Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Oh Happy Day

It is a very happy day, indeed. Despite all the personal distress at the moment I can take some significant joy from last night's delivery of the prize after nearly two years worth of work by Obama and his team. Work with me here and just start the video below

and let it play while you read the rest of this post. Obama has shown his ability to fill the office of president ably if by nothing else than the highly effective campaign organization he has built and run. Obama is nothing if not plugged in to the modern media environment and all the tools it can provide for a new method of governing as Joshua Zumbrun writes in Forbes today, Obama's Machine. It's definitely a new day when you've got the co-founder of Facebook doing your campaign website.

Today, forty five years after Dr King's march on Washington and the "I have a dream" speech in August of 1963 and the fight over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed into law just ten months later in July, and all the civil unrest that followed we may have finally come to the beginnings of a post racial America. Now, if we can only get moving on getting to the post Neo-Con America.


It's going to be a bumpy ride I'm sure, a real roller coaster of a ride, one that may last beyond my lifetime - I participated in the Kennedy campaign in high school -, but a necessary ride that has finally begun. Obama is up to the ride I'm sure if he runs his administration as well as he has run his campaign.


If you're done with Choeur Gospel Celebration de Quebec with Sylvie Desgroseilliers and Oh Happy Day a few more videos are linked below and you might play these while you read Stephen Henderson from the Detroit Free Press today, Obama's win creates a new reality for world, and spend a bit of time on your own thinking about how far we've come, how far we have
got to go, and how you, that's right you, are going to help get us there. Get us there today, tomorrow and all the next days. We surely need to get there.

Lyndon telling the nation "we shall overcome".



Pete singing
We Shall Overcome.


And, finally Gill Scott - the father of rap music - telling us it won't be on the TV.



Oh Happy Day! The door is open now, we have to walk through. It's time to walk the walk!

And, just so we don't get too far from the cultural roots of this event here are a few quotes from the book of Romans, the fifteenth and the twelfth chapters as I recall, as best as I can recall them

May the God of Hope fill you will all Peace and Joy as you trust in Her so that you might overflow with Hope by the Power of the Holy Spirit.

Do not repay evil for evil. As far as is possible live at peace with everyone. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.


And finally, thanks to Marlyne who got me started today with her email entitled
Oh Happy Day
What a night. I teared up when ABC predicted Ohio for Obama, as it sealed my conviction that we would win. ... I feel as if I got my country back tonight. Perhaps, just perhaps, we can reclaim the true values of America and move on.

See more of how things look at
The Big Picture, The next President of the United States.