As I watched the election results flash on my TV screen while I surfed between CNN, MSNBC, New England Cable News, and Comedy Central, I simultaneously sent messages to my Twitter stream of friends and strangers – people I’ve met in person and others I don’t know other than living around the world – who also watched TV and surfed online publications, trying to see who would break something, anything, first.
I also participated in a live-blogging exercise via CoverItLive, an online application that enabled me and other online journalists to react in real-time to a larger base of global bloggers writing about Barack Obama and the election from their eyes.
The CoverIt live blogging was a last-minute effort through Voices without Votes, the Reuters-sponsored group blog project I joined several weeks ago. (You can read my VwV contributions here.)
In due time, it came and the world watched and stared, transfixed to their TV and computer screens as he began speaking.
Moments after (or was it before?) President-elect Barack Hussein Obama spoke to a crowd of 125,000 friends, colleagues, and supporters at Chicago’s Grant Park (and carried live on broadcast and cable TV to millions around the world), CNN contributor Roland Martin spoke of the importance of the election to his family.
Roland recollected to his childhood when then-friends of his, young Black Americans, said they wanted to grow up and be President. The kids were ridiculed.
Fast forward to today, and Roland remarked he now can tell his nieces and nephews they can be anything they want to be.
Dreams aren’t fantasies anymore.
I saw this reflected in twitterville and the bloggerville. Everyone said, in a collective breath, “Yes we can.”
I recall the months after 9/11 when the world stood with New York and said, in unison, “I am a New Yorker.”
Until Obama is President, the next 76 days will be wondrous ones, full of what I hope to be more cheer than animosity. The world wanted an Obama Administration by a ratio of about 90 percent more than they wanted John McCain to win. The world got their wish and celebrations are occurring globally.
I hope that Americans can stand with their worldly peers and echo the post-9/11 words with a new sentence: “I am an American and I stand behind my new President.”
Roland Martin had a dream when he was younger. That dream is now a reality.
I, too, had a dream in grade school, wanting to grow up and be the first Jewish president of the country. I remember more jeers and sneers than pats on the back.
Older and wiser now, I don’t want to be president. But I still have dreams, including political ones.
Maybe you do, too.
If America can elect an African American as its President in 2008, anything is possible.
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Ari Herzog is an online media strategist and Newburyport City Councilor-Elect.
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I think watching the streets filled with Americans last night showed a great sense of pride, spirit, and morale for our great country. We normally don’t see that sense of nationalism unless their is a tragedy. To see all types of people come together was amazing. Here’s a nice video slide show from CNN of Obama’s speech. http://www.cnn.com/interactive/allpolitics/0811/slideshow.obama.speech/
I, too, am thrilled at the turn this country is taking! Long live the Obamas!!!
Considering the factors and the dynamics of this historical presidential race surrounding the person, the technology and the economic challenges facing this nation, I predict governments’ (federal, state and local) buzz word for 2009 will be “Engagement.”
That’s what it will take to flesh out knowledgeable ideas, build consensus or identify disagreement, and make more informed policy decisions that benefit the whole.
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