Official Participant in the Youth Media Blog-a-Thon

In Denver Colorado, on the night of Obama acceptance of the Presidential nomination, I sat behind the CNN tent watching the microscopic image of Obama over the head of Anderson Cooper. It didn’t quite hit me then, not even after all crowd was long gone and I spent a good half an hour walking around the stadium trying to soak up every last moment of good vibes that felt like a weird Alice and Wonderland dream.

And tonight, as I stood in Jack Adams Hall at San Francisco State with hundreds of my fellow students there could be no greater moment when the giant screen on stage displayed the prominent face of Barack Obama when CNN declared Sen. Barack Obama the winner, and President-elect of the United States of America.

There was a very strange moment of silence. Maybe five seconds long, where no one had any idea what the screen said, or couldn’t quite believe it until someone screamed, “OH MY GOD!!!”

I turned to my best friend, grabbed his arm and squeezed it so tight I might have cut off his circulation to the rest of his body for a good few seconds. Since next week is his birthday I can’t begin to think of a better early birthday present to top that exact moment.

The energy level in the room spiked for the next hour or so as we waited for Obama’s speech.

People flipped open their cell phones and started text messaging their excitement. I’ve never seen so many happy people on campus before.

One girl I spoke to made her excitement known. Over and over again she repeated (screamed) how unbelievable it was for her, a young African American woman, to finally have an African American President. It was also her first time voting. Her excitement warmed my skin and I couldn’t help but smile as she became pleasantly overwhelmed by her emotions.

I still can’t believe what happened – happened! I’m so worried I’ll wake up tomorrow and someone will say “SIKE! Sorry, we miscounted. Obama lost.”

Regardless of my euphoria right now, tomorrow morning I am sure I will be suffocated with media stories of how angry half of America is. When I got home earlier today I saw a post my ex-boyfriend had on his Facebook. He’s a fairly conservative Republican who is in the military. His note read, “It’s okay… I swore to defend the constitution, not the President.”

And just like that my natural high dropped like a ten-ton stone. Has it really become it’s ‘us verses them’ situation? I joked about leaving the country if McCain was elected – but what about everyone else?

When McCain gave his concession speech the crowd at State booed him and laughed when Sarah Palin appeared on screen. But if the people listened to what he said, really listened, I think it was much easier to respect him than take joy in his defeat.

On my way off campus my friend said that even though McCain talked a lot of trash during the election, his concession speech, he thought, was actually very good. Not because he was admitting defeat, but because instead of doing the right thing and throwing his support behind Obama, he could have very easily gone the other route and not been humble about it and eventually got the Republican party on the defensive—which would have started up something really unfortunate for everyone.

Despite what is undoubtedly going to be very interesting four years I am utterly excited to see what happens next.

As I walked down the streets of San Francisco the sentiment seems to be true for almost everyone. Several bars on Mission rattled with excited as they watched the recaps of the night. But the celebration wasn’t only confined to San Francisco.

My friend living in the political liberal city of Berkeley called to tell me the city broke out into a giant out door celebration when the announcement was finally made.

“The city just ERUPTED when it was announced,” she said.
“Yea,” I said, ““But I’m pretty sure the world just erupted too.”
—Eming Piansay