Yes, we did
Hung-over and exhausted from last night’s spontaneous, all-night celebration on U Street (Sommer Mathis at DCist summed it up quite nicely: “At the very site of the worst of the 1968 riots, there was dancing instead”), I can’t help but be reminded of the first time I saw Barack Obama speak, at a fundraiser for the Kerry/Edwards campaign in 2004. I was an intern for Chicago alt-newsweekly NewCity at the time and showed up to the black tie gala wearing a t-shirt and a ratty pair of jeans. They issued me press credentials anyway and I was finally able to witness in person the electrifying speaker that the whole city was buzzing about. In those days, he was merely an Illinois State Senator and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School (his lectures were every bit as compelling as his speeches, or so my roommate at the time told me) but at that fundraiser, he managed to upstage both John Edwards and Mayor Daley—no mean feat in the city of Chicago. I was impressed enough to note that fact in my article but at the time, I could never have imagined that in just five short years, that little-known State Senator would become the first African American President in United States history.
