I watched the election results intently last night, like most Americans. As the evening progressed, my thoughts about the outcome darted quickly and almost randomly to my life in America the past 50 years and election nights.
Last night seemed different.
Yes, I listened to reports on exit polls, watched the map of the U.S. change colors, heard pundits offer “insight” into the numbers and trends, and jumped between stations when some political “insider” irritated me.
But the images and the sounds from the television served as background. In my mind’s foreground, the question stayed the same: “What will happen next?”
The Democratic Party and President-elect Barack Obama face a pretty daunting task.
It must deal with an economy on rubber legs.
It must deal with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It must deal with nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea.
It must deal with terrorism.
And that list represents only the headaches Americans know about. Again the question: “What will happen next?”
As election night wore on, the electoral math showed an inevitable Obama win. The news reports shifted from speculation to celebration as throngs of people — a young and diverse crowd — descended on Grant Park in Chicago. The crowd swelled, and its energy grew with each “Blue State” that popped up on the map. Estimates have that crowd reaching nearly 200,000 by the night’s end.
That crowd — grasping the idea that their participation in this election could lead to substantive and positive change — unraveled in my mind a historic thread — one that the “best political team” in the country and their competing counterparts never mentioned. Forty years ago, throngs of young people who believed that their involvement in the political process could change the country for the better descended on Chicago. They gathered without permission in Lincoln Park. Their numbers swelled, and they moved throughout the city during the Democratic National Convention.
They opposed a war and the policies of a sitting president. They spoke against corporate greed. They wanted equal rights for all Americans regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, age or income.
They believed in 1968 that America teetered on a turning point. And they wanted it to fall in the right direction.
Ultimately that crowd of thousands headed down Michigan Avenue to the convention where it met nearly 12,000 Chicago police officers, more than 7,000 Army troops, more than 1,000 Secret Service agents and some 7,000 members of the National Guard. Americans and the world watched the bloody outcome.
“What will happen next?” many marchers and TV watchers asked that night. Four decades later, Americans and the world watched a different scene in Chicago — the peaceful outcome of a democratic process few countries in the world enjoy.
On this night, love, happiness and hope replaced panic, tear gas and bloody beatings. So how do you answer the question that still remains on the day after this election: “What will happen next?”
Resources:
- 1968 Chicago Police Riot on YouTube
- PBS Going Back to Chicago
- Brief History of Chicago's 1968 Democratic Convention
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