47 Facts About Kerry Kennedy

1.

Mary Kerry Kennedy was born on September 8,1959 and is an American lawyer, author and human rights activist.

2.

Kerry Kennedy is the seventh child and third daughter of Robert F Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy.

3.

Kerry Kennedy is the president of Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, a non-profit human rights advocacy organization.

4.

Mary Kerry Kennedy was born in September 8,1959, in Washington, DC to parents Robert F Kennedy and Ethel Skakel.

5.

Kerry Kennedy appeared, at age 3, in the 1963 Robert Drew documentary Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, saying hello to US Justice Department official Nicholas Katzenbach by phone from the office of her father, Robert F Kennedy, Attorney General at the time.

6.

Kerry Kennedy is a graduate of The Putney School and Brown University and received her Juris Doctor from Boston College Law School.

7.

Since 1981, Kennedy has worked as a human rights activist, leading delegations into places such as El Salvador, Gaza, Haiti, Kenya, Northern Ireland, and South Korea She was involved in causes in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Sudan, and Pakistan.

8.

In 1988, Kennedy began serving as the president of the Robert F Kennedy Center for Human Rights.

9.

Kerry Kennedy was the executive director of the Robert F Kennedy Memorial until 1995.

10.

Kerry Kennedy is the honorary president of the Robert F Kennedy Foundation of Europe, based in Florence, Italy.

11.

Kerry Kennedy branched the RFK Human Rights Foundation to Spain with the mission to promote the education about the defense of human rights worldwide.

12.

Since 2018, Kerry Kennedy is working side by side with the President of the RFK Human Rights Spain appointed by her, Maria Diaz de la Cebosa, to increase the number of citizens with a working knowledge of human rights concepts.

13.

Kerry Kennedy is the chair of the Amnesty International Leadership Council, and her writing has been published in The Boston Globe, The Chicago Sun-Times, and The New York Times.

14.

Kerry Kennedy serves on the advisory board of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment at Columbia University.

15.

Kerry Kennedy is the editor of Being Catholic Now, Prominent Americans talk about Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning; Crown Publishing, Sept 2008;.

16.

Kerry Kennedy's life has been devoted to equal justice, to the promotion and protection of basic rights, and to the preservation of the rule of law.

17.

Kerry Kennedy started working in the field of human rights in 1981 as an intern with Amnesty International, where she investigated abuses committed by US immigration officials against refugees from the Salvadoran Civil War in El Salvador.

18.

Kerry Kennedy has worked in over 60 countries and led hundreds of human rights delegations.

19.

Kerry Kennedy founded RFK Compass, which works on sustainable investing with leaders in the financial community.

20.

Kerry Kennedy started the RFK Training Institute in Florence, Italy, which offers courses of study to leading human rights defenders across the globe.

21.

Kerry Kennedy is the author of Speak Truth to Power: Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World, which features interviews with human rights activists including Marian Wright Edelman, the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, and more.

22.

Kerry Kennedy interviewed human rights leaders for Voice of America.

23.

Kerry Kennedy is Chair of the Amnesty International USA Leadership Council.

24.

Kerry Kennedy is a patron of the Bloody Sunday Trust and serves on the Editorial Board of Advisors of the Buffalo Human Rights Law Review.

25.

Kerry Kennedy is on the Advisory Committee for the International Campaign for Tibet, the Committee on the Administration of Justice of Northern Ireland, the Global Youth Action Network, Studies without Borders and several other organizations.

26.

Kerry Kennedy serves on the leadership council of the Amnesty International Campaign to Stop Violence Against Women and on the Advisory Board of the Albert Schweitzer Institute and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center's National Advisory Council.

27.

Kerry Kennedy was named Woman of the Year 2001 by Save the Children, Humanitarian of the Year Award from the South Asian Media Awards Foundation, and the Prima Donna Award from Montalcino Vineyards.

28.

Kerry Kennedy has received awards from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the American Jewish Congress of the Metropolitan Region, and the Institute for the Italian American experience three I's award for outstanding efforts and achievements for human rights.

29.

Kerry Kennedy traveled to Ecuador in 2009, after which she blasted Chevron in an article for the Huffington Post.

30.

Kerry Kennedy was reportedly given a 0.25 percent share of any money collected from Chevron, worth US$40 million if the full amount were to be collected.

31.

Kerry Kennedy responded that she was "paid a modest fee for the time I spent on the case," but denied that she had any financial interest in the outcome.

32.

Kerry Kennedy is a long-time activist for bail reform in New York and nationally.

33.

Kerry Kennedy's work includes campaigns in support of community bail funds like The Bronx Defenders, as well as direct activism in providing bail funds for minors held in pretrial detention at Rikers Island and other adult facilities across the country.

34.

Kerry Kennedy has criticized the treatment of New York teenager Kalief Browder during his extended time in pretrial detention at Rikers Island.

35.

Kerry Kennedy has worked closely with the Katal Center for Health, Equity and Justice to campaign for passage of speedy trial reform and criminal justice reform before the New York Assembly.

36.

On June 21,2018, in response to President Donald Trump's decision to enact a 'zero-tolerance' policy of family separation on immigrants entering the United States illegally, Kerry Kennedy joined organizations including the Dolores Huerta Foundation, the Texas Civil Rights Project and La Union Del Pueblo Entero to launch the 'Break Bread Not Families Immigration Fast and Prayer Chain.

37.

Kerry Kennedy joined protestors outside the Ursula Detention Center, where they temporarily blocked a bus of immigrant children from departing.

38.

Kerry Kennedy was threatened with arrest by US Customs and Border Protection agents after repeatedly attempting to speak with officials inside Ursula about the use of chain-link cages to house children separated from their families.

39.

Kerry Kennedy holds honorary doctorates of law from Le Moyne College and University of San Francisco Law School, and of Humane Letters from Bay Path College and the Albany College of Pharmacy.

40.

Kerry Kennedy is a member of the Massachusetts and District of Columbia bar associations.

41.

In July 2012, Kerry Kennedy allegedly sideswiped a tractor trailer on Interstate 684 in Westchester County.

42.

Kerry Kennedy was charged by state police with leaving the scene of an accident.

43.

On January 23,2014, Judge Robert Neary ruled that the drugged-driving case against Kerry Kennedy would move forward.

44.

Kerry Kennedy has achieved a great deal and is dedicated to good works.

45.

Kerry Kennedy was not present, and was instead in Brussels and the Western Sahara conducting human rights advocacy.

46.

Kerry Kennedy admitted to having been in a car wreck 18 months before the incident, as well as suffering a head injury that required medication.

47.

Kerry Kennedy was acquitted of the charges on February 28,2014.