This week's big event, the election of President Barack Obama, have meant so much to so many for reasons too numerous to count. One New York Times story on Wednesday aptly described it as a moment of "national catharsis."
It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America.
To help do our part, as law students, my friend Aaron recruited a group of us to serve as the Obama campaign's official poll watchers on Tuesday. Virginia law allows for one observer from each campaign on Election Day, both inside and outside the polling place. So 50 of us law students and professors awoke early, some as early as 3:30 a.m., and traveled to precincts throughout Hampton Roads, from Virginia Beach to Newport News to Williamsburg and James City County. We witnessed history first-hand, as thousands of first-time voters, many of them black, helped turn Virginia blue for the first time since 1964.
When I arrived at 5:30 a.m., in the darkness and the rain, a line of more than 200 people had formed inside the hallways of Christian Life Church. Polls opened at 6 a.m., and it took an hour and a half before everyone in the original line had cast a ballot. By day's end, nearly 80 percent of the precinct's registered voters had cast a vote for Obama or Senator John McCain.
The crowning moment of my day came in the early afternoon, when an Obama volunteer, a middle-aged woman ripe with enthusiasm, accompanied an elderly black woman to the church. As the elderly voter showed her ID to poll workers, the volunteer told me that the woman was thrilled to have her chance to vote in this election — it was the first time she'd ever voted. After the elderly woman slid her ballot into the optical scanner, she stepped to the middle of the room and stopped. There, she threw both her hands in the air and exclaimed, "I have never felt so good in all my life! This is the first time I've ever voted!" Everyone in the room, perhaps 15 or 20 people, burst immediately into raucous applause. Tears streamed down the face of the Obama volunteer, as the elderly woman came to embrace her. The first-time voter proceeded to hug every person in sight as she made her way out of the church.
Stories like this one have come from all parts of the country, stories that serve to heal us and give us hope that this week, we live in a new kind of America — the kind of country that embraces all people equally. There are also stories that just feel good, like this one, from a friend of a friend who was at Grant Park in Chicago, where Obama made his acceptance speech:
It was totally amazing, but here's the moment of the night:
CNN was playing on the huge screens in the park. We watched as Wolf Blitzer called the states and the huge panel of pundits pronounced on whatever struck their fancy. Some time after Ohio was called, they turned the volume of the TVs down and shrunk the image of CNN to show pictures of the crowd that was present at Grant park. There was a whisper behind us that several networks had called the election for Obama. I was with a group of political scientists and since all of our phones were down and we could not confirm via the blogs and election maps that we've all become addicted to, we doubted. The crowd murmured and shifted.
Then, an unassuming skinny young white guy in a black hoodie came out onto the stage and said into the microphone, "Mic check 1, 2, 3. Mic check 1, 2. Mic check for the President Elect of the United States of America."
The crowd exploded.
The moment in Grant Park must have been the pinnacle of public euphoria, but since then, I know personally of many people who have had their own private moments of pure emotion. My own came on Wednesday afternoon. Still exhausted from a 14-hour day at the church (alright, and a full night of celebrating), I turned on the TV and caught a piece showing reactions to the election around the world. And there, just two days after Barack Obama's white grandmother had passed away in Hawaii, was Barack Obama's black grandmother, in Kenya. Sarah Obama's entire village was celebrating, as were young people in Greece, Israel, France, and even the children at Obama's childhood school in Indonesia. My girlfriend's friends from Canada and Australia called her this week to say that if they could have voted for Obama, they would have.
As I watched these
scenes from around the world, the joy and relief overtook me, as it has so many people this week. Jesse Jackson Sr., whose tears were caught on camera at Grant Park Tuesday night,
said that he cried for the happiness that Obama's accomplishment brought him, but also for the sad fact that Civil Rights-era people like Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr.—the ones who made Barack Obama possible—weren't still alive to see this day.
Thank goodness for them, and all those who helped make Tuesday possible. Now there is much work to be done, and it will take many hands to rebuild this country. As
our new president said himself: "to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn – I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices,
I need your help, and I will be your President too."
We have our country back, all of us. The change is palpable—it fills the spirit and brings a smile to faces all over the world. I like to think we owe it to people like the elderly black woman in James City County, Va., who on Tuesday mustered the courage to cast a vote for president for the first time in her life. We may live in the same country that we lived in on Monday, but because of people like her, today we live in a nation that is forever changed.
