By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
MANILA, Philippines - I saw one of the best movies of all time last week. Except that it wasn’t a movie, it was real life.
You can forgive Oprah Winfrey her larger-than-life enthusiasms as she groped for words to capture the momentousness of the moment. As well indeed as the countless other Americans, black and white, who gathered at Chicago’s Grant Park and erupted into cheers and applause as Obama was declared the 44th president of the United States of America. Tears flowed copiously down the faces of the more elderly among them, like the Rev. Jesse Jackson who grimaced as he held back his emotion, that image alone speaking volumes about the length of the journey and the depth of the victory that had been won that day.
I myself roared my approval last Wednesday in the quiet of my neighborhood when CNN projected Obama the winner. When I saw that image of Jackson, I felt the hair on my body stand on end. Few images have moved me to the depths of my soul. That one did.
As dramatic goes, Obama’s victory ranks up there among my list of the five most dramatic events of the last 50 years. It is certainly the most dramatic event of the 21st century. Not even 9/11 comes close to it. The only other events I can think of that seem equally awe-inspiring are the landing on the moon, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of apartheid and our very own People Power in 1986.
Except for the landing of the moon, all these events were the culmination of struggles against tyranny, the bursting of light at the end of the deepest darkness. The Berlin Wall was dramatic because it carried a very graphic image, a physical barrier that became the symbol of everything that was absurdly tyrannical or tyrannically absurd, a literal wall that divided a city, a country, a people. The end of apartheid was equally dramatic because of Nelson Mandela, one of the truly great individuals of our time, who endured the severest persecution and punishment before going on to rid the world of one of its greatest plagues. Moses could not have done better.
And Edsa, ah, but that too qualifies as a modern-day miracle and has earned its place in the annals of epochal events, notwithstanding that Mahatma Gandhi preached the virtues of a bloodless revolution long before it. But I’ll plead guilty to my inclusion of it being motivated more by sentiment than by utter reason.
Just a year ago, the idea that America would have a black president was unthinkable. That he would be a first-time senator, that he would have an exotic background, with a Kenyan for a father, Hawaii as his roots, and some years in Indonesia behind him, and that he would carry the improbable name “Barack Obama,” was even more unthinkable. The tyranny that Obama ended wasn’t just the reign of George W. Bush, however tyrannical that was and would go down the anus of history. It went further, much further. It went back to the beginning of the life of Ann Nixon Cooper, the 106-year-old woman who bestirred herself to go to the polls last week to vote.
“She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons—because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.”
One of those reasons at least Obama pushed back, if not dispelled once and for all, with his victory. He would say in his acceptance speech that that moment was not the change they were seeking but merely the chance to secure the change they were seeking. But as many spectators, or witnesses, would say later on, that wasn’t entirely true. As Obama strode down the stage, a tall, gaunt and confident figure, not unlike another politician from Illinois who went on to sign a declaration that abolished slavery, he was the embodiment of the change countless people had sought and thought they would not see in their lifetime. His voice was the clanging of chains being thrown away.
“Change has come to America,” he said. What simple words to describe the massive shifting of the tectonic plates of history! No wonder the Rev. Jesse Jackson was in the state he was. Some of my friends texted me to say tears ran down their faces when they heard those words. I texted back: “Mine too.”
It was no ordinary election that took place in the mightiest nation on earth last week. It wasn’t just whether a Republican or Democrat would reside in the White House or whether the Republicans or Democrats would rule both houses of Congress. It wasn’t even just about jobs and the economy, or whether a country had had enough of eight years of misrule or would have more of it. It went deeper, it went farther.
It went beyond John McCain’s conciliatory words about his understanding the special pride African-Americans must feel that day, something he and his running mate in any case meant to thwart with a campaign that at a desperate hour tried to resurrect a “real America”—a bigoted America, a paranoid America, an America that brooked no change from what God, a bearded white man, decreed to be so.
In fact, it wasn’t just an election that took place last week in the land of the free and brave, where only last decade cops were free to beat up a black man for over-speeding, and where only recently Republican campaign ralliers could be brave enough to shout, “Kill him! Kill him!”
It wasn’t just an election, it was a revolution.
The road Ann Nixon Cooper has taken has been long, and it remains long. Obama has miles to go before he sleeps, picking up the journey from her. But last week, he took a long stride, not unlike the gravity-defying kind Neil Armstrong took on the moon.
I saw one of the best movies of all time last Wednesday. Except that it wasn’t a movie, it was real life.
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