On this historic day, Barack Obama will be inaugurated as America's first black president. Congratulations to everyone who fought to win this campaign, who wore campaign buttons and T-shirts, who made phone calls, who walked precincts, who urged friends and relatives to vote.
For today is not only a day to celebrate this milestone in the struggle for racial equality-it is also a day to celebrate yourselves. Obama's victory would never have been possible without the determination and idealism of the students and young people who infused the campaign with leadership and energy, who made it different from other electoral campaigns and a genuine mass movement.
The Obama movement has succeeded at awakening a new sense of hope that America can be a land that realizes its principles of democracy and equality for all. Your actions have shown that, indeed, "Yes we can."
In addition to celebrating your historic accomplishment on this day, you should begin to determine among yourselves how you are going to preserve the accountability of President Obama to you.
All arguments against this consciousness of your own role and of your own right to stand up for what you believe are merely arguments that Barack Obama, as president, should only be accountable to the wealthy elite whose money fueled his entry into the primaries but could not have advanced him one practical step toward the presidency without the passionate response of rank and file progressive Democrats to his message of new hope for America.
What is most important on this triumphant day is that you recognize your own importance in history more than the importance of the particular candidate whose electoral cause you have embraced.  Â
