I've never known so much excitement about a US election. Senator Barack Obama is already an inspiration to people throughout Europe. Black students at the University where I teach, soccer fans on a message board I visit, strangers on the street wearing Obama buttons and baseball caps - I have never felt an American election impinge on our consciousness in the way that this one has. The whole world is looking to the New World tomorrow, looking for leadership in the current crisis, looking for a moral centre that puts ordinary people and their needs at the heart of the hard decisions that we will face over the coming years.
Because the movement that you have created and the leadership that Senator Obama has shown has put the US at the centre of the radical movement again. We need your community activism, we need your energy. Most of all we need your hope.
You can remember the reception that Senator Obama received in Berlin.Today that that would be repeated in every capital in Europe. I'm trying not to tempt fate here, but I cannot tell you what psychic energy is being expended in London in support of Senator Obama. Thumbs are being held, fingers are crossed, no pavement (sidewalk) line in Europe is being stepped on. There's a shortage of good luck charms because they're all in use.
So help us America. We are waiting for you. We will be watching for you. We will be counting every vote - we will be watching every fluctuation in the polls. And more than anything we will desperately be hoping that the 5th of November, a day which in Britain is celebrated by bonfires and fireworks to commemorate the thwarting of an attempt to blow up Parliament in the seventeenth century, will from this day forth be remembered as the day that government was transformed; this time, by peaceful means, by an extraordinary man and the extraordinary coalition who have gathered around him and whose work I read about here on Daily Kos.
So there will be fireworks in London tomorrow. And if Senator Obama becomes President Obama there will be tears and laughter and celebration. And most of all there will be hope. That there is another way. That ordinary people can make a difference. That the kind and the thoughtful and the courageous can triumph over the cowardly and the cruel and the mean.
We are with you America. We're watching you. Show us the way.