'That's America'

Chicago's Grant Park plays its part in connecting an immense crowd to a larger power

CHICAGO -- It was the third time that I'd attended an important political gathering in Chicago's Grant Park. Named after the general who, perhaps more than anyone else, had ensured that this nation remain whole, Grant Park in more recent times had given witness to deep divisions within the body politic.

My first visit there came during the 1968 Democratic Convention. I was a young college volunteer for Allard Lowenstein's "Coalition for an Open Convention" -- the forlorn sequel to the latter's "Dump Johnson" movement. Events in Grant Park, where even "respectable" antiwar activists like me assembled after news of violence (and whiffs of tear gas) had penetrated our lakefront hotel redoubts, left a deep impression.

People running and screaming down lakefront streets, burly lines of police and National Guard outfitted in riot gear and Democratic Party leaders, led by Mayor Richard J. Daley, denying the reality we witnessed in the streets -- these images capped my first immersion in American electoral politics.

Jumping into the political process with considerable naivete, I was quickly disillusioned and soon identified myself, like many of my peers, as an alienated "outsider" to the "system." Indeed, within a few months of the convention, I would set off for a junior year abroad in England, eager to find solace in the life and politics of a less violent society.

Two and a half years ago, I was back in Grant Park for an equally urgent but more hopeful occasion.

In December 2005, the House of Representatives had passed the Sensenbrenner Bill, which would have criminalized unauthorized immigrants, as well as those who assisted them, simply for being present in the U.S. without documentation.

The bill triggered a massive response from immigrant-rights defenders across the country that began with Chicago's March 10 mobilization at the Federal Plaza and crested two months later in truly massive rallies in both Chicago and Los Angeles.

On May 1, 2005, I joined an estimated half-million people who had marched to Grant Park from another site of Civil War commemoration, Union Park, to stop the crackdown on an important sector of the city's working poor. Even as the Latino community took the lead, other ethnic groups, labor unions,and Democratic Party officials, led by Mayor Richard M. Daley -- son of the 1968 mayor -- were much in evidence.

Workers, schoolchildren and whole families paraded with American flags even as their chants and insignia identified them by their home-town affiliations. "Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote," they chanted, in Spanish and English. The political voice of Chicago seemed united on that day, though it was as if the city itself were tilting against a national wind of "border protection."

Anchoring the bluest of "blue states," Chicago itself represented the Democratic counterculture during the Bush years.

On election night 2008, it was again a different feeling in Grant Park. With the presence of discreet police, Parks Department personnel and the Obama machine's own operatives, I had the feeling that I had entered an incredibly well-run mini-state.

The crowd was immense, but someone had figured out exactly how much space was required to fence in 70,000 ticket-holders. This was an adult and predominantly young-adult crowd, but a very mixed one. The prayers and the music, not to mention the final, featured speaker at the podium, reflected the pride and exuberance of the African-American community, a community eager to share its joy with all comers.

Returns from CNN were projected on a giant screen: Shortly after the Virginia results were announced, the official projection of an overall Obama victory flashed on the screen. By that time, however, one could no longer hear the audio. People all around me were jumping, clapping, whooping, hugging and hollering. I suddenly realized that one of that shouting throng was me.

For the first time I could remember, the power of a crowd seemed not merely unthreatening but positively intoxicating: We each felt connected to a power larger than ourselves and envisioned the world a better place than it is.

On the way home, my wife and I packed into one of the El trains efficiently lined up for that very purpose by Daley's transportation department. Soon, we were invited to take a seat by two 20-something men in Obama T-shirts. It turned out one was Russian, the other Uzbeck. Both undergraduates at Northeastern and now good friends, they had been in the city a bare six months.

The Uzbeck wanted me to know that his town had produced the famous Muslim astronomer Akhmad Al-Fergani. The Russian said he just could not believe "a man like Obama" could be elected president. "That's America," he said with a smile.

There will be hard times ahead and likely further political trips to Grant Park. But for that moment, the harmony of the human and natural order seemed eminently feasible.

(Leon Fink, a former UNC-Chapel Hill faculty member, is distinguished professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is author of "The Maya of Morganton [N.C.]: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South.")