Martin Luther King once said...

"Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy"

It will be one of the most important nights of my life. I was in Salomon 101 (Brown's largest lecture hall) with over 300 politically-conscious, fiercely intelligent Brown students staring at a giant screen - Wolf Blitzer was on CNN, standing next to an elaborate ticker with 10 seconds on the clock. Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa had just been called for Obama - he had 220 electoral votes. The polls were just closing on the West Coast (the bluest of blue parts of the country) - we all KNEW we were about to become a part of history. At 11:07 PM (EST), Barack Obama was declared the next President of the United States of America. And the world was taught to dream again.

It takes real courage, in our world, to profess faith in the slogan "YES WE CAN". Barely 3 hours after Barack Obama's elegant, modest and inspiring acceptance speech (more on that later), I was assaulted by people (in real life and online) who had already begun doubting the man, his agenda and what he could achieve (not much, they argued). This is what Barack Obama was up against - a nation and a world gagging on fear.

The far-right in this country claim to have an undying and unwavering love for god and their religion - and yet, I find it puzzling how afraid they are of the unknown. George W. and his cronies have invested in fear tactics and a politics of suspicion for far too long. How can politics be inspiring when the party in power is using the White House as its base for planning illegitimate wars, concocting new methods of torture, writing up new tax plans to make their CEO friends richer and delegitimizing people's identities and their right to freedom and equality regardless of their race, gender or sexual orientation. How can we believe in those politics?

I sincerely hope you have all watched Obama's acceptance speech from the night of the 4th. If you have not, watch it here / read it here . It was a simple speech with a decidedly sombre tone. And that, my friends, is what relieved me. This is not a man who is looking to be a demi-god or make a quick buck and gain celebrity status for four years. This is not a man who speaks well and hides his intention using ideas stolen from Utopia. He is a man, I truly believe, who wants to make his country a better place. He stood on that stage in Grant Park - faced his nation (and the rest of this super-nosy, entitled world) alone. But he told us that he cannot do this alone. In his eyes, I saw him pleading - I saw him humbly asking us to re-think our priorities and the ways in which we've been leading our lives. I saw him willing us to be better people - to open our hearts to those around us, to want less and give more.

Barack Hussein Obama, I believe, is that rare breed of politician - the proactive kind. As I type this, he is at work naming his chief-of-staff (Rahm Emmanuel - he's a hardline pro-israel tool. anyway, what can be done.), assembling the rest of his senior officials (his Secretary of the Treasury is expected to be the next annoucement) and setting up meetings for early next week with the outgoing (PRAISE THE LORD) government to discuss issues facing the nation and ensure a successful handover of power. Same time in 2000? George W. Bush went on holiday. No joke.

I graduate in May 2009. Ever since I came to college, I had decided that I would take time off and bid farewell to the US of A for a while. A very long while. But, I admit it - I want to stay. I want to be a part of a country that can make an informed decision and vote into Presidency the "unlikeliest of candidates". I want to be a part of a country that will cease to be over-run by religious zealots who will take away my personal freedoms as a woman with their "pro-life" agenda, maniacs who believe that only by being armed can we ensure peace and security and narrow-minded bigots who believe in their right to claim supremacy because of their white race and their heterosexual orientation. I want to be a part of a nation that is inching towards universal freedom. I want to be a part of this nation where even the most stringent of all anarchists on Brown's campus can, for one night, shed their constructed shells of political apathy and salute the American flag and proudly sing, nay, YELL "The Star-Spangled Banner".

I'm not going to top off this post with a disclaimer that reads: "is he perfect? of course not. will he change everything? of course not". I won't do that because he has never claimed to be superhuman or possess the power to right global wrongs singlehandedly. I don't think this election "proves that racism is dead" [Obama's heightened security, the morbid conditions of slums in the inner-cities and the frighteningly high number of incarcerated Black men easily disprove that statement]. It does convince me that we are slowly deconstructing white hegemony and empowering ourselves as people of colour. It does prove that Americans are tired of the narrow-minded, war-mongering politics of the last 8 years. It does prove that we, like the new President of the United States of America (I get goosebumps everytime I say that!), have not lost the ability to believe in our own abilities to change the world. It does prove that America is willing to submit to a politics of Hope and not one of cynicism.

"I'm not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't talk about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's...Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!"
- Barack Obama, addressing the Democratic National Convention in 2004

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In summary,

this is the first family of the United States of America!
Yet people still continue to ask if "change" is possible.

P.S. - I am very distressed and angered by the passing of Prop 8 in California and I have a LOT to say on this awful piece of legislature. But that is coming in another post. This one's for Barack :)