Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for President

By Debra Sheldon, Originally posted in The Kennedy Beacon

I remember going back and forth on the ferry over the East River, thinking about how people care for the things they love. I remember the river of my childhood, the majestic Hudson, and I feel gratitude for Kennedy’s leadership at Riverkeeper. It taught me how  to motivate, litigate, and support  allies through the work of his organization that was dedicated to the health of the Hudson River.  The river of my childhood memories became a noble cause that enlisted  veterans, fishermen and naturalists all working together to restore  its natural pristine beauty.

After 9/11, I joined the Red Cross and worked in the office of emergency management for the City of New York. My job provided a front row seat to observe the work of emergency responders, experience their culture and witness their hard work and dedication. I applied what Kennedy had taught me at Riverkeeper about citizen engagement and put these same principles into my work at the Red Cross, NYC Office of Emergency Management and the Citizens Committee for New York City. 

In 2021, I rejoiced when I witnessed police and firemen join the diverse health freedom community in the tens of thousands, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge protesting the lockdowns and mandatory vaccination requirements for first responders. The folks on the front lines understood that the real emergency was the threat to health freedom.

What is a movement? A call to action, something stirring within that calls us to speak out, rebel, protest what we find unshakably unjust.  A movement is the impulse to find like-hearts and minds with whom to get to work. It’s the unstoppable urge to do something about it! It’s what’s at the heart of the formation of the polis. Political philosopher Hannah Arendt described it as inserting oneself into the world through action and deed accompanied by a boundless rippling that changes the world, the arc of events that make up history. For history always has actors and those actors are attributable to its shaping.   

It’s simple, really. Health freedom starts at home.  It starts with your sense of purpose and belonging, with the freedom to pursue healthy human activities, unfettered by harm — intentional or otherwise.  It goes beyond political rights. The two words individually embody the totality of human aspiration, especially if health is understood to include spiritual, social, and emotional health. Together they mean something very specific, something that has often been understood in the context of the Nuremberg Protocol: no one can be required to submit to a medical procedure without their informed consent. Health freedom requires active stewardship.  Active stewardship is born from loving attachments such as the child who frolics in the beloved woodland behind her home who becomes the adult advocating for its protection, should it come under threat.  Likewise, the loving parents for their child, and the fisherman for the waters. Keepers of anything sacred — woodland keepers,  family keepers, water keepers, as well as freedom keepers — all share in this: the love of the treasure  they protect.

Kennedy is the classic example of how a boy in love with nature goes on to become a professional protector. He lives by example, engaging in an active, healthy lifestyle, inspiring young and old alike with his strength, humor, and humility before God and nature.

The heraldry of Kennedy’s presidential candidacy — a beacon of light in the dark, boots on the ground, a soaring eagle, light for liberty — are forged on the battlegrounds of truth, and the honest pursuit of a good life. It’s the same heraldry that guides and lifts our health freedom movement — a constellation of freedom keepers around the world.

Although Kennedy is the obvious medical freedom candidate, even more importantly, he is the obvious health freedom candidate. The distinction is important, because although medical freedom is essential, health is an ultimate goal, and includes much more than just medicine. When we talk about health, we talk about the optimal state of things, people, animals, landscapes, nations, the spiritual and the physical, the emotional and the social.

Let’s consider what the presidential candidates are known for. It’s not difficult to see that one’s true values are those things that are consecrated in action. So let’s ask: What has Donald Trump done  to improve health in the US for the past three decades?  No one imagines Biden as a health freedom candidate, but some people still imagine  Trump that way.  Ask yourself. Be honest. 

For Starters:

✓ At Waterkeeper Alliance, he cleaned up rivers all over the world, including the Hudson River. Bald eagles have returned to the watershed.

✓ He successfully sued Monsanto over its Roundup product resulting in a $289 million judgment for plaintiff Dewayne Johnson, who had developed non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma from his exposure to the toxic pesticide.

✓ Kennedy is the single most effective and successful advocate for vaccine safety, opposing toxic vaccine adjuvants such as mercury, and championing the individual’s right to choose regarding  vaccination. 

✓ The organization he founded, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), has successfully litigated a number of lawsuits, including vaccine safety.  CHD provides the most effective, legal, media and citizen advocacy on this issue worldwide.

✓ In the spring and summer of 2020, when then-President Donald Trump was rolling out Operation Warp Speed — ushering in the bio-surveillance state — Kennedy was raising concerns about the dangers of censorship and bad science. In a widely watched debate, Kennedy thoroughly defeated Trump lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, on the issue of the legality of lockdowns and mandatory vaccinations.

✓ Athletes, performers, nurses, the elderly, and others who were urged to get the shot early on came forward as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database exploded with adverse reactions, including death rates so significant that insurance companies around the world noticed  a concerning spike in excess deaths -–as much as 40% higher than normal. As statistician Ed Dowd revealed in his book, Cause Unknown, The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022 (Skyhorse Publishing) these adverse events and excess deaths happened not at the beginning of the pandemic, but only after the Covid vaccine was rolled out.

In my health freedom journey, I’ve learned that Kennedy has always been a freedom advocate. The summer prior to the lockdowns, in June 2019, New York State repealed religious and other non-medical exemptions for vaccines.  Kennedy, along with dozens of religious leaders, joined thousands of us in Albany, NY — parents and children from all over the state to protest the decision and rally for health freedom. It was at that moment we knew for sure that we had a true leader: on the ground, joining arms with us, amplifying our grief, committing to fighting for, and with us.  

Then, we were a minority.  But soon we would be joined by hundreds of thousands, millions, perhaps billions worldwide, for whom lockdowns and mandates were the catalyst for “Questioning The Narrative.” Groups like The New York Freedom Rally,  Teachers for Choice,  Bravest for Choice and the National Coalition of Frontline Workers sprang up in New York City, and other places across the country and around the world, solidly committed to holding the line for one another.  On my recent visit to South Carolina, I met with leaders from four prominent South Carolina groups, all very active in local and national politics, who named at least 15 more groups who were ready to activate for the cause of health freedom.

My field research supports the  conclusion that  Kennedy is, undeniably, the only true health freedom candidate. Everyone who suffered from the loss of a job or the loss of a loved-one knows that Kennedy was there on the front line fighting for their cause when they couldn’t.  Some came to know him later in their struggles, when they developed the courage to share their stories and reach out for connection. And what they discovered is that Kennedy has always been there, holding the line of freedom for all of us. 

We are now experiencing  a revitalization of the spirit of American democracy.  And we continue to find one another — at county fairs, at weekly gatherings with neighbors, at NAACP picnics, through homeschool groups, at birthing circles, at farm share pick ups, and at innumerable Kennedy gatherings around the country.

It’s a homecoming of sorts, back to our roots.  As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, it is a truth unique to  American democracy: when Americans see a problem, we get together with our neighbors, get organized, roll up our sleeves and get to work solving it. 

Kennedy is no stranger to such poignant moments in American history. His father’s leadership during the civil rights movement brought similar grassroots activists together in solidarity with peace and labor activists, forming the most significant opposition to the military industrial complex it had ever faced. And we all know the price that was paid for that effectiveness.

That was then. This is now. No amount of pressure can stop our movement — by, and for the people. It grows stronger daily, creating fortifications in the social and civic infrastructure throughout the country.  I have met with parents and health freedom groups throughout the country, and we know what our mission is, and we are all in this battle for freedom, and in it for good.

Kennedy has long been at the forefront of the health freedom battle  — protecting us and our children against unwittingly ingesting harmful substances (Monsanto, Hudson river fish, coal pollution), unwitting participation in radioactive fields (W-Fi, EMF exposure), and against coercive strategies threatening our education and livelihoods if we refuse to inject harmful substances. 

No other person better represents the issues at the heart of health freedom and has, over the course of many decades, proven that his heart is what leads him there. There is a certain incorruptibility in Kennedy that those of us who are experienced rest easy with.  In our hearts still rings the call to action, “Hold the line!” chanted at gathering after gathering, with Kennedy there among us.

Kennedy’s health freedom armor was forged in pursuit of protecting the health of the places he loved, where he played and went to be free: the sanctuaries that we find in the wild patches of earth, sea and sky.  The best stewards are active users.  When those treasured places were in danger, he protected them for the benefit of all; no other candidate’s track record can match Kennedy’s. 

It was all too familiar when we were forbidden to gather, kicked out of the places we loved, homes away from home, places where we belonged. Health is not just physical —it includes a sense of belonging and purpose, and connection to others and to the environment.  It’s physical, social and ecological.

Attempts to separate people from themselves and one another are part of the same ruling strategy. Like Lemuel Pitkin in Nathanael West’s novel  A Cool Million, victims of the fake American dream are laden with self-denial for someone else’s profit. The snake oil salesman has been writ large.  We are experiencing the ultimate bifurcation of spirit and body, of neighbors against one another, the catastrophic reality of the post-modern atomization of the nation and the world. The divisiveness that tore through the country during the past two presidential administrations was marked clearly by the degradation and near abandonment of the founding principle of e pluribus unum… Out of Many, One.

What happened when they locked down our towns and cities, our schools?  What happened when they told us our children must wear masks to participate in outdoor sports?  When they told us our athletic sons couldn’t play ball without subjecting themselves to shots known to be especially harmful to young male athletes?  When they told our daughters they had to take an experimental therapeutic that could potentially interfere with their menstrual cycles and fertility? 

People took to the streets.  Millions of us, all over the world, took to the streets. From Berlin to New York to Beijing to South Africa.  

And Kennedy showed up. In person, ready to protect — because the movement was alive in him as much as it was in us.  The personal and political stakes were higher than anyone imagined.  From loss of jobs, to censorship, to being canceled, to loss of family and friends.  We were branded domestic terrorists. Undaunted, Kennedy and his team of devoted CHD colleagues worked tirelessly compiling the evidence in support of us, and to defend us and our right to make our own health choices.

By that time, our basic, fundamental rights were deeply under attack. The first amendment had all but eroded.  Assembling with others was forbidden, even   standing beside neighbors was labeled dangerous behavior.  An entire world was divided against itself under false pretense. Corruption was at the helm. Who was profiting from these egregiously didactic policies? Kennedy made it his business to find out. His numerous investigative books and articles laid out the facts with thousands  of footnotes, as he — as always — held the line

Kennedy will do what his predecessors lacked the political will and courage to do.  In his own words, “In my first week in office, I’m going to assemble the upper echelon of the NIH, and we’re going to redirect[our] research funding. We’re going to find out what is making our kids the sickest generation in history.”

Are you truly free if you are only free to live in a state of chronic disease?  No other candidate has taken up the challenge  of ending chronic disease that plagues Americans at such an alarming rate.  Kennedy’s promise: “When I am President I am going to end the chronic disease epidemic in this country. If I have not dropped — significantly —the rate of chronic disease in this country I do not want you to re-elect me.”

Just recently, a post popped up in my feed celebrating a lawsuit Kennedy won for those who developed cancer as a result of Monsanto’s Roundup. He is still hard at work on the sacred things he keeps watch over.

And so are we.

I see your faces in the Souls of A Movement black and white photographs and am reminded of your courage.  I’m grateful to call many of you in this movement dear friends and family, including Robert F. Kennedy  Jr.  The movement lives in him as much as does in each of us.  So my plea to health freedom keepers everywhere, when it comes to choosing a president for the United States of America —choose Kennedy and “Hold the Line!”

For more than two decades, Debra Sheldon has been creating initiatives that bring people together to celebrate our shared humanity and improve the quality of community life. She lives in Harlemville, NY with her family and currently works as Director of Special Operations at American Values 2024.