I want to start with the tears.
November 4, 2008. Grant Park, Chicago. Barack Obama has just been elected president, and the cameras find Jesse Jackson standing in the crowd, not on the stage, in the crowd, with his face completely undone. Tears running. Jaw tight. Eyes somewhere between here and thirty years ago. The facial posture alone carried the weight of a whole life. Impression and expression layered together the way only real grief and real joy can produce, each one refusing to yield to the other.