I haven't posted in awhile, not because I've disappeared, but because I didn't have anything I felt deeply moved to say. In part that is because so many others have been doing such a good job of saying the things I believe in recently.
But today at the Obama rally in Denver I was reminded why we do the things we do, why we work so hard, why we fight for important things, why we work the phones and wear out shoes and argue passionately for what we believe in.
Someone reminded me today that one of the very first Obama events in Colorado was way back in late summer 2007 at the Veterans Memorial in Civic Center, and that State Representative Terrence Carrol and I were speakers. It was a rally for Veterans and I think we had maybe 20 people there. I remember thinking we had a lot of work to do.
Today Terrence Carroll gave the invocation and I said the pledge of allegiance in the same park, for the same man, Barack Obama, but today we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 people there to see the next President of the United States. That's quite a neighborhood.
We came full circle today, Terrance and I. I think that when I am old my involvement in this campaign will be one of the proudest parts of my life. And I have to say that I was proud and honored to be with Terrance Carroll in Civic Center Park today, just as I was a year and a half ago. Who could have imagined that from such a humble beginning such a wonderful thing would grow?
But as I drove home I also felt a strange sense of sadness, as if something wonderful were coming to an end. What a thing it is to be part of a movement that transforms America, and to be part of it from the start. The little campaign of 2007 is so much bigger now that those of us who were "bigshots" then are "nobodies" now. And that's okay, because we got what we really wanted all along.
But still that lingering sadness. I'm sad the way a teacher is sad at graduation--very excited that HER kids have finally made it by their hard work and they are graduating, but sad because now they will go out into their lives and not be part of hers anymore except in a much smaller way. Or maybe the way parents are sad when their kids get married and move away. When I say sad I only mean that this little bitty thing we started way back in June 2007 in the gym at Manual High School has gotten so big, and in nine days, one way or the other it will be over and something else will take it's place.
I believe it will be something wonderful, but still, for a year and a half we have been part of something so big, so powerful, that it will likely be the biggest thing we ever do in our lives. And now it's ending. So it's joy at what we've done, but sadness that it is ending. It's not a bad thing. It's thinking of all the times and places and people that we experienced and knowing it's ending now. That kind of sad.
But oh what we have done for America! The truly transformational nature of this election! What will it mean when America finally elects an African American President? It will mean that once and for all the American Dream is reality. That any child in America truly CAN grow up to be President.
And THAT has to be the focus of our next crusade--to make the promise of this campaign a reality for the people of America.