Thoughts on the Day After....

Missing you all and wishing we could all have a big debrief around the election together. I was sort of in shock yesterday and it didn’t really hit me until I woke up this morning and saw the images of people celebrating across the world and heard stories of how elderly grandmommas in Liberty City came out their houses beating pots and pans. Last night, brown and black people across the world beat drums, blew into their conch shells and danced in the dirt—each claiming victory for themselves, each feeling their own power after a long time.

And so today, the world seems full of new possibilities and my mind is whirring with ideas for our movements and spinning with the lessons buried within this election on democracy, mass-participation, strategic communications, mass-line, messaging, and campaign strategy.

This is huge. I mean huge.

I hope you, like me, are taking a moment today to just rejoice in the reality of winning something so huge. I feel like I have never known what it was like to win something so big. And it is intoxicating.

Instead of listening to NPR and agonizing over the election as I usually do each morning, today, I listened to music that I love and even laughed to myself on my drive to work. (Must have looked crazy). As I looked at the cars whizzing around me, I saw people and wondered if each of them, like me, were a little more humbled, optimistic, and hopeful today---and instead of my usual road-rage at their awful Miami driving, I wondered if they were on their cell-phones re-counting the historic evening with far off-relatives or if they were driving a little slower because they were in utter disbelief about what happened last night.

Funny how Obama can inspire all of this in a cynical, young lefty.

And at the same time, my heart sinks for the anti-gay propositions and amendments that passed in Florida, Arizona and California. The same voters who helped us reach this historic moment in our nation's history also alarmingly voted to take away the civil rights of gay people.

So while we celebrate today, back to work tomorrow....