Like most of America, we woke up to the news that Bobby Kennedy
had been shot. It happened late at night, on the West Coast, and
it was a deed of darkness, committed when most decent people
were home asleep.   I was 8 and we lived in a black and Mexican
neighborhood in Los Angeles.    In those days and in that place,
people were afraid of riots. We had seen Watts burn from our
front door, and we had locked ourselves in when Martin Luther
King was killed.   But that morning nobody was afraid and nobody
rioted. People just sat there stunned. At least my mother and
step-father did. In the early hours before they went off to work
in the restaurants, they watched in sad silence as the local
newscasters recounted what had happened at the hotel.    It's
hard to imagine now, four and a half decades later, but on that
morning it was a “not again” moment, as the nation collectively
sucked in its breath at this assassination, at the third such
murder in a handful of years. It was impossible to fathom that
such a thing h