chicago. in the streets near grant park w/ roughly a quarter of a million people. the streets exploded w/ cheers. it was beautiful.

strangely, you might think chicago was *the* place to be, but, ummm... after obama spoke the crowd dispersed pretty quickly. there wasn't the same sense of explosive joy following his acceptance speech. the party didn't rage into the night. the cops were very well behaved, but also very well trained. they cleared the streets. the party was OVER. sure, for america the party had just begun, but for the chicago pd, they'd had their big carnival population explosion in the streets and they brought it to an end in a very controlled and efficient manner.

i had read that morning that there were seven cities with SWAT teams on alert. i'd been to ten obama rallies in a row. well, nine in a row and chicago was number 10. he was getting 30-100,000 people a day showing up at his rallies in every swing state he visited... and all of this with only 72 hours max notice (secret service only posted his schedule a max of 72 hours in advance.) compare that with mccain who had 2,000 people show up to one rally and had to bus in 4,000 high school students (ie people not of voting age who were forced to sit through his boring ass speech as part of some civics credit or something.)

the rallies were evidence of a populist movement. i don't know how successfully obama will embody the populism, but i don't think that's even the crucial detail. i think the crucial details are that, first of all, he knows it's not about him. he says "we" every chance he gets. he makes it clear that he won't be able to do it all himself and doesn't want to get all the credit for what needs to be done. second, even if the empire goes to hell in a handbasket worse than it has (global economic collapse) we've at least made a decisive statement to the world that we're more willful and more thoughtful than our "handlers." this, i think, is about the best we can hope for. for the first time since, oh, before october 12, 2001, when i think the first bombs dropped on afghanistan, the world is sympathetic to the united states. or perhaps i should say "has empathy for" rather than sympathy for the united states...

this is good because i don't think we've seen the last of this weird economic roller-coaster. and heavens knows the energy industry is going to have to turn on a dime if it thinks it can recover from the eight year backpedaling it just did... epitomized most clearly by the "tax rebates for SUV drivers" nonsense...

anyway, seven cities had SWAT teams on alert the night of the election. i joked to friends that we needed to show up in chicago with gas masks and party hats, "prepared for either outcome." it was party hat night. clearly the nation wasn't going to tolerate one more stolen election. yay for The People! i'm going to the inauguration (why not? i went to both of george dubya's) but now that we've got "yes we can" and "yes we did" under our belts, we need to get down to the brass tacks of rebuilding everything that's been dismantled... and that also includes pressuring obama to reverse his "warrantless wiretaps on americans" FISA vote...

i told my friends that i think the obama button is the new dead shirt. i used to wear dead t-shirts while hitchhiking and it used to open doors for me in terms of an instant bond with people. the crowd vibe at these rallies felt as good as at any dead concert (how could it not with stevie wonder blaring from the loudspeakers every night?) but it's finally much, much bigger than even dear ol' jerry garcia. the peace movement's come of age, and now we have to make sure that the figurehead knows that he has to do more than give it lipservice. we gotta get outta iraq and start to dismantle the war machine and focus on priority number one, which is a new energy economy. oh, and maybe make some effort to keep our health system from collapsing too...

yoooo... thank you Shady..
I agree with pretty much everything yer sayin, but I'm not quite over
the glow just yet. This election meant so much to so many people..
I whooped and hollered and yelled and screamed myself damn near hoarse
for the first like, two minutes.. and then it was like I got hit with an ancestral freight
train.. I dropped to my knees and cried like a someone who realizes that the price
of victory was incredibly steep, and bittersweet the prize, but dammit.. what a fuckin
prize..
in that moment, I remembered all the marches, and the sit-ins, and the hoses, and
the dogs and the nightsticks and the hazings and lynchings and burnings and
moments.. all the shoulders and backs of the countless milions who came before,
who fought, and ran, and bled, and died, and dreamed, and shouted for just. that.
precious. moment.
i felt all of them, and I was one with them, and I cried like someone lost, and
found, and AWARE that although we've got a LOOOOOOOng way to go.. there
was definitely a moment in time, when we could stop, and look up at a stage
at a podium in front of tens of thousands of people, where a muthafuckin black man
with a name like Barack Hussein Obama, was about to address a nation, as it's new
highest political leader.
I am and will continue to be a striver for Human Beings being human, and one, and
differently amazing, but still together.. but I am also aware that for me to espouse such
ideas, I must also be aware of how I am perceived in this world I move about in, in this
world I intend to help shift. and in that moment, I was a black man. crying for black people.
who the nation over, can now look in their childrens' faces, and tell them with no reserve
that YES shit is possible
YES you can be any fuggn thing you wanna be
YES you can even end up being president of the united states of america.

we [ black people ] can't even agree on what 'blackness' IS.. it's a fuckn construct
that was thrust upon us and then snatched from the jaws of belittlement and
claimed as a badge, as a blazing emblem of defiance in the face of overwhelming
pressure to accept being permanently less than.
but whether brown people agree or not, much of the world sees us as black.
and living that, breathing it, seeing the ramifications of that daily,
Baracks' moment for many of us can NEVER be taken,
can NEVER be erased. the whole fuckin PLANET saw it. so for me, that shit was
crazy. IS crazy. I'm STILL fucked up buggin my head off.

and we have lots to do still, and there's so much more than race, or ethnicity,
and this means so much more, and people may start hatin him once
shit gets rollin, blah blah.. yes I unnerstand all of that but YO..
in the history of this country.. nothing like this has ever happened before or
ever will again. it's HUGE. people don't understand how insidious shit is. EVERY
DAY. I could on and on... but I won't.
suffice it to say, I'm a happy bitch right now.

and lastly, when was the last time anybody saw this many people the world over
celebrating ANYthing?
craziness