America 2008, Or Berlin 1989?

A truly remarkable thing happened in Washington last night, as the world finished watching Barack Obama deliver his victory speech in Chicago and hundreds of election-watch parties being held by Democrats in raucous bars and shi-shi hotel ballrooms across the capital broke up after hours of non-stop whooping and cheering.

Someone, or more likely several someones, made a decision to march on the White House. And seemingly the rest of the city followed on behind.

They streamed down the hill from Adams Morgan, down 16th St and along Pennsylvania Avenue to converge on the edge of Lafayette Park. They sang songs, beat on drums, waved life-size cardboard replicas of Obama, hugged, kissed, high-fived and alternated chants of "Yes we can!" with "No more Bush!" For blocks around, cars lined up along the improbably jammed downtown streets echoed the rhythm of those chants with volley after volley of three short toots of their horns.

This wasn't an organized celebration like the gathering in Chicago's Grant Park. It didn't involve buses and organizers and legal protection volunteers, like the vast protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle nine years ago, or the mass demonstrations on the eve of the Iraq war. It was something altogether more unusual in American public life: a spontaneous political gathering of thousands of ecstatic, peaceful revellers who decided to make their feelings known before the most powerful political office on the planet. It was a celebration, for sure, but it was also some kind of deeper statement: that the people had been living under some sort of perversion of democracy for a long time but now felt emboldened to claim it back for themselves.

The disaster of the last eight years under Bush, as well as the overwhelming partisan preference of the District's residents (Obama got 92 per cent of the vote here), certainly did a lot to fuel that sentiment. But it also went a lot deeper than that. For too long, politics in this country -- both Republican and Democrat -- has been seen as something intangible and inaccessible to ordinary people and their everyday concerns. Now, with a black man pulling off the astonishing feat of rising to the presidency in a land riven by racism for more than two centuries, there was a sense of extraordinary release, and even more extraordinary empowerment. For one night at least, we could fantasize that the White House was the people's house, after all.

The moment couldn't help but remind me of the extraordinary outpourings of "people power" that toppled the Communist governments of eastern Europe in 1989, or of the hugely inventive, almost poetic mass demonstrations in Serbia in the mid-1990s against the despotic rule of Slobodan Milosevic. "We are the people," they chanted in Leipzig and Berlin in those heady days. A very similar sentiment abounded last night in the usually staid confines of downtown Washington.

Many, many Obama supporters kept saying how relieved they felt, as if a great burden had been lifted. The African Americans were the most exuberant (of course). Nobody, black or white, young or old, could quite believe what was happening. Even the Secret Service and the DC cops keeping an eye from a discreet distance said they had seen nothing like it.

This is what democracy at its best looks like. This is how people come to have hope in the future again. Now, of course, it's up to the new administration to deliver -- an altogether trickier proposition.

Read more reaction from HuffPost bloggers to Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election

Comments

[SaulBloodworth]

While I don't want to diminish the Obama presidency - it is important - it can be, in absolutely no way, compared to Berlin 1989. In Berlin 1989 people actually risked to get shot at, killed, and put in jail by an oppressive regime, just to be free. No such risk was taken in America 2008.

Well, if the U.,S. had overthrown Bush in 2003 ... that would be another story

[linzy]

I'm proud to be a "minority": white, female, over 62! I, too, feel like I've been liberated from fear and it feels so good! Perhaps now, with Obama's new voice, energy and strength we can all stop being wary of one another and get on with the business of enriching and strengthening our multi-cultural country, these United States of America. This cannot be done with anything but renewal of mutual respect, honesty, and belief in the goodness that has too long been kept from us. Yes we can.

[wrylass]

Beautiful. Wish I hadn't been in a red state last night ... but our victory party was still great.

[XME]

I know what you mean. I was SO excited that our state (Virginia) was blue for the first time in 44 years!

[AnotherHuddy]

It was like this in a lot of places.

[anon004]

I've benn feeling so emotional since last night, crying and smiling, and thinking about the future. My family and friends are doing okay, no different than they were yesterday and the day before. I knew I had felt this exact same way before, but I couldn't figure out when. Your post reminded me: Nov 10, 1989. Another event I didn't expect to see in my lifetime. Another event which was joyful, yet a reminder of the hard work to come (it will take Germany a generation to bring former East Germany to EU standards). Yes we did, and for the future, yes, we can!

[SirRealDeal]

This was not an election about Conservatism vs Liberalism
This was not an election about Socialism vs Capitalism
This was not an election about Rich vs Poor, Black vs White, Young vs Old.

This was an election about the Hope for the Future vs the Fear Rooted in the Past

And Hope Won!!

As he said from the stage
As the video sang on YouTube
As the world collectively prayed

YES WE CAN!

[BoulderSue]

It was beautiful to watch, and probably a lot more significant than we know. Maybe it signifies the end of fear that has permiated this country since 9/11 and the beginning of a truly positive (though difficult) time in our history. We have our country back from the fearmongers and administration members with non-existent memories re: wrong doings. I feel as though the sun is a bit brighter today....

[scubasteve]

Majority rules

Xenophobic bluster and belicosity lost. I don't feel so outnumbered after all.

[Singer7]

It is a triumph of rationality, intelligence and moderation over the forces of ignorance, ideology and intolerance. I am so very proud of those Americans who took a this very wonderful potential to the very top.

I have yet to see a campaign so dirty and so full of lies BUT they did not prevail. Those who organized and pushed for the divisive and ideological elements, for a time, are overcome but they are too determined to ever stop their efforts. Rational people everywhere must work together in the future, as they did this time, to keep the extremists at bay.

[CitizenoftheRepublic]

Heed these words! A crack was opened up last night that WE THE PEOPLE must galvanize together as the pry bar and rip open. The shield of influence and deception that has encapsulated our government and its elected officials will come down like the wall in 1989 by the sheer force of will by THE PEOPLE, not merely the President we elected. That cult of greed and division that has manipulated and twisted our government into a blunt instrument that they wield to punish, kill and dictate policy with to any individual or group that dares to stand up in their way are already under way re-characterizing themselves as the NEW same old, same old. Our President elect warned us Tuesday that WE must be vigilant in our endeavor to redefine how we are going to allow THEM to govern us and set our course for reconstruction and development of OUR futures! Pay attention and be stead fast in responding to your Senators and Representatives as they generate new laws, ideologies and policy to change our paths. It is your DUTY to know the contact info for your elected officials and to be involved in the process of governing. I am tired of hearing US blame our elected officials for mismanaging and creating this current turmoil when they could only get away with it because not enough of US are paying attention and guiding THEM! DO YOU ALL GET IT!!! It is not about party… it’s about PARTICIPATION!

[NevaforLeadership]

It really riles me when the media keep on insisting that Barack Obama is a black man. His mother was white; his father black, so we could just as easily call him a white man. Or, maybe he's neither black nor white. Or, maybe he's both.

Barack Obama is an American, and he belongs to the same race to which the rest of us belong. The one "human" race.

Advanced genetic research has proven that each and everyone of us is descended from a small band of people who migrated out Africa and populated the world. So we can just as easily say we are all African Americans.

It was the media that injected the race card into this election day after day. Unfortunately a lot of John McCain's and Sarah Palin's supporters signed on to that representation. I know, because if ran into the bigotry, hatred and fear mongering on the Internet every day. In my view, the media are as culpable as they are.

Luckily most of America believe that Barack Obama is an American.

Congratulations President-Elect Barack Obama and Vice-President Elect Joe Biden.

[clearsense]

How true. I have written that Obama was as white as he is black, but the press and his supporters were obsessed with the race thing. I am now in Idaho, and even here no one really cares about the race of the candidate. The race card was probably more important in the south and the east, but in the west it wasn't even part of any discussion I was involved with. I don't remember it being a big issue with Condoleeza Rice, but with Obama, if you favored someone else, you were called racist. I often hear of Obama being referred to as an African American. Now I am confused, was he born in Hawaii or in Kenya. If he was born in Hawaii, then he is an American. Why this hyphenated-American garbage. If we are equal, why separate some with a hyphen?

[BoulderSue]

Let's face it: racists and bigots have always had a thing about "purity" and it has spilled over into the national consciousness, not always in a derogatory way, thank Heaven. If you are darker than me (I am white) then you are " person of color" and subject to being called all kinds of things, some worse than others. By now only the very ignorant don't know tht Barack is half "white", and many of them don't care, still think it's a bad thing because he looks Black. Remember, it was against the law in many states for Barack's parents to be married when they did, and a very brave thing to do. In Hitlerian Germany, if you weren't "pure", non-Jewish., you might as well be full blooded and the same goes for part whites for many in this country in too many people's mind: darker skin is bad, and you don't even have to be African-American to fit the description. The same would apply to native Hawaiians. Hopefully, with the increasing familiarity of a "Black" family in the White House, it will begin to matter less and less. Personally, I don't care, and have a lot of faith that the younger generations will care even less.

[stphdys]

This was very important to the White Society when I was coming up. It wouldn't matter if you looked as white as a white person if you had 1/5th Black Blood you were"Black" period. Hyphenated was coined during the 60's to show that we as Black People were proud of our heritage, which of course was from Africa. Many of us Black Youths at that time was just proud to be called "Black". Today I see the young people redefining the main stream culture in our society and perhaps it wont be needed in the future.

[Whiplash]

Interestingly enough, Barack is more "White" than he is "Black".
I don't mean genetically, but rather from an environmental point of view - he hardly knew his African father and was brought up by white people without any connection to the "black experience".
For example, he is not the descendant of slaves and had no relationship with people who have had second-hand knowledge of what slavery was like. The mental scars that seem to be inherited or passed on due to early and repetitious exposure to retelling have been the subject of many psychological studies. He would never have been exposed to this. As a child, he also would have never had the experience of family gatherings during which discussion and acceptance of what it means to be black in the USA was the dominant topic.
In fact Barack's childhood had more in common with a white person than with a black person.
I'm not saying that his teenage and adult years have not taught him about the implications of his skin color; only that purely from a comparative perspective, classifying him as black is decidedly more inaccurate than classifying him as white.

[katyusha]

Washington, DC -- a town not given to inordinate exhibits of exuberance, or inordinate exhibits of anything, come to think of it -- a two o'clock this morning was like ... oh, maybe, the Jedi had won the Super Bowl at a wedding in Beirut during Mardi Gras. And I -- a typical Washingtonian so far as that can be measured in exhibits of exuberance -- was out there with the best and the rest of them, celebrating the return of my country to its people, the return of this country to the world.

[singwood]

Andrew, you make a great observation. The shackles of fear were broken in 1989 in Europe. Fear is a powerful tool of a despot. The Bush regime used it incessantly. The people of America broke their shackles of fear last night. Fear is bred by isolation. Enlightenment thrives in cosmopolitan urbanity. In all countries the rightwing is strongest in rural areas. The cities are bastions of tolerance and liberal thought.