Finally, I can exhale. I can settle down. I can relax. Obama did it. He pulled it off. And I have no doubt he did it for me. Of course, it wasn’t only for me. He did it for Rich and Marie too who after graduating from Swarthmore College spent the next ten years of their lives organizing workers on the factory lines. He did it for my very first boyfriend Ricky, a member of SDS, who taught me about political activism as he instructed me on the horrors of the Vietnam War. He did it for my cousin Gail, a Freedom Rider at the age of 19 riding into the segregated South to register voters.
He did it for Dona who took in the homeless and counseled women ravaged by rape. He did it for Lisa on the front lines in the Valley of Virginia, working as fast as she can to protect the beauty of that magical land between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies. He did it for Nancy who taught self-love at the cost of earning a good living. He did it for Lorenzo’s father who passed away last week at 92, and who had despaired at what had happened to his beloved country. He did it for Wendy telling her students that war is not the answer, in spite of warnings from the school administration. He did it for Paul and Lisa to thank them for their mellow musical protest on the streets of buttoned-down, Republican Moorestown. He did it for my dear friend Mary who couldn’t even bring herself to hope.
There was the old black man I met outside the 7-Eleven who wore an Obama button on his cap and told me that it was the first time in his life that he had given money to a political campaign. “Wasn’t much,” he said, “but glad I could do it before I died.”
There was Rashid;there was Frank, an Indian and a Barbadian, two new Americans, transit workers living in Queens who came down on a bus last Saturday to the Boilermakers union in Ben Salem. They came with hundreds of others to help get out the vote in Pennsylvania. They spent their hallowed day off going door to door in suburban Philadelphia, door hangers in hand. He did it for them.
And, of course, it goes without saying that he did it for Andrew Goodman, one of the three white civil rights workers killed in Mississippi in 1964 and for John Brown and for Rosa Parks and for King himself, but he also did it for Father Michael Doyle in Camden, for Alice Paul, for Cindy Sheehan, for Cesar Chavez. And for countless others.
He did it for all of us children of long ago who have always known there was a better way. We could see it, feel it, taste it. He did it for those of us who had forgotten it was possible.
Sixties Chick 