By Tim Redmond
San Francisco is going crazy. I haven’t seen this much excitement in the streets since we shut down the city when the Iraq war began. But this time, we actually have something to celebrate.
Spontaneous parties broke out at 16 and Guerrero and 19th and Valencia; the cops closed the streets (and told me they weren’t going to break up the parties — for a while). Everywhere I rode on my bike, people were waving and screaming, and when I stopped for a bottle of bourbon at my corner store on the way home, the guy gave it to me cheap — “the Obama discount.”
The city is full of hope. That’s a rare commodity these days, and I want it to last. I want Obama to realize that this was a progressive victory, that he won not with the party power structure but with the grassroots, with activists who belong to the left side of the Democratic Party, and that he will take office with a huge, monumental mandate. We’re going to want real change. When you give this many people this much to believe in, you don’t want to let them down.
So let’s celebrate tonight — and tomorrow, let’s remember that WE won this victory, and we now have to make sure that our standard-bearer doesn’t forget that.
