Posts Tagged ‘Grant Road’
Meeting President Obama For The First Time November 5th, 2008
Chicago
Just as promised, the world changed on Tuesday night. Barack Hussein Obama became president elect of the United States. Less than two years ago, he had the wrong middle name for the job, he was of the wrong colour, and recently, it was pointed out, he had the wrong associates.
On Tuesday night, however, he was undoubtedly the right man. America voted for its first black president in a way so unequivocal that the world celebrated as it watched him ascend the stage in Grant Park, at the heart of Chicago, to accept his prize.
On Michigan Avenue, at the entrance of the park, they lined up from the morning. Those with tickets to one side, looking slightly privileged, with deck chairs laid out on the street and sunglasses. Those without tickets, to the other with placards begging to be taken in as a ticket-holders guest since they were from Seattle.
On a November day so perfect that many were reading it as “a sign”, whether they had tickets or not, there were picnics to be had while waiting on the sidewalk. Crabby babies to be fed. T-shirts, and new age ‘high definition’ Obama buttons to be bought. The buttons were just like regular ones, except they were like Obama’s message in a way: sharper, clearer (and dearer).
Evening fell and the barricaded gates of Grant Park opened to let about a quarter of a million people in, others watched from behind the tinted glass of insulated condos or hotels. Everyone straining to find out from the big screen or a neighbour whether Ohio had been carried or if Florida had failed them. Within three hours of the gates opening at 8, it was over, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennyslvania, Obama had prevailed everywhere. The TV stations announced the winner.
People held their heads in disbelief. The audience, even those without the celebrity or the additional tear glands that Oprah Winfrey possesses, cried, hugged and whooped. The last, did not stop for hours after Barack had come, seen and conquered (yet again). Tears rolled down Jesse Jackson’s face. Jackson had wanted to be president once as well, but he couldn’t get the democratic nomination because the wisdom of the time was that whites wouldn’t vote for a black man.
Twenty years since that bid, Obama was delivering his victory speech, glorying in America’s colour-blindness. It came just after McCain made his classy concession. If Obama placed the credit of victory at the feet of the electorate, McCain said the burden of loss was his and no one else’s to bear. For a brief while, the power of the old man’s words, spoken from a lectern in Arizona to an audience that was in despair, quietened the crowd in Grant Park.
And then, Obama appeared. Presidential, even when his wife whispered ‘love you’ in his ear, he spoke with an awareness of both the scale and the nature of the event he was at the centre of: “This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations… he said, going into an anecdote about 106-year old black woman who had stood in line to vote for him. “Tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America — the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.”
He’d pressed the button. That creed, or variants like ‘yes we did’, kept resonating through the streets of Chicago. Interspersed with cathartic whoops (that were composed of joy and bewilderment, though you couldn’t tell in what proportion) from wave upon wave of supporters. It was no point trying to speak out a solicitation, so the figure crouched on the pavement across the park merely held a placard: “I’m just hungry and homeless.”
Tags: Barack Obama, Chicago, Grant Road, President Obama, US Elections 2008
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