Come together …right now

Marge Beaver/Photography Plus An aerial photo shows Grant Park in Chicago.

A huge event was scheduled for Chicago’s lakefront at Grant Park.

With thousands of people eagerly awaiting the star attraction, something went terribly wrong.

Before it was over, scores of people were injured, including more police officers than were hurt at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The smell of tear gas and the taste of blood were everywhere.

---

No, the liberal elite media didn’t cover this up at President-elect Barack Obama’s speech this week at Chicago’s Grant Park.

The event described above was in 1970, when the rock group Sly and The Family Stone skipped out on a scheduled concert.

I happened to be at Grant Park that day almost 40 years ago, and the terrifying memories don’t fade easily. The front-page stories and talk that followed told of how the country continued to be ripping apart.

---

Last Tuesday, I was hunkered down in The Columbian newsroom. It was election night.

Cold pizza, warm Pepsi and a little beef jerky would get me through the long night.

I had already marked my office pool ballot: Senator Barack Obama would win the presidency with 321 electoral votes, 51 more than needed. I clearly underestimated Obama’s strength.

The race was over almost as soon as it began. Network TV dutifully refrained from calling it until the polls closed on the West Coast at 8 p.m.

A second later, Sen. John McCain was finished.

With little suspense left, the TV focused on Grant Park. The Grant Park of the ’68 convention. The Grant park of the Family Stone riots … now the Grant Park of Obama’s acceptance speech.

---

Grant Park. What a place. Named for President Ulysses S. Grant in 1901, it is considered Chicago’s front lawn. Growing up in and around Chicago, I’ve been there countless times. But the 1970 Grant Park riots were always my strongest memory.

So as I watched the huge Obama crowd gather on an unusually warm November night, I took a moment to reflect on how far we’ve come in almost 40 years. So many of those in the crowd listening to Obama weren’t even born in 1970. Are they aware of what happened there?

---

This was a bitter election campaign. Palling around with terrorists, socialists, clinging to guns, it was all a bit much.

But as I watched this huge, diverse crowd in Grant Park, it felt like there was an opportunity to come together, to extend a hand rather than point a finger.

Locally, if you listen to those who speak the loudest you’d think this is a dark red county: conservative, end of discussion.

But voting here has always belied that view. We’ve always been pretty evenly split. This year, in fact, Obama beat McCain here.

So is there an opportunity now to stop the shouting and the name-calling, end the fist-pumping?

I think so.

But the window for this kind of thing is always open for only a short time. We’ll all need to take advantage of it quickly.

The Columbian would love to cover a coming together.

Who needs Grant Park, right? Esther Short Park is our front lawn.

Let’s come together.

Lou Brancaccio is The Columbian’s editor. Reach him at 360-735-4505 or lou.brancaccio@columbian.com.