kalpurna

I haven't even backread my flist; I feel like I haven't sat down since yesterday at noon, when I set out for Grant Park.

I know that I should be writing up my impressions of the night so that I can show them to my grandchildren, but I don't even know what to say or how to be coherent so just a few things:

- We arrived at 1:30 and were among the first 1000 people. We could have been about 5 people from the ticket-holders' barrier, but we decided to go sit in front of the jumbotron instead, having been standing for hours already. I could see Obama's head and shoulders above the podium.

- The man in front of me in line asked semi-accusingly if I thought the youth vote would actually turn out. All I could say was that I thought so.

- Rumors kept buzzing through the line - that Pennsylvania had been called for Obama, that the exit polls were frighteningly close. None of them turned out to be true, of course.

- There was a young black woman in front of us at the rally who didn't sit down once. She spent the whole time swinging an "I have a dream" shirt over her head and yelling, and when it happened she hugged everyone she could get to.

- The crowd went insane for Pennsylvania, and insane for Ohio. CNN was on the jumbotrons whenever they weren't showing crowd shots, and the moment Grant Park knew he'd won was while the panelists were still talking when they flashed Virginia's results at the bottom of the screen. Anderson Cooper stopped the woman who was speaking and took us to the Virginia projection and then we all counted down the seconds until California closed and they called the race.

- People clapped for McCain's speech, which I think came across as surprisingly gracious. I believe he meant it.

- The sound-check guy finished testing the mics with "Last soundcheck for the next President of the United States."

- Michigan Avenue after the event wasn't remotely chaotic. People walked out and got home, hundreds of thousands of them, without a single emotion expressed other than joy.

- Waiting for the bus home on the South Side people were leaning out their car windows and honking and screaming with happiness.

I don't think I'm deluded about what this means. I was revolted last night and today by the number of talking heads and politicians whom I saw suggest that from this day forward, black people have no right to object to their treatment in this country. People honestly seem to think that this means that the right to point out racism is ended. (Then again, I have a hunch these are the same people who never thought that anyone had a right to point out racism in the first place.) That's not even mentioning the sexist language, insinuations, and outright statements I've seen directed against Sarah Palin from people who claim to be liberals. I don't have to like her to hate that.

But we did something yesterday as a nation. We arrived at a new moment in our history.

And I was there.