Another Great Day In Harlem

This is my account of one of the most historic days in recent history. Now first off you have to know that I personally I had a lot of back and forth debate within myself about whether I would vote in this years election. Personally I feel that the whole political process is antiquated and needs to go. After the Gore / Bush election I had lost faith in the democratic process. I stopped voting altogether so I hadn't planned on things being much different this year.

Now the other side of the coin was that this year we had a black man who was running for office. Not only was we black, this brother was qualified and in my opinion the best possible candidate. This would be a momentous occasion and how could I not do my part to help this brother pave the way for future generations. I had decided to let events fall into place and wait for a sign that would allow me to make a decision. I took a few photos to show some of the events as they went down and wanted to share a few with you.


This is the Barack Obama and Rakim shirt that a sneaker store had in the window on 125th street. I thought this was kinda stupid because WTF does Barack Obama have to do with Eric B and Rakim? Just another example of how people were pimping Barack and this whole election to make a quick buck. Other examples of this are.













The Barack Obama button lady selling buttons for $2 dollars a pop.












The Rhinestone Barack Obama Shirt which I don't know how much this brother paid for it but he is obviously happy to be wearing it
















So aside from all if the other things being sold on 125th street, Charlie Rangel had made arrangements to have a Jumbotron set up in front of the state office building.
Everyone came there to watch the election results come in on CNN. A few Celebrities showed up as well. I saw Jeremy Piven of Entourage there at some point. I heard fellow Harlemite Dougie Fresh was there, but it was really all about Obama. As you can see there were lots of




News Trucks














People













Even Obama himself showed up to watch the events on the Jumbotron. And for 5 dollars you could even take a picture with him. (I swear if the resurrection happened tomorrow and my people knew about it in advance, they would have T-shirts with Jesus' picture on it talking about “The Comeback 08”)






Anyway, I had decided a way that I could still vote without being a hypocrite and participating in the political process myself. I wanted my daughters to be able to understand the significance of this moment so I decided to take them into the voting booth with me. This way they would be the ones pulling the lever and actually voting in my name (I know its a stretch but It works for me) I took this picture so that they would be able to show their kids one day that they voted in this election.










This is a picture I took maybe 30 minutes later of the aftermath of a buncha Bloods jumping on someone in front of the building around the corner from my house. No matter what is happening you can still expect some cats to act totally uncivilized in the face of progress.







The only thing left to do now was to sit back and wait for the election results to come in. When they did, Harlem exploded. There were White, black Hispanic, Asian east Indian, all races running and shouting in the streets, hi-fiving and hugging each other. It was a celebration even bigger than New Years. I have never seen anything like it and I gotta say it was beautiful.







We went into PJ's which is a bar around the corner from my house to watch Barack Obama's acceptance speech. This made the day even more historic since PJ's is a place that I would never be caught dead in. It was great to see my people happy and celebrating but it was even better to know that we had a black president who won this election with class and handled himself with dignity.




I even got to get some video footage. I shot this footage at 1am on 133rd Street and 7th avenue in Harlem in front of PJ's Lounge on the night that Barack Obama was elected our nations 44th President. I wanted to show that the excitement was still in the air. Please forgive me for sounding so ghetto in the clip but I was soooo tired.



I hope that my people will take note and be the change that they want to see the same way brother Barack did.