woman’s right to choose, the right to vote, the hope that we can address climate change.

Everything’s going to be okay.

It was hard to believe that.

I thought of all of this as I waited for the results of the California primary last Tuesday.

I went back and forth through this primary season about who to support. I am behind everything Bernie Sanders brought to the forefront. But in the end, decided that I supported Hillary Clinton because I think she is better prepared for the job, and that we have more of a chance of steering the country to the path that Bernie’s revolution evoked with her as president.

I was appalled at the level of vitriol thrown at Clinton by Bernie supporters.

Everything’s going to be okay.

I hope so.

I did not realize how much it would mean to me that a woman is on a major party’s ticket. I know that the Green Party has a woman on the ticket, but the Green Party candidate has little chance of winning a presidential election. A woman on the Democratic ticket is a sign that another barrier has been broken.

I do not understand the vitriol hurled at Hillary Clinton. I think that any of the men running would have folded—or gone ballistic—long ago under the constant barrage of nastiness.

Is Hillary flawed? Yes. She is too self-protective. And that makes her seem secretive. I can’t really blame her for her self-protectiveness, but I think it hurts her.

She is more establishment than I am. And, in 2008, I didn’t think she had undergone the kind of self-reflection about gender that Obama had about race. I think she may have now.

She won the nomination fair and square. I cannot believe the nasty memes I have seen on Facebook about her. The vitriol. I have unfollowed friends or hidden their posts to keep from unfriending them.

I’m going to work for Hillary to become president. In part because it would be disastrous to have a Trump presidency. He is the very definition of white male privilege—a privilege that condones rape so long as it is committed by a white, privileged male. A privilege that I think turns one into a sociopath—a solipsist who has no understanding of where he or she ends and the outside world begins.

I’m also going to work to change the face of Congress. It’s a challenge because I live in a place that already has progressives in place. I don’t know how to influence other parts of the country.

Everything’s going to be okay.

I almost believe that.

I have been feeling very grumpy towards the Sanders’ faction that says Clinton and Trump are equivalent. I actually feel old and grumpy. I want them to look at 1968 and see how assassins’ bullets killed dreams. I could not vote in 1968. I was 18. The voting age was 21. Yet, 18 year-old kids were drafted and sent to. My grandmother, who died in 1988, did not have the right to vote until she was in her 30s.

Things change.

Compromise and governance is what will turn this aircraft carrier that is our country around. I believe it takes a mile for a ship the size of an aircraft carrier to turn around.

I still wonder what could have been if Bobby had made his way through the kitchen and then to Chicago. I still weep when I pause to remember that night.

Here’s a portion of the spontaneous words Bobby Kennedy spoke when he delivered to the crowd the news that King had just been killed. The audience was mostly African-Americans gathered for a Kennedy rally:

“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 and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.”

And then there what were probably his last words:

“Is everyone okay? Everything’s going to be okay.”

Everything’s going to be okay.

It’s incumbent on us to direct our efforts and work as if we believed those words.

Is everyone okay?

Everything’s going to be okay.