After running around Denver like a chicken with my head cut off and getting four hours of sleep a night for the past three days I finally got to walk into Mile High Invesco Field where Sen. Barack Obama would accept the Presidential nomination. I’ve watched events like these on T.V. for years, but actually getting the chance to be a person there, present and part of history—is a whole new level of surreal existence.

Before Obama made his grand appearance an all-star line up of artists such as Sheryl Crowe and Stevie Wonder entertained the crowd followed by New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson and former Vice President Al Gore addressed the crowd. For a few minutes during gaps in-between speakers audience members did The Wave from one side of the stadium to the other.

During his speech Al Gore addressed the youth’s impact in the election.

“This election is actually not close at all among young people – you are responding in unprecedented numbers to Barack Obama’s message of hope,” said Gore.

He continued on to say, “You recognize that he represents a clean break from the politics of partisanship and bitter division. You understand that the politics of the past are exhausted, and you’re tired of appeals based on fear. You know that America is capable of better than what you have seen in recent years. You are hungry for a new politics based on a bipartisan respect for the ageless principles embodied in the United States Constitution.”

Following a video segment on the young Senator and his life, his mother and family the man himself walked out on to the stage. The floor beneath my feet rumbled, the vocals of every person in the stadium exploded and the digital cameras flickered like Christmas lights.

For the past three days I’ve tried to be objective as humanly possible when it comes to the Obama campaign, but all that melted away during the speech. It was an extremely powerful moment that I’m very thankful to have been apart of – something that does not translate well through a television set.

Obama listed all the things he planned on doing once elected. And even though I wanted to believe him a piece of clouded skepticism slipped in. “He certainly can talk it. But can he walk it?”

But at that point I didn’t care. I wanted the moment to exist for as long as humanly possible.

Obama focused his words on the middle class, the ones who have been neglected by the current administration, prior to his speech several people who had gone through many issues that the population in the middle class are experiencing. One woman, who really touched me with her words, was Pam Cash-Roper from Pittsboro, North Carolina. Pam and her husband both went to major medical surgeries that racked up high medical bills and lost their medical coverage.

“I am a life long Republican,” said Pam, “who voted for Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush but I can’t afford four more years like this.”

Obama finished off his speech by urging Americans not to stick to the old game plan of the last eight years.

“America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to do. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to men. America, we can not turn back.”

When all was said and done, Obama’s family and Joe Biden joined him on stage, fireworks lit up the sky and the confetti floated down to Earth like multi-colored snowflakes, I could the sworn the music playing over the loud speaker was a hodgepodge of movie soundtracks, specifically The Matrix, Star Wars and Indiana Jones. It had a very buckle down; toughen up feeling, like we were getting ready to go into battle.

But battle cry or no battle cry, Obama’s speech did its job.
—Eming Piansay