…Below is another Obama Supporters, Riding Subways story from my cousin Sarah Doe.
Last night, as I stepped onto my old familiar L-train, I felt like it was New Year’s Eve. It was after midnight and the train was packed with exuberant 20-somethings. But best of all, as I got on the train, the whole packed car erupted with whoops and cheers and claps. This trend continued at every single stop along the train, from Union Square to Grand Street in Brooklyn, as new passengers got on the train and old passengers left, we all joined in shared celebration. For the first time in our voting lives, a collective hope had been answered with true promise of a better tomorrow. Like us millenials, the cheers were primal and a tad coarse, howls in the night that we could not contain.
In the early hours of yesterday evening, my cousin Michael was full of joy and energy. He compared this pre-returns joy to that of new lovers: maybe it’ll turn into a 4-year relationship or maybe it’s fleeting, but either way he was happy to be happy. And later my friend questioned the degree of change that would occur after Obama won the election.
So it was with great curiosity when I woke and walked to the train for the ‘morning after’ of this new and beautiful relationship. Would people still be shouting in the subways? Would there be ponies and rainbows everywhere? Well, no. There were not those things. Nor was there the unbridled jubilation that had filled the night just hours before. But there was, in the packed rush hour train, a new gentleness. As people pressed into the cars, they negotiated the empty spaces, rather than pushing for a spot. The girl who softly bumped me even more tenderly apologized, and all around the train (speckled with Obama buttons and a few stars and stripes) there was a hesitant trust, not necessarily in Obama or in the political system, but in each other, in ourselves, and in the potential for our futures.
Yes We Did.
This is what Obama has done and will continue to do. This is the deepest part of the change he brings, that grows like grass through pavement because it is rooted in every one of us. This is the power of democracy, and this is why, I can say with a straight face, that I am now proud to be an American.
