NOW LET'S GO CHANGE THE WORLD. Obama Rally, NYC, 9.27.07.
The Obama campaign is reporting that close to 25,000 supporters showed up for the rally in NYC's Washington Square Park last Thursday. Who knows about 25,000 - a throng of people couldn't make it in to the fenced-off, giant city block park for its full perimeter - but it was certainly packed, with enraptured folk holding a sea of blue placards bearing the sunrise "O" that's become the Senator's logo. Some held up the September issue of VIBE, with B-Rock on the cover - a few dudes near the press box chanted, "VIBE with Obama!" Take note, at least some of the hip hop generation supports.
Washington Square Park is smack dab in the middle of New York University, and the kind of place you can cop schwag from crusty fellas [not that we do] or listen to dudes busk jazz on saxes, or watch freshman alternately smoke and make out - in other words, a historic congregation spot, and a perfect place for the Obama rally. The college kids, or kids who look collegiate with backpacks and fresh faces, are out in droves. Older folks too. Press are interviewing cheeky young Democrats about their organizational skills, while live flamenco guitar tears through the speakers. Secret service stand atop buildings all around.
Jeffrey Wright, the actor we love to love, intros Obama. He describes the first time he met B-Rock: "You could see a new future was coming. The change was coming... something necessary and needed in America could be embodied by this man." That Senator Obama's supporters are prone to passion speaks both to the man's star power and the dearth of leadership our country has felt for so long.
Next, freestyle champ Jin, aka "Obama's top friend on myspace," takes the stage to rap his Obama joint. He's wearing grey AF1 hightops and the same shirt he's wearing in his myspace profile pic. Kids are chanting, "Take it to the polls" and it's aigghhht. I text my friend, VIBE scribe and supergenius Chris, that "JIN IS HERE!" Chris texts back, "He's gonna serve Barack. Wonder if he'll 'go there' and big up goat farming." I have no idea what this means.
Jin is done, the sun is setting and it's time for B-Rock to come on. His chosen grand entrance song: "Touch the Sky" by fellow Chi-city killa Kanye West. It's a hot look. The crowd is bananas, the horn section echoes across the Westsiiiiidddde, 'Ye's yelling "We on top of the world baby! WE ON TOP OF THE WORLD" and Obama is beaming, his shirtsleeves rolled up, shaking hands with audiences, before commanding the mic like a hip hop legend.
He began by thanking the volunteers and talking about kicking it in Washington Square Park when he was in college - "I know some of the bars around here," he quipped. Someone shouted "I love you" from the crowd and he shouted, "I love you back," R&B man style, and acknowledged that his supporters that day came from "Every walk of life: young and old; poor and not so poor; black, white, Hispanic, Asian; gay and straight; Democrats, independents and Republicans. It tells me that the American people are not the problem; the American people are the answer." Even if you're not voting for him, you can't deny he's a compelling, passionate speaker with the know-how to motivate and unite a crowd. At the same time, his presence is real regular - laidback, a joke here and there, even self-deprecating jokes. He name checks the important issues: Katrina first, then Iraq, followed by an indictment of Bush and Cheney: "The system is not working for us. The game is rigged. The stakes are too high to play the same partisan games over and over again." He shouts out the White Sox, talks nationalizing health care - says that health care industry is run by drug companies and insurance companies, and it's time we "end that kinda business in Washington." He goes at Cheney again for his entanglements with big oil and says, "Power doesn't always have to trump principle." He talks curbing global warming, fixing public education, making college affordable and accessible, raising the minimum wage to a "living wage," stopping the corporate / rich people tax breaks, reducing mandatory minimum sentences - never in all my life have i heard a mainstream political candidate utter the words "prison industrial complex" - and bringing all combat troops home by March 30 of next year, to end the war in Iraq.
About the only thing he doesn't hit on is immigration, presumably because it's not a hot-button issue in NYC (which is untrue, as anyone who came out to the immigration protests last spring can attest to). As a second-generation Mexican-American, and a fierce supporter of immigrant rights, this was disappointing. Essentially, his speech was the kind of thing you can hear on any of 10,000 Democratic debates every night, said in an inspirational format, and funny (the other candidates, as far as I can tell, are not funny, except when they are being unintentionally so). But the difference was the end, the note he left on: "Change happens from the bottom up.... Now let's go change the world."
Whether you support him or not, the man has a point. As the Jena protests proved - with Mychael Bell finally, belatedly freed. (Read Obama's Jena 6 comments here.) Glad I went, amped and ready to go.
-Julianne Shepherd
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