It's a bit out of character for me to have several blogs just days following each other but i feel like i need to shout from the mountain tops or the Ozarks or the ghetto liquor store down the street. I am, like many, many people in this country, so relieved and elated to witness Barack Obama take the presidency. Win, out and out, no bullshit, win the presidency. No recounts, no supreme court and no accounts of voter fraud or corruption. How freaking refreshing. I feel like this oppressive scary stranglehold from this Bush administration has been lifted. As soon as the CNN projection came on the screen and the cheers went up i knew everything was changing and it was really, finally happening. I could breathe again!

For those of you who don't know I live in downtown Little Rock, a predominately black and poor part of town. It is as we speak being "revitalized" and what that means for this town isn't yet clear. I'd like to think Jamey and I are mavericks (just to use that word one more time) and we are singlehandedly reintegrating downtown Little Rock but alas, I can not take credit. My street for example is all med students or law students of different styles and persuasions but just one or two blocks away you get abandoned lots, abandoned Victorian homes and abandoned people living off the street or under the overpass on I630. This is the reality of this town. It isn't perfect, its an ugly American reality and we live here deliberately because we don't want to hide away in the white neighborhood and pretend that things like poverty and homelessness don't exist. We also know that by just renting a place down here we aren't going to change these realities but at least we think about them on a daily basis and we are constantly challenging ourselves to find solutions and sustainable ideas to address them as citizens of this city. And the people in this part of town know what it is to struggle for a myriad of reasons and so the Obama victory is felt on such a deeper level. It gives people an ounce of hope where there may have been none before.

Anyway, the other night we had a choice in locations for the election results parties but we heard that the UALR black law students were congregating at a bar close to our house so we decided that is where we wanted to be, surrounded by a sea of exceptionally smart people who understood the meaning of hard work and success. So it was me, Jamey and our friend Seth and we headed to our neighborhood Mexican bar to watch an African American man elected president. I wanted to be surrounded by people who were feeling this momentous occasion so deeply and to see on their faces the enormity of the event. Obama being elected was big for everyone in Little Rock and I have been feeling it for some time.

I was really reluctant to move to the South because of many reasons but facing the reality that racism and all the ugly trimmings that go along with it are still very much alive in this part of the country was one of the things that scared me the most. Our trips to Mississippi this summer were eye opening, scary and amazingly beautiful all at the same time. Living here has helped me to understand our sordid past as a country and the deep thriving culture that abounds here in the deep south. It was not lost on me that as I was celebrating in the streets after the projections were made, that I was just blocks away from Central High School and where the Little Rock Nine paved the way for social change and integration in 1957, 51 years ago. 51 years ago my parents were living the reality of the civil rights struggle and here I was today living the reality of what the brave people of that time had given me and the generations to come. Hope! Success without barriers.

By no means do I think that the struggle has ended. We may have leapt a large obstacle but there are many more battles to be won. Especially evident by the fact that most of the citizens of California still believe in taking away the rights of people based on their sexual orientation and that Arkansans believe that homosexual couples should never raise a child together. I wish that they would just wade through the bullshit talk and put what it is they really mean on the ballot:

Issue 1: Because the person proposing this bill is ignorant and scared, gay people and heterosexuals who don't want to get married should never raise or foster a child-
check yes/check no.

Anyway, I digress. I just feel so damn proud. I feel proud of my country, finally. I feel like I can travel overseas and not pretend to be Canadian (although I never did because I wanted to prove Americans were cool cats like me). I feel like I can believe that the leader of my country has its people in its best interest and understands the word democracy and community. I feel like this administration doesn't believe in governing using fear and oppressive scare tactics. I feel like the youth is finally AWAKE! I feel like dancing in the streets and hugging random people! oh wait, I already did that! And I was here, in Arkansas, voting for an African American President. Oh I see that promise land, indeed I do.

(this is sort of a random picture but I saw it on shirt in Provincetown once and I thought it was hilarious, just sharing the hilarity with you)

Even today, two days after the election I felt like I could walk into the Community Bakery, stand on my chair and yell "OBAMA" and I would have a chorus of whoops and hollers ringing along with me. It wouldn't be weird it would be an jubilant expression of how most of the people in this town feel. Usually when I stand on my chair and shout things I get food thrown at me so this has been a refreshing time. Although this state went Red, its very core is blue. Right smack in the center, here in Little Rock. And damn it, if Virginia can vote for a Dem anything is possible.

So I have learned several things over the last few days not excluding the Obama shuffle, which if you don't already know you apparently don't belong to an African American Fraternity at a state university. I have learned to trust the American people again and to believe that really, it is all possible. Anything we believe in and work for we can achieve. And we may not have a woman president now but I tell you what I'm voting for Michelle Obama in 2012. Hey, we don't even need to change our yard signs! Recycle!