
Speaker Nancy Pelosi struck the final gavel of the Democratic National Convention last night, signaling an immediate and inevitable end to the four days of frenzied activity, intense emotion, and the constant sense that what you are doing matters. Quite frankly, I'm relieved it is over. There is only so much exhilaration a person can take all at once.
I spent the night last night with old friends who live in Denver. This morning, they shared with me this reaction from a neighbor to Obama's speech: "I didn't like the speech. I mean, why should we help the poor?"
Ahem.
What a lovely opportunity to discuss the role of government from a Democrat's perspective, that is if you can stomach any further engagement with one so minded. And of course, you have to engage because hearts and minds don't change any other way. Still, it was trying if not alarming, leaving my friend to contemplate why she is living where she is living and how in 2008 we still have so far to go.
From my friend's house I came to the Denver airport which seems to have mopped itself up from the flood of visitors that came in for the Convention. I was uncharacteristically early, so had some time for a breather at the Food Court where I checked my much-neglected email, and had the kind of fast food meal I don't let myself eat much anymore.
Quite deliberately, I wore an Obama t-shirt to the airport today. I hoped to invite conversation by wearing it, and it served it's intended purpose. A woman named Genie came over to me with a wry smile and said, "it was pretty great, huh?" A Political Director for the SCIU union in Illinois, she is from Obama's home district and proudly told me that her support pre-dated his senate run.
She then went on to tell me that her boss was a speaker at Invesco so she and a few coworkers got tickets. As she stood in the long line approaching the stadium last night, a guy walked by with a concert or sporting event-style sign saying "I need a ticket." Though it had to have been the hottest ticket on the planet, she just gave him one. Later, when she was at guest services trying to recharge her cell phone, she lamented to the clerk that she was up in the nosebleed seats, and the clerk gave her a ticket in a better section. This kind
of generosity kept paying itself forward throughout the event.
Genie, a Caucasian, told me that she was sitting with her male African American coworker. At the end of Obama's speech, a White male stranger came up to the coworker and gave him a full embrace. Then the stranger pulled back, looked the coworker in the eye and said, "I didn't think I would ever vote for a Black man."
This was a week for hearing that kind of thing, for watching people step gingerly or leap across lines they had drawn, and to see them seek --and usually find -- embrace on the other side.
Genie and I were soon joined in conversation by Randy, a baggage worker here at the airport. He asked us what we thought of McCain's VP pick. And then Randy talked about how he usually gets three days off in a row, and how he would use those days off to do voter registration right here in Colorado.
That's what these final 67 days will be about. Talking to strangers, crossing lines, reaching out, engaging. All of it hard work, all of it essential.
Something tells me there's more fast food in my future. But I hope also more people like Genie and Randy.
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