We hit the streets, along with most of Fort Greene, after 11:30, nearly a half hour after CNN and MSNBC called the election and the shouting and screaming and crying and hollering had begun to spill out of the houses, lungs too full for indoors. My election night party had peeled off until we had a hard core of the faithful, going from one TV to another, until we began to see our neighborhood reflected in the outer world: local hero Spike Lee was on CNN speaking of voting in Fort Greene before getting on a plane to go to Chicago and I figured if he could go that far, the least we could do was head for the corner. 

There, at South Portland and Lafayette, traffic was blocked in what looked like the opposite of a riot: cars were stopped by revelers but no one was fighting: everyone was shouting in unison, crying, laughing, chanting, holding up signs and cardboard cutouts of the candidate’s face. For a moment we were all Obama.

I heard from my sister in Texas that many reacted as if it were the end of the world. Now you know how we felt for, oh, eight years; the difference is we won’t punish them, we won’t think them unAmerican if they don’t agree with us. And President Obama (say it with me) will be their president too, just as he promised in his beautiful speech. (At least when we talked of leaving the country — after Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush — we kind of liked the idea; most conservatives would rather die than live in France.)

My friend Jess Greenbaum went to Harlem and couldn’t make it here but she sent me a message of huzzah. She had said something about how friends and family needed to be in touch with each other not just on the 9.11 disaster days but the opposite, the days of celebration and hope. For me, for so many of us who have fought and prayed for this victory, yesterday was like that. If 9.11 was our world turned upside down, Obama’s victory helped right it. I’m not used to seeing my country like this. Excuse me, there’s something in my eye.