A new era dawns With its reputation damaged in the eyes of the world over the last eight years, America can now look forward with hope and pride
American in ireland Sheila Sullivan
Barrack Obama
YES we can. And yes we did. It was a long haul but we finally made it to the mountain top. As people all over the world rejoiced at the election of Barack Obama, the donkeys in Dookinella seemed genuinely pleased and the swans on Keel lake squawked and flapped their wings, applauding his momentous victory.
It was all part of a magical few days in Achill leading up to the American presidential election. The weather was dry, the sun shone, and the island was still and calm in the November light. “Everything is fitting into place,” Michael Gielty observed, looking out towards Clare Island from Gielty’s Clew Bay.
Pundits had favoured Obama for weeks, but on election eve, the polls tightened, the suspense mounted and the fear was real among Democrats in Ireland. One friend across the Pond managed to remain calm. “Isn’t this election amazing?” Ronnie Eldridge, a true blue New Yorker and friend of Robert Kennedy, wrote in an email from Manhattan. “We are so filled with hope and overwhelmed with wonderment.” But the rest of us were nervous wrecks, with nightmarish visions of Sarah Palin as commander-in-chief and Joe the Plumber as secretary of state dancing in our heads.
My Irish friends and colleagues didn’t seem to believe that a black man could get elected. The thinking was that white people would tell pollsters they were voting for the African-American, and then go in and vote for the white candidate. American friends in Ireland thought Obama could win but were afraid that a Florida recount-type fiasco would occur and spoil everything. Joan Dalton, born in New Jersey and living in Waterford, put it this way: “I’m not even letting the joyful thought form fully in my mind because I’m so terrified something could go horribly wrong and we could end up with McCain.”
On Election Day, November 4, there was nothing left to do but worry and wait. “Obama’s doing well,” Olivia said to me in Brett’s, Achill Sound, as the first results came in from New Hampshire favouring the Democrat. “Good luck to you and Barack,” another Irish friend said.
The TV images from American cities were promising: there were long lines of people waiting anywhere from one to seven hours for the opportunity to vote. Millions more had gone to the polls early, days before the election. Six hundred thousand people, many of them black, had voted early in Broward County, Florida, to avoid being disenfranchised. The sight of so many waiting in line for so long with such patience and determination was profoundly moving. “An exciting time,” a colleague emailed from Miami.
And then the miracle happened. In the early hours of Wednesday, November 5, Irish time, the crucial swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio went for Senator Obama, and, greatly relieved, I fell asleep. I woke at 5am to hear President-elect Obama giving his acceptance speech in Grant Park, Chicago. He did it – he had won. Tears fell as I watched a non-violent revolution taking place in American life. Obama was sombre, awestruck, thrilled, exhausted, bereaved at the death of his grandmother in Hawaii, and grappling with the enormity of his new responsibilities. He seemed an even more serious version of his usual self: a president-elect with a touch of the poet, looking at the crowds, watching, thinking, listening, feeling and trusting his intuition.
Next morning the headlines told the story: ‘The Day That Changed America’, ‘Wave of Change’, ‘America Turns the Page’, and ‘For Many Abroad, An Ideal Renewed’. The headline on a Guardian supplement simply said: ‘Wow!’
Suddenly camera crews who wouldn’t venture into black neighbourhoods in the past were interviewing African-American people all across America, and we were hearing their stories as if for the first time: a female soldier in the 1950s remembering how she had to sit at the back of the bus; a 55-year-old man telling how he had registered for the first time in his life, in order to vote for Obama.
In the days to follow I was joyful, delighted, optimistic and drained. It had been a long time since I had seen so many people cry in public on TV. And I had no doubt that for some of us those tears were being shed in anguish. It is estimated that 151,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the first three years of the Iraq war, and, according to some surveys, that number has climbed to 600,000 or more since then. Even those of us who opposed George Bush from the beginning have to cope with the sorrow and the shame.
President-elect Obama, now the world’s greatest role model, seems to bring out the best in people and the best in America, so we do have reason to hope. As it turned out, those who anticipated trouble at his acceptance speech in Chicago had no reason to fear. A quarter of a million people gathered to hear him speak, and the event passed off in an atmosphere of sobriety, tranquillity and peace.
One commentator remarked that the election was a triumph of ‘brain over brawn’. America’s new president has a fine mind and a great education, and the chance to appoint a talented Cabinet who can bring about real change in domestic and foreign affairs. Irreparable damage was done during the Bush years. But as Martin Luther King observed in his ‘I’ve been to the mountain top’ speech: “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
If Obama, with his experience of Indonesia and Africa, his intellect and eloquence, and his innate understanding of human suffering, can bring his gifts to bear on the quest for social justice, and if he can convey the message that men and women everywhere – not just in America – are created equal, then a new day really will have dawned.
Sheila Sullivan is an Irish Times journalist and author of ‘Follow the Moon: A Memoir’ (Currach Press, 2006)
RIVALRY
Pre-November 4
EUPHORIA
November 5
REALITY
January 20 Now that the campaign trail rivalries are over, wish-lists are being formed by US citizens for the new President IRISHWOMAN IN AMERICA Áine Greaney THE voice sent me running into the living room. “I’ve been 40 years voting here,” the elderly woman told the television interviewer. “And I’ve never seen anything like this.” No mistaking that accent. West of Ireland, born and bred. Then, the camera panned to the long queue of voters, standing two and three abreast, and stretching all the way out the door and down the footpath from the polling booth in Quincy, a south-of-Boston suburb.
Eight hours earlier, in our quiet, north-of-Boston town, I awoke to a street packed with cars. Our house sits diagonally across the street from one of the town’s polling stations – the church hall of the Methodist Church. It was only just gone 7am, but people had obviously decided to come early, before work or before heading off on their morning commute.
“It’s called visibility,” a man told me, standing there outside my house with his Obama sign. But soon, he’d be handing over to one of our neighbours, while he himself headed off to a polling station in the state of New Hampshire where, last January, John McCain had won an unprecedented victory in the primaries. So you go where the need is greatest.
Another car came around the corner. This time, it was a TV crew. Complete with all their accoutrements, they parked just opposite the church-turned-polling-station. They were from a Korean television station, they explained. And they’d come about the American election. They wanted the local angle.
Local indeed. All day on November 4, my usual-haunt coffee shop was giving out free cups of coffee – no party or candidate affiliations asked. Just java on the house for exercising your civic duty.
As a permanent resident (not a US citizen), I couldn’t vote and I had to pay for my cuppa. It’s not that I haven’t considered it. I’ve had US citizenship forms printed up and ready to fill out for months. Having lived here for almost 22 years, I’ve been eligible. But eligible is not the same as eager.
Since late summer, front gardens across America have sprouted candidate support signs. On the commuter train or on the footpaths, more and more people sported either an Obama or a McCain sticker. Here in Massachusetts – at least along the seacoast – spotting a McCain sticker or yard sign was a bit like spotting a three-footed owl. But there were some.
Elsewhere in the country, it was a more dual-candidate and dueling candidate scene.
On Halloween weekend, a National Public Radio did a feature on the growing trend of people stealing their neighbours’ front-garden election signs. Some theft victims found it amusing and a sign of a healthy level of vehemence and voter engagement. They just rang up their local Democratic or Republican party offices and ordered a replacement – until that one was stolen, too.
On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, the sign-wars and the internet predictions came true. Over 100 million Americans turned up to vote – the highest turnout since 1967, and the highest ever representation among young people and African-Americans. Thousands left their workplaces, employed babysitters or brought their kids along to queue outside the polling stations – some for up to four hours. This time, the country really cared. And this time, the actual voting machinery itself worked – largely due to the Obama campaign’s nationwide voter-education teams.
‘Historic Victory’ announced The Boston Globe headlines on November 5. The night before, by 11pm Eastern Standard Time, the world knew that a 47-year-old African-American, a previously little-known Senator from Illinois, would be America’s 44th president.
For two days, the country buzzed. Around here, in the coffee shop and on the streets, we crossed ourselves, raised our eyes and said a collective ‘phew!’
In Springfield, Massachusetts, within hours of Obama’s victory, a church with a mostly black congregation was burned to the ground. It’s been proven to be arson. The timing, say the news reporters, is suspicious, and the investigation continues.
By Day 3, the headlines had a more sobering tone. Faced with a war, an economic meltdown and taking over from a president with the lowest approval rating in US history, the 47-year-old Senator from Chicago has his work cut out for him.
For the Irish take on the new presidency, I contacted the city of Chicago where Dublin native Frank Gleeson has lived and worked for almost 30 years. Gleeson also serves on the Board of Chicago’s Irish American Heritage Center. He shares his adopted city’s pride in Obama.
For the new administration, Gleeson’s top priority is a large-scale shift in economic-policy. He says: “Stop the reverse Robin Hood effect that has resulted in a re-distribution of wealth from the working classes to the very rich .... The implementation of Obama’s plan to increase taxes on the very rich and provide a tax break to the middles class will be a great start.”
Frank Gleeson also advocates for bringing the troops home from Iraq and would like President Obama to ‘act as a neutral honest broker in facilitating a Middle-East settlement’. Third on the Dublin native’s list: healthcare. Citing the 40 million Americans who go uninsured or can’t afford insurance, Gleeson supports Obama’s plan for a workable and universal health care plan.
The Boston office of the Consul General of Ireland (Department of Foreign Affairs) has its own wish-list for the new regime in Washington. Deirdre Ní Fhallúin, Vice-Counsel says: “Our main focus will be on strengthening the existing deep and historic ties between the US and Ireland. We will continue to work to enhance cooperation between the US and Ireland in the areas of trade and investment, both by Irish firms here in the US and by US firms in Ireland. And of course, finding a solution for the undocumented Irish in the US will continue to be a key priority for the Irish Government.”
Galway native Gobnait Conneely has lived and worked in Boston since 1980. Conneely sees the new presidency as ‘absolutely brilliant’. Highest on her personal agenda – and concurrent with her professional immigrant-advocacy work – is legislation for immigrant rights. “This is not just an Irish issue,” Conneely says. “It spans national and racial groups in America, and nothing’s going to get done until we as immigrants – from all countries – stand together.”
In his acceptance speech, Obama acknowledged that his campaign message of change translates to a mandate of work – an awful lot of work. And he cautioned that it might take years, possibly more than one presidential term.
So by Election Day 2012, I’ll make sure I’m eligible for that free cup of voter coffee.
Áine Greaney is a journalist/writer living in Boston. She was born in The Neale. For more information check out www.ainegreaney.com.
