Courtesy of Shepard Fairey

I woke up this morning in haze. Did I just have the best dream ever, or was it real. OMG! Yes, it was very real. Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States. I was still in awe, speechless as I rolled out of bed. In my lifetime, I cannot believe that a black man, an African American has been elected President.

So to confirm my realization, I turned on the TV and it was true. Obama was chosen to lead this great nation to greater possibilities and higher heights. The man who ran as the President for Change, not the black President, won by an overwhelming popular vote. As a friend said: “It wasn’t a landslide, it was an ass whoopin’!”

I called my Mother to talk. “I can barely believe it,” she said. This is the woman who, along with my late father, had lived through the Civil Rights Movement. My parents who would go to “Whites Only” restaurants in the late ’50s and ’60s in protest only to be kicked out. My Mother, a retired lawyer who also is a community organizer, wished her parents could have seen this day. She recalls when Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling in 1936 when she was six years old. “It was a shame that a boxer was the only thing that black people had to look up to to give us hope,” she told me this morning. “But now with have this.”

Obama represents the new America. He is a role model and icon for today. He is multi-cultural, profound and a leader. We need him is these rough times and economic uncertainty. We also need to follow Obama’s “audacity of hope” and remember to aspire, have faith and be about change. But we cannot expect him to fix everything. We have to do our part. This is not a dream, this is very real. It’s a new day. Now let’s get busy!