Sixteen years ago, on my seventeenth birthday, I stood outside the Mayfair Diner in Northeast Philadelphia at 5:30 in the morning to see the man I hoped would be the next president of the United States. Bill Clinton’s voice was long gone during that campaign marathon right before Election Day, but it was still quite a moment to be that close to a man running for the highest office in the land – especially since he won. Not that I thought I had anything to do with it, of course, but I never did make it to a Gore rally in 2000 or a Kerry rally in 2004. Four years ago I resolved that I wasn’t going to let myself feel like there was something else I could’ve done to support my preferred candidate, and come hell or high water that meant I was going to go to a rally in 2008.
See that little flash of maroon cap in the lower left hand corner? Mission accomplished. Saturday morning, I was outside the Mayfair Diner at 5:30 in the morning once again. This time, I was a volunteer for the campaign, assigned to ushering duties. This meant that I had the increasingly impossible job of asking a crowd of thousands to please not push forward to get closer to the stage. The upside is that by the time the crowd finished converging on me, I had a damn good spot close to the podium. You can see some of the pictures I was able to grab over on Flickr. At this point I can’t say Obama’s speech surprised me – I’ve seen versions of it so many times by now. But it felt good to be part of the energy of the crowd, to see all the people for whom this election is so important.