Yes We Can, Together

On Tuesday night, I witnessed something that finally made me really proud again to be an American and doubly happy to have been in New York. No, I'm not talking about the fact that Obama is our newest President-elect, though that certainly played a big role. I was extremely happy to see that the enthusiasm had returned to our nation.

Voter turnout was a record high. The AP reported that there was about a 64.1% voter turnout rate. We haven't seen that kind of interest in the elections since the sixties. Also, a record-breaking 138 million people came out to vote. People actually got up early to vote. Many people ended up waiting in hour-long lines that wrapped around themselves.

And once the new President-elect was announced, people in New York (and elsewhere) flooded the streets to celebrate together.


The crowds in Union Square about 20 minutes after CNN declared Obama the winner of the 2008 elections. There was a giant flag that people were crawling under and flapping up and down. By the end of the night, the flag had disappeared, mostly swallowed by the crowd. Everyone was ripping apart the flag, an action that might typically be seen as disrespectful. But that night, it was almost symbolic, as if everyone were getting a piece of America. Hopefully, the government of the next four years will again be for the people.


This guy was walking right up Broadway in Times Square with a flag trailing behind him.


I needed a quintessential New York photo of a hotdog stand... especially one that supports Obama/Biden.

I don't think our country has gotten together like this, shared a moment together since the period directly following 9/11. It makes me happy when I can see that we can all put aside our differences and come together as a country. I know Obama's election has not bound our country's citizen's together the same way 9/11 did, but we can all admit that we're living through yet another moment that'll certainly go down in history. And though America may still be divided by social and economic ideological differences, there are signs that show we're moving towards a more cohesive country - something we haven't seen in a long while. I think even those in other countries are starting to sense a change, that America might move away from being the arrogant, elitist country that we were for the past eight years and actually work with other nations to come up with globally beneficial plans.