Eight years ago today – October 29, 2008 – one week before the historic Presidential Election, I posted Inauguration Ball 2009 on Daily Kos. I had been a DK member for only 12 days, and I didn’t think I had anything substanitive to add given the thick political atmosphere of the day. But I had read so many predictions of poor voter turnout, particularly in the black community, I felt compelled to move beyond the election and deal with the results as I envisioned them.
Within a few days of appearing on DK the essay went viral. I had no idea; the power of a simple post to DK. I was still a rookie here. The essay was copied and attached to emails, then received and forwarded all over the country. It was pasted into blogs and other political websites. Some teachers contacted me to get permission to use the piece as part of their history lessons. A radio station in Houston called me for an on-air interview. Civil rights icon Marian Wright Edelman read the essay during MLK-week festivities at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham (yeah, that church). A high school teacher asked if he could adapt the essay to a stage play for Black History month in his predominately white school. A latenight college radio host asked me if she could set the essay, by spoken word, to jazz music. But the best response came from home, back in New York, when my mother’s visiting friend told her about the essay, not knowing that my name is Kenyada. She went on and on about how she received the piece as an attachment from friend in Philly. My mom smiled and proudly admitted, “That’s my son, Richie, who wrote that.” Sadly, Mom passed away a year later, but she was so happy to have contributed her vote to President Obama’s win, and perhaps just as proud that her kid had written a pretty good fantasy description of Barack’s Inauguration.
Thank you, Daily Kos, for stalwartly moving forward on behalf of Hillary. I predict she will win. Early voting numbers are the highest since 2008, and those results worked out just fine.