Can the freshman senator from Illinois stick to his ideals and still become the first man to rock Air Force Ones on Air Force One? We 're entering the most hotly contested election of our lifetime. It's time to decide once and for all: Is Barack Obama our man?
On a Tuesday afternoon in May, the lines for a Barack Obama rally are as long as they would be for the rock concerts that are the normal fare here at the Electric Factory, a vast, converted warehouse in North Philadelphia.
Even for this mixed city, the crowd is stunningly cosmopolitan. The orderly line includes a coed reading The Bookseller of Kabul, South Asian engineering majors from the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Arab-American law students from the University of Pennsylvania, activists from the National Hip-Hop Political Convention in crisp suits, community organizers in ACORN T-shirts, young white, black, and Latino parents with kids in strollers, elderly people in wheelchairs, and everywhere, high schoolers - some sporting HOT CHICKS DIG OBAMA buttons, some from North Philly in their school uniforms, others from South Jersey in Abercrombie & Fitch, drawn like the faithful to Mecca.
They have all donated $25 to $50 - star prices for the B-Rock - to be, in Common's words, ignited. Obama pitches himself as the candidate of change, and many here hope he can turn around a nation polarized by George W. Bush, war, the economy, race, religion, political parties, and even hip hop.
Beverly Washington from the Mount Olivet Tabernacle Church is wearing her red Sunday power worship suit and gripping her varnished brown cane. Four generations from her congregation have come on buses. The last time she felt this good about politics was two decades ago. "Jesse was real. But now Barack is coming," she says. "He's fresh, he's new, he's inspiring."
Carmen Mitchell, 14, got her cousin, Anthony Lewis, 17, to ask his mom to write them a fake doctor's note that morning. They dressed in their summer-bright polos, grabbed their black D&G stunna [WORD OK?] shades, and skipped classes to catch a train from the boondocks of Conshohocken Then they hiked two miles from 30th Street Station to be the first in line at their first political rally. They want the wars in Iraq and in their old West Philly neighborhood to end. "He makes us feel like he's really talking to us," Carmen says.
Obama arrives backstage, a retinue of Secret Service agents trailing behind. He introduces himself to the employees, looking them in their eyes. On the decks, King Britt cues Aretha Franklin's "Think," and she wails, "Oh, freedom! Freedom!" Now it really is Obama time. This crowd of 3,000 isn't the biggest he has seen - there were 12,000 in Oakland, 20,000 in Atlanta and Austin - but as he ascends to the stage, they are deafening. "Spring is here in America," he says in his soothing baritone. "It's time for us to renew the spirit of America, and that's what this campaign is all about."
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September 25, 2007 at 1:00 am