Grant Park

Now, I want to stress that I am a lousy photographer, and taking photos at night with no tripod and a camera that doesn't seem to have any night-time settings while thousands of people mill about you makes it less easy to get any good shots. But I would be remiss if I didn't share some photos.

Jackson & Michigan

Immediately upon stepping onto the street in the Loop, it felt more like a sporting event than an election party. People were swarming everywhere, and vendors were out en masse. The more innocuous ones stood quietly and inconspicuously (there were about 20 to a block) selling buttons or T-shirts. Some were selling fans ("you can't call yourself a fan unless you have a fan!") and there were even a startling amount of people selling "rally towels:" hand towels with slogans like "Yes We Can" on them. They were all trying very hard to convince people that all of our friends would need proof that we were there. Like a rally towel.

Outside the first checkpoint

This is the crowd just outside of the first security checkpoint (I believe at Congress and Columbus), where people were milling around trying to find friends before heading inside. This is the first of many photos I have of stunningly large amounts of people. There ended up being three basic ticket-check/security-check points before we arrived at...

The Metal Detector Mob

The white tent at the front of the crowd is where the metal detectors were located. This was taken at the corner of Columbus & Balbo, looking south. This was by far the longest portion of the wait to get in. It took us over an hour to get from that first spot at Jackson & Michigan to get to the metal detectors, just over half a mile away. However, we're lucky we got there when we did.

The Second Wave

This photo is taken from the same spot, but looking back north. As you can see, on the other side of Balbo, CPD set up a barricade to keep the crowd coming in waves. I'm pretty sure traffic was blocked off on Balbo, but I believe the intent was to keep the crowd broken into smaller chunks so they could be managed more easily. All told the CPD did an exemplary job last night. Last time a Democratic function this big was held in Chicago, well... we all know what happened there. The police here don't have the best reputation. Former Police Commander Jon Burge is finally being brought up on charges related to his alleged torturing of more than 200 suspected criminals between 1972 and 1991, pre-invasion Iraq War protests were said to have more police than protesters, and at least one police officer was recently caught on tape beating a woman within an inch of her life because she refused to serve him more alcohol. More to the point, Chicago also doesn't have a great record with crowd control: the legendary Iroquois Theatre fire killed hundreds of children here in 1903, and more recently a fatal porch collapse and the E2 nightclub catastrophe. I was warned more than once to get out as fast as I could if it looked like there was going to be violence. But throughout the night, all I could see were calm, orderly crowds, helpful police officers overseeing the whole process, and overall a flawless event. It's a sad statement when I'm surprised that I didn't read about any arrests in the papers today (especially the Sun-Times, which only exists to criticize Mayor Daley), but it's still a happy surprise.

Playing to the Camera

We happened to end up situated close to a roaming crane-cam (I don't know what network it was for, but I was probably on said network a lot last night). As I said, the crowds were quite orderly: when the camera swung past, everyone would shout and cheer and wave their hands, and as soon as it moved on, they returned to quiet, polite conversations. I was expecting the hooting and hollering to be much more consistent, but what I saw was actually a lot more patient poll-watching. CNN was playing on the jumbo-tron, and all eyes were focused on the talking heads, and only reacting when another projection was made.

Wireless

Everyone and their mother was on their cell phones, constantly getting poll numbers, state by state updates, telling friends and family how excited they were, and so on and so forth. After a while, everything stopped getting through altogether. I would get notifications ten and fifteen minutes after the fact that my texts had gone out to Wyl. When I left the park, I got 17 text messages and 5 voicemail messages simultaneously.

Victory
Just after 10:00, when the west coast polls closed, CNN shot through a giant graphic reading "Barack Obama Elected President" and the crowd went insane. People were crying, screaming, dancing, waving their hands, hugging and kissing indiscriminately. As such, I was not going to take any photos. I was caught up in the moment. Not too long after, one of the sound guys came out to the podium and, amidst counting to four repeatedly, announced, "sound check for the next President of the United States" and the indiscriminate hugging and yelling started all over again.

Then John McCain gave his concession speech. For the first five minutes or so, Grant Park was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The only sound other than John McCain's voice was the police helicopter hovering over Lake Michigan. There was a tangible sense of thousands of people collectively forgiving John McCain, and remember after a fevered campaign that this was an earnest, honorable man who was being as gracious as he could be in defeat. But then he started repeating himself and everyone started checking our watches. Not out of bitterness, I don't think, but because he had visibly run out of steam, and we were waiting for our moment.

About ten minutes later, an announcer came on the PA and announced "Ladies & Gentleman, I would like to introduce to you..." The crowd went wild... and then was introduced to a Bishop who would lead them in prayer. Then the PA kicked up again, and we were introduced to... someone who would lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Then the PA kicked up again, and we were introduced to... someone who would sing the National Anthem. Each time the crowd was audibly disappointed, impatiently awaiting the moment when our champion would emerge and begin to lead us on the road to peace and prosperity and equality.

And then it happened.

I was far enough away that even with the zoom on my camera, and standing on my tip-toes and standing as still as I could, this was the best shot I could get of our new President-elect. But my god, the excitement.

Wednesday Morning Coming Down

And then we all filed out. It was a lengthy process, none hastened by the stiff knees caused by six straight hours of standing and the adrenaline crash. We walked several blocks out of the park to a train station in the opposite direction as the one we were going, in order to get on the train before the crowd. Upon entering the station, we were met by a 10-minute wait to get past the turnstile, and a largely full platform. That said, the trains were running frequently enough that we had no trouble getting on the first train that came by and getting out of the loop in a reasonable amount of time.

By the time I got home, all the energy had washed out of my body. Anna called me from her celebration in front of the White House to relay messages of the ecstatic masses roaming the streets of Washington. I got some desperately needed food into my body, flipped on the TV for a reprise of the acceptance speech, and poured myself two fingers of bourbon to celebrate our victory with the cat. I made it through the speech, but not much longer before I had to drag myself off to bed. But all told, what else was there for me to do?

We won.