As I write this, I have been up all night. My feet are
throbbing, my legs feel like they’re made of old recycled tire rubber
and my back has seized up so stiff that it hurts to stretch. I just made
myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich — for breakfast. And I am
the luckiest person I know.
I spent last night in Chicago at Grant Park at the
Barack Obama rally. A friend scored one of the 70,000 tickets for a spot
inside Hutchinson Field, and even though he could have traded the
accompanying guest pass for as much as $1,000 cash (or any number of
tempting would-be companions on Craigslist offering everything from good
karma to massages to juggling lessons), he took me. We missed work, we
missed sleep, we paid absurd prices for parking and bottled water, and we
never got to actually see Obama. But hey — we feel like we
experienced history.
I know, I know: Us and 200,000 other souls. But what
a remarkably diverse congregation we were: Black, white, Asian, Hispanic,
Indian, and plenty of people who looked like they have to always check the
box “other;” white-haired elders, infants in baby slings,
boomers and Gen X, Y and Z-ers; gay, straight, jocks, geeks, hippies, and
yuppies, plus a little of everything in between.
If there was a common thread other than support for
Obama, it was jovial decency. I’ve never seen so many people happy to
be squished together. Nobody complained about standing in line; we passed
the time swapping info about the early returns. Nobody complained about the
four security checkpoints; we all wanted Obama to be safe. Even the law
enforcement officers were cheerful, purposely overlooking allegedly
contraband items like bottled water, potato chips and Swedish fish.
I met plenty of people you might consider obvious
Obama-ites — middle-aged minorities like the elementary school
counselor who had been working at the polling place inside her school just
a few hours earlier when her alderman stopped by to vote and ended up
giving her his rally ticket. “My principal and I were the only ones
there, and the principal had to stay until the building closed. So I got
the ticket!” the counselor said.
I met a young blond man sporting a starched
button-down shirt embroidered with the Ralph Lauren polo logo. While we
were waiting to go through security checkpoint number four, his chatter
about swing states was spiced with an accent. “I’m from
Hungary,” he said. “This was my first time to vote.”
Red-headed Mary Kate Cahill might not have been the
most enthusiastic spectator, but she had to be close. Like anyone else
shorter than seven feet tall, she couldn’t see the stage from her
vantage point somewhere around the third base line in the baseball diamond
carved into the field. So Mary Kate pogo-ed like she was practicing her
jump shot — over and over and over again. Her New Balance trainers
got saturated with clay; her wind pants had dust halfway up to her knees.
But it was totally worth it to Mary Kate.
“I could see his head!” she said. “I
could see him and [Joe] Biden and I was just like wow, he’s actually
there!”
In between leaps, she kept hugging her mom, her dad,
and her aunt. Just 13, she had spent the past two weekends knocking on
doors in Indiana and Ohio. Her sweatshirt was festooned with campaign
buttons, including one that said “canvasser.”
“We are big Democrats, and we love Obama,”
she said. “This is just amazing. I mean, it’s like an
African-American president of the United States of America! This guy is
young and new and I just think this is gonna be a really great time. I just
think it’s gonna be great.”
When I asked Mary Kate how she would’ve felt if
John McCain had won, she chided the rally guests who had sung a stanza of
“Hey Hey Goodbye” while the Republican contender’s
concession speech played on the Jumbotron.
“I didn’t like when they were singing
‘Na Na Na.’ I’m not into that. I mean, McCain’s a
classy guy. He called [Obama] and didn’t make him wait. I
would’ve been obviously disappointed, but I wouldn’t have booed
McCain,” she said. “The American people have the right to
choose who they want.”
When the rally ended, 200,000 people had to be
funneled out of the park. Amazingly, the egress was just as orderly and
cordial as the ingress. Maybe that’s because alcohol was banned in
the park, and even in the nearby hotel where Illinois
Times food writer Julianne Glatz booked a room
overlooking the festivities. But it couldn’t have hurt that all those
200,000 people were both utterly exhausted and deliriously happy.
Contact Dusty Rhodes at drhodes@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2008.
