What is Possible

Usually it takes fifteen minutes to vote in Cambridge, Massachusetts; this year it was an hour. The line at my polling place stretched out the back door of City Hall, around the corner, and down to the video store.

A diverse group of Cambridge residents stood waiting on this unseasonably warm day to cast our ballots. As I moved closer to the door, I saw a woman from my church’s religious education committee and waved. She came over, her teenage daughter beside her. “I just wanted her to see this historic moment,” she said.

When it was my turn to vote, I did so with a sense of pride in my presidential choice and my decisions on statewide initiatives. On both issues, the long line filled with my neighbors and fellow Cantabridgians reassured me that the outcome for Massachusetts would be positive.

Soon after voting, I was driving my husband and three Unitarian Universalist friends up to New Hampshire to volunteer for Obama. The highway was lined with colored leaves, yellow, red, brown and orange.

Southern New Hampshire, where we knocked on doors, was having a beautiful day too. In the first neighborhood that we visited, cute houses lined the short streets, and in seemingly no time we had covered our ground. Our task was to knock on the doors of Obama supporters and ask if they had voted, and then to note their reply. Everyone we spoke to had voted already, except for one woman on an oxygen tank who said her husband would drive her to the polls at 3pm.

Our next neighborhood was on the ocean. A friend and I took a break to climb up the sandy slope to the beach and watch the waves come crashing in. Later, as the sun was setting, we drove a few minutes away to a marshland area, where we had a few remaining Obama supporters to visit. As I knocked on the door of a small trailer, I peeked up through one window and saw straight through to a second window on the other side, and to the deep blue sky beyond.

By the time we made our last round, it was so dark that some of our teammates carried flashlights. And when we piled in the car to drive back to Boston, we knew the day of voting was almost over, and the results would be announced soon. When we received a text message from my best friend saying New Hampshire and Massachusetts had been declared for Obama, I screamed and pounded with my fist on the roof of the car.

And when we learned, later in the night, that Obama would be our next president, I cried. I spoke to my parents, who were elated. And to one of my mom’s best friends (a Hillary supporter and champion of women’s rights) who was overjoyed and told me she never thought she’d see the day. I called my brother, a former Harlem school teacher who had been an early supporter of Obama. And we opened champagne with another couple, also from our church, who had volunteered for Obama in his primary run.

We were overjoyed and teary-eyed, but too tired from a long day to go dancing in the streets. Maybe we showed our age. Judith Warner writes in the New York Times:

It is, I suppose, in part a matter of temperament, whether one shouts or weeps at happy transformative moments. But I also think it’s a matter of what has come before. The young people joyfully frolicking in front of the Bush White House never knew the universe whose passing was marked by Obama’s victory and Jackson’s tears.

I had the odd sense of my husband and I standing on the cusp of two generations. We’re too young to have experienced the civil rights movement, but too old to consider Obama’s victory our coming-of-age moment (for me, that was protesting the bombing of Afghanistan in 2001 and the lead-up to the war in Iraq).

I’m not so young that I quit my job or left school to volunteer for Obama — but I’m so grateful to those who did. And so grateful to all of those who laid the groundwork for this day through decades of struggle. It’s not just a moment for young people and not just a moment for African Americans — it’s a moment for all Americans who celebrate the significance and possibilities of Obama’s presidency.

Now I am focused on what is possible. My mind is racing with visions of what can now be accomplished.

We — all Americans concerned about justice, equality and compassion — are just getting started. The day after the election, there were reminders of how far America still has to go. The passage of Proposition 8 in California was a stark reminder that the American dream is still not available to all. As Rev. Keith Kron wrote in his blog post:

…only time will tell if yesterday really leads to more than one new day in America. We will have to continue to work on issues of race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, the environment, and many more.

But for the first time in years, I feel that a better future is possible — if we in America continue to advocate for it. Now, I am excited for the progress that our country can make on fighting global warming, expanding health insurance coverage, making our economic system more fair, welcoming immigrants, and defending the civil rights of all Americans. And I’m elated to think that each of us living in this country has the chance to be a part of this new moment, to make real what is possible.