By Jessica Bennett
Outside the Apollo Theater on Harlem's 125th Street, chants of "Obama
U-S-A" echo through subway tunnels and roadways as the final words of
the next president's speech--that familiar "Yes We Can"--broadcast
through open windows and car radios. To describe the scene here almost
sounds like a Lifetime special, except it is real: streets have been
blocked off, while black, white, Latino, young, old celebrate
peacefully, in multiple languages and urban dialects. "I honestly never
thought I'd see this day," says Roland Jackson, a lifelong Harlem
native who moved to Indiana six months ago, but came back today to
vote. "It's the fulfillment of Martin Luther King's dream," says
Richard Washington, 45. "Now we have a new legacy."
Beside me, two friends embrace--"change, man, change," one says,
patting the back of his friend. "I'm going to cry," says Elana King, a
36-year-old Harlem native. "Not only is this historic because its a
black man, but it's the first time we feel like we truly affected
change."
Amid the clanging of pots and pans, the constant blare of car horns and
scattered showers from a broken fire hydrant shooting water into the
air off Broadway, camera phones are almost as abundant as the Obama
paraphernalia: home-made posters, self-designed T-shirts, stickers,
flyers and fountains of confetti. "Its like Mardi Gras," says a woman.
Just a lot more historic.
