{"id":2113,"date":"2008-11-05T17:51:06","date_gmt":"2008-11-05T17:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2113"},"modified":"2008-11-05T17:51:06","modified_gmt":"2008-11-05T17:51:06","slug":"crossing_paths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2113","title":{"rendered":"Crossing Paths"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

America, for all its many and well-documented flaws, can be pretty great. Only a few decades ago, the circumstances that made this photo possible would not have existed. There’s no way that someone like me would have gone to law school, found a job, and traveled to Washington, D.C. as part of a leadership training. And there’s no way that a black man with an exotic-sounding name would have been elected senator from a Midwestern state. But in this country, things are impossible until, one day, they’re not. Separate paths of hard work and serendipity led us to this brief encounter: two somewhat geeky lawyers who don’t look like most of the people around us. Two guys who could not have gotten to this moment in time without the support of so many others. <\/p>\n

In President-elect Obama, I see elements of my own story writ much larger. His election also reminds me that I shouldn’t spend so much time believing the myth of my own outsider status. The future is here and I’m so excited to discover my place in it.<\/p>\n

Image description: a February 2005 photo of me and then-Senator Obama taken in the tunnels under the Capitol building in Washington, DC. Obama is standing to my left in a charcoal suit, leaning forward slightly and smiling at the camera. I’m wearing a leather jacket over a shirt and tie, my facial expression entirely too serious. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

America, for all its many and well-documented flaws, can be pretty great. Only a few decades ago, the circumstances that made this photo possible would not have existed. There’s no way that someone like me would have gone to law school, found a job, and traveled to Washington, D.C. as part of a leadership training. […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-y5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}