“That One” Won

7 AM Election Day. A curtain of fog on I-87 hid traffic on all sides as we merged south, headed for Monroe County, PA. I didn’t know how the election would play out. I didn’t dare to hope but win or lose this election was an historic moment and that, along with my 16 year old daughter’s enthused nagging, propelled me.

I allowed my daughter to skip school so we could carpool with an English teacher who was also skipping school. As taillights blinked and dissolved into the grey I experienced a feeling of tempered buoyancy as hope vied with pragmatic non-attachment. Just as the public opinion polls vied each other, in a constant swinging pendulum of propaganda, nothing was to be trusted, my feelings or otherwise. So it was the tidbits I had heard from those on the ground, like a shell found on the sand, which sang courage in my ear. The dogged volunteers were excited and positive. The young were confident, “Oh, he’s gonna win,” they pronounced offhandedly. The woman of color, sitting next to me at a phone bank patted my hand, “Don’t be afraid.”

The English teacher maneuvered his silver Saab with the deftness of a NASCAR driver as I gabbed non-stop about politics and culture. My daughter sat silent in the backseat. The Saab shot like a bullet through the cataract of fog.

I was born in Buffalo, New York in the last month of 1960. As a child I shared in the dream, believing the fight against injustice was not only the founding principal of our country but also the highest achievement of humanity. For a while, because my father believed religion should not be segregated, we were the only white family (my mother being Chinese) in an all black church on the east side. As a family we marched in DC for civil rights and against the war. I remember riding on my father’s shoulders looking out above a sea of heads.

In elementary school, my main hero was Harriet Tubman. At home my hero was Martin Luther King, Jr. I was very young but somehow deep ideals thrilled me as they do young children, who when hearing life’s questions discussed seriously will sit quietly and listen intently. It was natural that my heart should swell with patriotism during the pledge of allegiance. I loved the idea that every vote counted.

The collective dream was ripped apart by a hail of bullets, bigotry and the rawness of the times. JFK, Bobby, Malcom X, MLK. I was seven the year Martin Luther King Jr., was assassinated. When my father asked me what I wanted for Christmas that December (I had just turned 8) I replied, “Peace on Earth.” He didn’t believe me. “Oh, come on. What do you really want?”

But only the year before, MLK had come to Buffalo to soothe the city after a race riot had shut it down. Now there was fear of more rioting. The Vietnam War reached into our dining room every night on TV. Each year of the 60’s brought images of deep turbulence. Life magazine depicted a lynching in the south. A monk had set himself on fire. Every slap of violence rippled out to me and I felt its sting. Why would a child not want “Peace on Earth” to calm the storm of unrest.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder brought a divide of grief and shame. We were separated, black and white, as happens when a death shatters a family and hurts cannot find reconciliation. We were torn apart—the mission of those bullets accomplished.

Now on Election Day 2008, forty years later, as we drove through Milford, PA a spontaneous healing was happening within me. A chasm bridged to somewhere and I was walking across. From the Saab we cheered on the black youth on the street corners as they chanted “Obama!” A long line at a polling place was a joy to behold. At the Shroudsburg Obama Headquarters a fifteen-year-old volunteer greeted us and as we signed us in I heard him mutter, “I wish I could vote.”

The groundwork of Obama’s PA Get Out the Vote campaign had already been lain by thousands of volunteers before us—campaign workers that toiled day and night for months. There were thousands more working in other states like the Carolinas, Ohio, and Virginia. And I am grateful for all their efforts and spirit because for us, the three in the Saab from Kingston, there was left only the ease of calling on Obama supporters and reminding them to vote.

I walked with my daughter, our arms encircling each others' waist in the sweet fall air of developments and lower-income neighborhoods. The question “Did you vote today?” was answered most often with sparkling eyes and beaming smiles. Black and white. Ebony and ivory (that corny song). We were united by hope. I didn’t realize till then that I had been lacking. Sure I had believed in working in good faith without reward and was happy for the good fight. But as a blog noted, the Bush administration had finally succeeded in brainwashing us to believe that we, as nation, were just plain greedy, lazy, stupid and racist.

George W had won Monroe County by 4 votes in 2004. Obama would win it by over 10,000 votes. Obama had inspired our own awaking, our own inspiration.

That night back in Kingston, at the Democratic Victory party at the Holiday Inn, I cheered with the crowd as the election results rolled in. Hands were thrown up in the air across the entire room. My daughter’s boyfriend, who had met up with us, received a text from his father that read simply, History! And we were part of it. Sharing all together, at last once again, in the noble dream.