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Election Day. Weeks of anxiety and uncertainty had turned into excitement mixed with steely assuredness. We were going to win this election. I worked at the polls all day, volunteering for the campaign. I witnessed the kinds of things that you would imagine hearing about on the local six o'clock news reel. A 94 year old woman had walked halfway across mid-town just to be able to cast her ballot. I rushed to her when I saw her coming up the street and offered my arm. After covering up my campaign t-shirt with a jacket, I helped her into the church to vote and called a taxi to take her back home so that she wouldn't have to brave the twenty blocks alone once more. “But I haven't any money,” she said. “Not to worry,” I replied. “Barack Obama is paying for the cab.” There, in the cold afternoon of election day, Mrs. Joanne Edge had changed my life. As I helped her into the cab, I realized that it was people like her that made this election truly remarkable. People both young and old came out in droves, many voting for the first time in their lives. I had never been actively involved or even interested in politics before, but this election was different. I found myself gripped with something that I had never experienced before. I felt like this was our time, my generation's time to get involved and to have a say in the leaders that we chose. As the day died down and the polls prepared to close, a familiar sense of nervousness crept back into my stomach. A man on one of the upper floors of an apartment building across the street cracked open his window. Election results had begun to come in from the east coast. “We've won Vermont!” he yelled down to us. We let out a loud cheer. At 7, when the polls closed, we packed it up and headed back to campaign headquarters. Groups of volunteers were huddled together watching the results on computer monitors. There was a general sense of exhaustion and excitement in the air. I didn't linger long. Most of the volunteers had been working for the campaign for over a year. I felt a little like the new kid in a group of old friends- out of the loop. I wandered across town to the Power and Light District. They had CNN on a huge screen in the amphitheater. People had gathered to watch. The temperature dropped as the sun went down, and not having a jacket, I decided to eventually head home. I ran the last leg of my trip at full speed. My neighborhood, like many this close to the city, was littered with signs. “Yes We Can.” I burst through the front door and turned on the TV. We had won Ohio. Victory was in the air. None of the networks had called it yet, but the deal was sealed. Barack Obama was going to win the election. I trudged up the stairs, took off my shoes and turned on the television in my bedroom. That's when I heard it. The west coast polls had closed. CNN announced that Barack Obama would be the 44th President of the United States. I stopped cold and sat down on my bed. We won. We really won. I couldn't even begin to comprehend what this meant. As I watched the sea of faces in Grant Park, I went through an entire spectrum of emotions. I felt shock, disbelief, awe. I was at once incredibly humbled and unbelievably ecstatic. I didn't know whether to scream out in joy or to break down and cry. By the end of the night, I had done both several times. I sobbed as I watched the now President-Elect Barack Obama walk out on stage to greet his supporters. I felt like my entire life had conspired to bring me to this day- to this one point in American history. I had hoped and believed in this man so fiercely and now, all of those hopes had been realized. I participated in an election for the first time in my life and had been a part of history. When I finally turned off the TV and crawled into bed, I didn't know if I would be able to sleep. I had had trouble sleeping in the weeks leading up to the election, but that night, I drifted off easily and slept well for the first time in months.
On Wednesday morning, I woke up to a new world. It was as if my entire life, I had been seeing the world through a veil and that veil had finally been lifted. It was a new day in America. People in general seemed to be in a really great mood for the first time in years. I found myself unable to stop smiling. In the street and on the bus, people smiled back at me. It was as if we were all acknowledging that something extraordinary had happened. The America that I live in is a confluence of everything that shaped me. I live in the inner city and work at once of the most exclusive restaurants in town. Everyday I see the cost of life in America. I see the people that sweep the streets, and the people that own the streets. I know how so many have suffered over the last eight years, and I am wise enough to understand that many of them will continue to suffer, even under a new President. People in my neighborhood will still have to struggle and fight to get by. They will still have to go to work and come home each and every day without proper health care, or proper wages. But I know, and I suspect that they know- they didn't vote because they expected a miracle or a handout. The hope that they hold onto isn't blind optimism. They hold onto hope, because for many, it is all they have.
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