The New York Times is the newspaper of record for a reason. And when the lead editorial and the magazine both speak to one issue, stop what you are doing because they are stating very clearly that this is a point in history. This Sunday, May 10, 2015 is a day that a kid born today and going to college in 18 years will look at as a part of research for a freshman paper. They will look to tomorrow’s newspaper and ask: what did this generation do when the news was unmistakable, unambiguous and presented with clarity.

How Racism Doomed Baltimore, is shocking in the statement of limitations and shackles that we, as a nation, have placed around African Americans for generations. Whether by law or by practice, we have ensured that black people in our cities are held back from having a chance at the American dream.

Our Demand is Simple: Stop Killing Us, The Making of a New Civil Rights Movement by Jay Caspian King shows how this generation is leveraging the tools of social media to make the racial injustices for which we all bear responsibility — whether by malfeasance or misfeasance — into the beginning of what may be the first U.S. focused organized cause organized into digital activism.

The 1968 campaign for President was wholly reshaped by the candidacy and then the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. While we saw an election different than the one that we were meant to have because of that despicable act, what Robert Kennedy saw and what is an enduring memory of that campaign, was that, in the words of Thurston Clarke, author of The Last Campaign, “He [Robert F. Kennedy] said they [the electorate] could not acquit themselves of this responsibility [what it had failed to do at home for minorities and the poor and what it had done in Vietnam] simply by voting for a new president and new policies. Instead, they would have to participate in the healing process….”

This election is like 1968. It cannot be successfully litigated in ballrooms, behind velvet rope lines. Too much is at stake. Too much has happened and too much has to change. It is not just about slowing income inequality; it is not just about healing the torment of inner-cities; it is about more than kick-starting our economy that was handed over during the good times to Wall Street and when it collapsed onto to the backs of everyone else, it is like in 1968 “about restoring Americans’ belief in their integrity and [that] decency could be restored.”

2016 has the roots of pain that we had in 1968 with the tools of change that can allow people to become involved and create a civil rights movement that has the power to transform not only in the streets but across T-1 lines. There is close proximity between the left and the right this cycle. Both feel disenfranchisement at their core. The issues may be different on one side an overbearing government on the other a government which hasn’t done enough. But at its root is the what Kennedy said during the 82 days of the 1968 campaign: “the affluent are getting more affluent and the poor are getting poorer.” That is not the compact of the American Dream.

John E. Nolan, Jr. , an esteemed lawyer and Kennedy advance man said “What he did was not really that mystical. All it requires is someone who knows himself, and has some courage.”

This race won’t be about name recognition — everyone will know all of the candidates by caucus day. It won’t be about fundraising — today you can raise millions in minutes. It will be the candidate who best understands, and empathizes with, and then to paraphrase Clarke writing of 1968, articulates the moral wounds and promises to heal them.