Yes We Did, but What Now?

Our country is at the best place and at the worst place I have ever seen it. I opened my “college fund” stock portfolio statement yesterday and was stunned to find that it had lost almost half its value. Many people are on the verge of unemployment. Falling real estate prices are affecting almost everyone I know back home in California. The cost of health care is crippling. CNN recently tried to keep up with the times by airing a segment on how to cook gruel. Yes, it’s all pretty frightening, but there is a very shiny silver lining in this dark cloud—Barack Obama is about to become our 44th president.

Up until now, the political experiences of most liberal college-aged Americans has been defined by crushing disappointment. The first election we followed was Bush vs. Gore in 2000. We know how that ended. Then, for many of us, the Iraq War protests of 2003 were our first acts of political expression. We saw how that turned out. We tried our best to keep our spirits up and elect John Kerry in 2004, but in the end, Ohio let us down. We gathered our troops once again. We made more phone calls, raised more money, knocked on more doors. We braced ourselves. Then we all exhaled the longest-held collective breath at around 11 P.M. Eastern Standard Time on Nov. 4, 2008. We would not be living the nightmare of “two mavericks” in the White House.

The media focused much attention on young voters, but for me, at least, an important aspect of Obama’s presidency is his ability to cut across all generations. Throughout last October, my 82-year-old grandmother got up at 6 A.M. every workday and drove to the village green in her small New Hampshire town to hold up homemade Obama signs and catch commuters on their way to work. Leading up to the election, my mother made phone calls to swing states for four hours every night. I was lucky enough, along with three friends, to meet Obama one morning on the tarmac at LaGuardia Airport when he was in New York for Sept. 11. Now, even my Republican grandmother in Connecticut prominently displays on her fridge a copy of the photo taken by a staffer of me with Obama’s arm around my shoulder.

So what if Obama falls somewhat short of the expectations we all have of him? Well, no matter what, we have the memory of Nov. 4—the night when we came together as a campus, as a community, as a city, as a country, and as a world. As members of the human race, we rejoiced over what we as Americans had accomplished. Who will ever forget the pictures of communities crowding around the radio and cheering in Kenya, or of joyful people with tears trickling down their faces in Europe and the Middle East—and right here, the crowds of Columbia students who left the comfort zone of Morningside Heights and paraded into Harlem at midnight, screaming and hugging complete strangers? We overcame the Republicans’ attempts to divide America. We triumphed with positive messages of “hope” and “equality.” I was starting to think that I would never see any of that happen in my lifetime, and it feels extraordinary to have been a part of it.

The question now is where young progressives go from here. Obama’s election was an uphill battle, and I am impressed by how well we mobilized our resources to get him elected. On our own campus, a record number of students turned out for the Columbia Democrats’ fall campaign trip. Columbia students took whole semesters off from school to campaign in swing states. Many traveled to Pennsylvania on weekends to register voters. Others convinced family members in Virginia and Florida to vote for a Democrat for the first time in years.

But there is no time to bask in Obama’s victory. It is time for student groups and young liberals to narrow their focus. We must go from macro to micro-political action. We need to pressure universities to maintain and increase financial aid, we need to work together with neighborhood groups to expand access to affordable housing, we need to make sure that local Democrats stay in office, and we must turn toward community service. We need to make sure that our friends and neighbors can still function in an era of economic disaster. Without a doubt, Obama’s administration will face disappointments, but I hope we do not dwell on them—we need to stay united to make sure that Obama is reelected in 2012.

As progressive Columbia students, we, more than others perhaps, can see Obama in ourselves. Hopefully we can stop living in the shadow of 1968 and stop yearning for a time that we sense was more exciting than ours. Instead, future generations of Columbia students will be guided by the even more powerful legacy of 2008—the election season when one of our very own, Barack Obama, CC ’83, was elected president and promised to change America. Let us define our generation and use his historic inauguration as our moment for inspiration.

The author is a Columbia College sophomore. She is Director of Social and Alumni Affairs for the Columbia University College Democrats.