Election 2008
(2008-11-07)
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I live in downtown Ann Arbor, so it's not unusual to hear strange noises at night. It's usually just drunks yodeling their way home.
But this sounded different. When I got to my balcony, I didn't see drunks stumbling down the street. I saw a hundred or so people cheering and clapping and singing, celebrating Barack Obama's election victory.
Well, more power to em, I thought. When I took a second look, I saw the group was just the head of a snake of maybe a thousand people - or two thousand, or three thousand - stretching for blocks.
They cheerfully ambled down through town, and I could still hear them when they were blocks away. It was half-past midnight. I thought: What the hell. When am I going to see this again?
I grabbed my coat and headed toward campus. When I got to the Diag - the University of Michigan's town square - I saw an even larger crowd filling the steps of the graduate library and spilling over onto the lawn.
These people - almost all students - weren't drunk or drugged. They were stone cold sober, peaceful - and ecstatic.
There were drums, a saxophone and some guy playing a didgeridoo.
I overheard one student ask a friend, "What are you doing here? You voted for McCain." He wasn't judging - just surprised. His friend replied, "Dude, I just had to see this."
They crowd wasn't angry. They didn't sing or chant a single negative thing about McCain, Palin or anyone else.
They were just happy. Very happy -- mainly to see that their votes had mattered - they went to the polls in record numbers - and their hard work paid off.
About two dozen students were waving American flags in the air, running with the flags behind them like capes, and draping them around their shoulders.
The most popular song - which broke out every few minutes and swept through the crowd - was not We Shall Overcome or Give Peace a Chance, but "The star spangled banner." They even got the words right.
The only other times I'd seen such large groups of students spontaneously gather on campus was after the 1984 World Series - I may or may not have been one of the drunks in the middle of that band, records from that period are sketchy - and after Michigan won the NCAA basketball tournament in 1989.
That one happened to coincide with the arrival of the Grateful Dead at Crisler Arena and the Hash Bash on campus. Not surprisingly, it resulted in an unruly mob taking over South University and clashing with police and firemen, and thousands of dollars of damage to local stores. Boy, you just couldn't see that one coming.
But not this time. These students were not celebrating something so trivial as an athletic contest. They weren't loaded. And they weren't looking for trouble. I saw only one cop car, down the block.
The last time students gathered like this with American flags and political chants, they were burning the flags and chanting, "Hell no we won't go."
A decade before that, in the fall of 1960, Michigan students came out to see John F. Kennedy introduce the idea of the Peace Corps from the steps of the Student Union. Kennedy didn't get there until after midnight, so the coeds were thankful when the University granted them special permission to keep the women's dorms open after curfew.
On Tuesday night, their grandchildren returned to that very spot to continue their celebration. I looked at my watch. It was already two o'clock, and the party showed no signs of slowing down. But I did.
The next morning I picked up my morning drink at the local market, and I told Dave, the owner, that the previous night a few thousand students had marched past his store. "Really? Well, I'm glad the city cleaned it up so fast." No, I explained. There was nothing to clean up.
As I walked to my class, right across the very same Diag, I couldn't help but think: Something has changed here, folks. Something big.
And whatever your politics, it's hard to believe that a crowd of students celebrating their votes, their national anthem and their flag could be anything but good.
I'm glad I saw it.
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