Levees Not War

Ms. Jossie Redmond of Mississippi at Obama Inauguration, Jan. 20, 2009. (Reuters)

First, the happiest part of all: Seeing on the screen, and hearing in the announcers’ voices the words “President Obama.” It’s real. Really real.

On the warmest cold day in recent memory, we joined about 200 fellow rejoicers to watch the Inauguration at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema on Houston Street in the lower East Village in Manhattan. (Landmark and sunshine indeed!) If we couldn’t be in Washington—obviously the place to be on Inauguration Day—then we wanted to be in a public place with fellow citizens rejoicing to see the passing of the torch. And so, with some of the same campaign volunteers with whom we drove from Brooklyn to Philadelphia in October, we sat in a warmly crowded theater to watch on the big screen CNN’s coverage of the fulfillment of our campaign efforts. (See ‘Yes We Can Get Out the Vote’ [10/29/08] below.)

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Celebration in Grant Park, Chicago. BBC photo.

Glory hallelujah! are the first two words that come to mind. After eight long years in the wilderness, it hardly seemed possible anymore that such a fine, worthy candidate could win in the United States, especially by such a large margin. And yet over the course of the past year we’ve felt the tide of history moving in a new, more hopeful direction. That new direction was celebrated last night in Grant Park, Chicago, and around the nation and the world.

“. . . two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century . . .” There is so much difficult work to be done by the next president and his administration, it’s a good thing he is young and energetic—and that he has, as his vice president says, “a spine of steel.” He’s going to need it. It’s a good thing, too, that he has a gift for inspiring exceptional efforts by his staff and supporters.

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