I’ve been trying for the past several days to come up with a way to express my feelings about the celebration at Grant Park on election night. I’ve been more overcome with emotion and elation than any other time in my life and my thoughts are just too jumbled to make any sense of. For my own selfish reasons, I need to be able to get the experience out in some form that I can read, share, store. Piece by piece, maybe…
We’d secured tickets to the event and had been told that the gates to Grant Park would be open to ticket holders at 8:30 pm and that there’d be another area for people without tickets right next to Grant Park where they could gather to watch Barack’s speech on the giant TV screens.
I’d been glued to the TV all day long and after I found the live streaming video of the people lining up to attend the rally, I hardly left my laptop. We’d have headed down there earlier, except I had a board meeting to attend at 7:00.
We drove downtown around 8:00 and parked at my job and took a cab over to the entrance of the rally at Congress and Michigan and as soon as we got in the cab my guy yells to the cab driver “TAKE ME TO SEE BARACK!” If you knew him, you’d know how strange that is. He’s extremely shy and laid back. He hardly ever speaks in public and quite frankly I started wondering if he’d completely flip out at this event and cause me to miss it in order to take him to the crazy hospital.
Driving downtown and then later in the cab, I was surprised how deserted the streets of downtown Chicago were but once we started to approach the Grant Park area, I realized that all the people were concentrated in this small area. That’s when I started to get nervous. I don’t do well with crowds and looking around at all the people at heightened states of this and that, I could see the potential for disaster.
As we stood waiting to cross the street to get to the ticket holder’s line, I was already becoming annoyed by the rowdy drunk guys behind us, smoking swearing and stinking of beer. I wanted to be OK with them just having fun celebrating this historic event but the truth is that I considered it a very serious matter, one that deserved a night of sober.
I nearly died when I saw the line for ticket-holders that stretched down Michigan Ave as far as I could see. We walked all the way from Congress to Roosevelt (5 blocks, I think) only to see that the line had snaked around and down Roosevelt Ave. We were feeling very defeated since it seemed there’d be no way we could make it through the line and into the park before Barack’s speech. Then something crazy happened. I think the Chicago Police just got sick of it all and on a whim they opened a blocked side entrance to the park and started telling us all to go. “The lines are too long, just go, go!” We all poured in and I’ll never forget my guy saying “this is where the stampede happens.”
We walked as fast as we could, past drunk girls complaining about us skipping them, not even knowing where the end of the line was. As we walked, I kept looking at the long line to my left, the ticket holder’s we’d just passed patiently waiting their turn to enter the park - they’d probably never make it in. We weren’t that far from them but the path we were walking down was lined with beautiful trees so they didn’t see us or there might have been some kinda riot when they realized they’d waited for hours for something we’d hardly waited for, at all.
Ultimately we ended up at the very front of the line in the corner where they’d stationed another ticket-taker between the wall and a big ass garbage can. We were packed together to a level that nearly sent me into a full-blown panic attack. It was one of those times where you know that something small could happen to excite the crowd into a panic and you’d end up on the ground fighting for your life while people trampled you. As we stood there, waiting, inching forward, I could feel the breath of strangers on my neck, I could hear whispers not meant for me to hear, I could smell what they’d eaten and drank. It was hard to find a way to position my head so that I could inhale anything but other peoples exhales. That was an awful moment.
We eventually made it through and I’ve never felt such freedom as I did when we passed the entrance and I was able to walk with some space on either side of me and breath the fresh, cool air.
When we entered the park there was a sea of people already there watching the Jumbotron but we found a spot over by the east fence so that at least one side of us would not be packed with people, and we waited, and watched. First they announced that we’d won Virginia, then Pennsylvania, and before long that feeling that we’d be winners that night came to settle in my mind and for the remainder of the night I fought back tears.
Only a minute or so after the polls closed on the west coast, the screen shined bright, “Barack Obama has won the Presidential Election.” The crowd erupted and we began sobbing. I looked around me into a sea of diversity all crying together about whatever singular thing this meant to each of us. Old black men who I imagine never thought they’d live to see this day, Muslim women in hijabs probably envisioning less harassment in this country after today and white people just like me who, even though we don’t experience racism like the others, totally get it.
During John McCain’s concession speech, I felt sad for for him. He is the ultimate patriot, with real battle scars to show. I thought he was humble and gracious and it saddened me to see him realize that this lifelong dream of his might not ever happen. I was proud of the way that he hushed the booing crowd and wondered if on that day he was ashamed of them.
I was mesmerized by Barack’s speech. I especially loved how he spoke to the folks that did not vote for him and even as I think of his words today, nearly a week later, it makes me emotional. “I hear your voices, and I’ll be your President, too.”
Most of all I was absorbed in the reaction of my boyfriend, a young African American man who I’ve spent years trying to support through times he’s been unjustly stereotyped and alienated because of the color of his skin. Before this night he felt he lived in a world of fear and pain to the extent that it prevented him from even considering bringing a baby into it, one of the most basic human functions. But as I watched the tears run down his face, I could see many of those bad memories, feelings, philosophies leaving him, and I was overcome with the thought of how this monumental event will personally effect my life, and his.
I have never been a patriot. As long as I can remember, I’ve been ashamed of the history of my country, the genocide, the enslavement of the past and the general I’m-better-than-you attitude of the present. In Grant Park on election night, that all went away. For the first time in my life, I’m proud of my country and I’m optomistic about the future.
Thank you, America.
