{"id":1418,"date":"2008-11-05T09:16:23","date_gmt":"2008-11-05T09:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/05\/grant-park-in\/"},"modified":"2015-10-08T15:32:57","modified_gmt":"2015-10-08T22:32:57","slug":"grant-park-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/05\/grant-park-in\/","title":{"rendered":"OBAMA’S VICTORY GARDEN – EXORCISING DAYS OF RAGE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"68chicago\"<\/a>Grant Park<\/a> 1968 – in the heart of Chicago.\u00a0 Grant Park — where my friends and\u00a0 I were gassed and beaten – terrified and abused – during the Democratic Convention in 1968<\/a>.\u00a0 Grant Park – haunted by so much<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here’s how I remembered it on the 40th anniversary this summer:<\/p>\n

I wonder if you can imagine what it felt like<\/a>\u00a0to be 22 years old, totally idealistic and what they call “a true believer” and to see policemen behave like that.\u00a0 To see Chicago Mayor Richard Daley<\/a> call the first Jewish Senator, Abraham Ribicoff<\/a>\u00a0of Connecticut, a “kike” (you had to read his lips – there was no audio\u00a0but it was pretty clear) and to see your friends, and colleagues, and\u00a0some-time beloveds with black eyes and bleeding scalps.\u00a0 To be dragged\u00a0by a Secret Service agent from your place next to Senator McCarthy<\/a>\u00a0by the collar of your dress as he addressed the demonstrators,\u00a0battered, bruised and angry. To see everything you’d worked for and\u00a0believed in decimated in the class, generational and political warfare.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Grant_park_obama\"<\/a>Why does this matter, you ask?\u00a0 Because, this moment – 40 years later — as Barack Obama assumed the leadership of our country<\/a> with such an elegant speech, informed and supported in part by the values, and people, who fought, bled and wept through those awful days and by a majority of those as young now as we were then<\/a> and just as committed to the vision they’ve been offered and by an enormous, excited turnout, black and white, — he did so on this same site, in the shadow of the Hilton<\/a> where we put all the kids with broken heads — and tried to keep the tear gas out of our eyes.\u00a0 We’ve been haunted by that time for so long, and as far as I can tell, this was an exorcism. As I heard a commentator say this morning: “The culture wars<\/a> are over.\u00a0 The Vietnam War is over.”\u00a0 And not a moment too soon.<\/p>\n

\"Line_from_steps_cropped\"<\/a>What’s happening is far larger of course.\u00a0 Yesterday morning we voted in our lovely DC neighborhood<\/a>, middle class, well-kept, bikes and an excellent walk-to-it elementary school, so of course
\nthere was a long line waiting to vote in a riot of autumn color.\u00a0 We stood for two hours even though Washington would clearly choose Obama, (and did so with 92% of our votes.) Each individual vote
\nwasn’t urgently needed.\u00a0 Instead, it was the need to cast<\/em> the vote that
\nwas urgent.<\/p>\n

Diverse in age and history, largely African-American, our community stood
\ntogether, talking, laughing, meeting new friends in front of or behind us
\nin line.\u00a0 People had their kids with them, called grown kids on the phone from line and waved at late-arriving neighbors.\u00a0 It was one of those moments where you feel history all around you, and a remarkable privilege to be voting in such company, who’ve worked through all the years of discord to maintain a civil, multicultural community.\u00a0 A bonus.<\/p>\n

Beyond this landmark day, though, the next months are going to be tough.\u00a0 As the new White House staff, cabinet and administration form, all this free-floating joy will take on concrete forms that remind us of the huge challenges and risks that face us.\u00a0 There will be things that disappoint us, and things that make us mad.\u00a0 The reality<\/a> that caused people to elect this man will descend upon us in a relentless\u00a0 economic, social, military and persona avalanche and we may be hard-pressed to remember the joy we felt last night; the promise that has so engaged us.<\/p>\n

When that happens, I will think of the older African-American man who called out “shalom” to us in the canvassing orientation when he saw my friend’s yarmulke, of the excited first-voters<\/a> — just 18 or newly naturalized — whom we met as we walked through one Virginia housing complex after another, of our four-year-old door-bell-ringer<\/a> beside himself over “Obama” and asking everyone from the supermarket checker to his teachers to vote for him, of my sons last night calling and texting literally across a continent and an ocean, of the day I was electrified by the broadcast of Martin Luther King<\/a> on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, of the fact that 66% of under-30 voters<\/a>, so long detached and cynical*, voted for Obama, and, finally, of the distance we have to go – and won’t — unless we work together to resolve each challenge and, perhaps more importantly, each disagreement.<\/p>\n

This is a great day.\u00a0 And a scary one.\u00a0 And now, as our new president-elect prepares to do his part, we have to resolve to do ours: to work through those disappointments and disagreements, to accept the call to contribute and to sacrifice and, as he and Abraham Lincoln before him asked us<\/a>, to heed to the “better angels of of our nature.”\u00a0 \u00a0They’re there – and we’re going to need them.\u00a0 If they can show up, and Barack Obama can show up, so can we.<\/p>\n

* (speaking of younger voters):\u00a0 A friend of my sons (a third son, really) sent me this from one of his favorite blogs<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s just so sweet.<\/p>\n

\"Wow_jedis\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\" Stumble It!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grant Park 1968 – in the heart of Chicago.\u00a0 Grant Park — where my friends and\u00a0 I were gassed and beaten – terrified and abused – during the Democratic Convention in 1968.\u00a0 Grant Park – haunted by so much. Here’s how I remembered it on the 40th anniversary this summer: I wonder if you can … Continue reading OBAMA’S VICTORY GARDEN – EXORCISING DAYS OF RAGE<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,27,7,9,97],"tags":[3413,1044,279,1040,586,996,166,281,285,92,1039,1046,21,1047,1045,1041,167,1043,1042,1048],"class_list":["post-1418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","category-current-affairs","category-life","category-politics","category-television","tag-3413","tag-african-american-voters","tag-barack-obama","tag-canvassing","tag-chicago","tag-election-night","tag-elections","tag-grant-park","tag-martin-luther-king","tag-obama","tag-obama-election-night","tag-obi-wan","tag-politics-2","tag-skywalker","tag-star-wars","tag-volunteering","tag-vote","tag-vote-for-obama","tag-voting","tag-yoda"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-mS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1418"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3490,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418\/revisions\/3490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}