Joy

Four years ago, I seem to remember some incompetent blowhard blathering on about a right wing mandate. As this past Tuesday night progressed, the thought kept popping into my mind, Crocodile Dundee style, that “that’s not a mandate. Now THIS is a mandate.”

I got off of work at 11:00PM, listened to McCain’s speech in the car on the way home, and managed to walk to the Empire bar to join Erica and some friends before Obama started his speech. It was incredibly heartening to see the crowd of people in the bar, already celebrating as they waited for the acceptance speech. We listened, applauded, cheered, and, when it was over, went out into the street in hopes of finding other happy people. We wandered through the old port area, stopping by a couple of bars and clubs, calling and texting random people, and I spent a good half hour on the phone with my mother in Austin. It was shortly thereafter that we heard cars honking and momentary sounds of chanting from up in Monument Square. We made our way there to find a couple dozen people, clapping out a simple rhythm, dancing, and yelling. The group grew over the next hours, with people bringing pots and pans to beat, cars stopping to honk and high five the revelers, and many improvised chants and even a couple of speeches. We finally went home at around 2:30 or 3:00 (I had a team meeting at work scheduled for 8:30 the next morning,) still full of energy.

There were many cameras, and at least two people were recording audio. One person, looking suspiciously like a Salt student, came by to ask people, including Erica and myself, about the experience. One video made it to YouTube shows some of the growth of the celebration, and also features Yours Truly a little past the one minute mark:

My only complaint about the night, and unfortunately it is featured in the video, concerns the speechifying. This amounts to a minor quibble, but I do not think that now, or that night, was the time to mutate “Yes we can” into “Yes we did.” I feel that the point of Yes We Can is to encourage people to actively engage in the current situation, in government, and in society. It is a call to empowerment of the individual, and an attempt to end people’s disenfranchisement with government. I was not there to celebrate the end of the race, or even just the liberal victory of its outcome, but rather to hope for, and celebrate the beginning of, a fundamental change in the direction of my country. Tuesday ensured that change will come to the highest levels of our government, and that is wonderful, but I feel that the momentum of local and individual activity connected to this race and campaign can bring important change on a much more intimate scale.

Mainly, though, I’m just glad that I can have confidence that my country will not invade another country unprovoked within the next four years. It is such a relief.

November 6, 2008. Politics.