Hope and Transformation

A very touching story from the On The Road series at Five Thirty Eight:

Back at the rally, after the march had left MLK Gardens, I'd gone back for the car while Brett took photos, and I spotted a very old black man in a sharp Sunday suit walking slowly at the very back of the huge march...

I wanted to go talk to him, to ask him what this moment meant to him. He was a guy who you take one glance at, and know, that guy's seen it all. I wanted a quote. I had my journalist hat on. I thought, this will be great...

Eventually I spotted him, and was ready to walk up the few feet between us and introduce myself when I stopped in my tracks.

A young black boy, no more than eight years old, walked up to this man, who was at least eighty. The boy offered the man a sticker, probably an "I Voted" sticker, but I couldn't see. The man took the sticker and paused. Silently, he looked down at the boy, who was looking back up at the man. The man put his hand gently on the boy's head, and I saw his eyes glisten.

I didn't ask the man for a quote. I didn't need to. I walked over by myself, behind the community center, and I sat down on a bench next to the track, and wept.

This story spoke to me. It made me cry in the same way I had when Sen. Obama clinched the nomination on that historic day in Denver. Hope and change sound like clichés to my (politically) jaded mind on most days. And yet, when I see the emotion in the eyes and faces of men and women, who have spent their entire lives discounting any possibility that one of their own could aspire to the highest office in the land, the emotion that comes from seeing just such a moment, it's hard to stay jaded. Hope and change are more than words and they are bigger than Sen. Obama, who is but a symbol for the aspirations of millions.