I cried, I ran, I shouted and sang this Nov. 4, but even as I did, I remembered a movie about the even more awe-inspiring election of the great Nelson Mandela. The people sang and danced then too, but sadly South Africa still has many people suffering in abject poverty despite the change in leadership. We must be warned by history if Obama's election is to mean something.

In the USA, we had a Native American vice president, Charles Curtis, under Herbert Hoover. We had many African-American Congressmen during reconstruction. We had Jeanette Rankin in Congress vote to give women the right to vote. America is a nation bursting with heroes. Yet the Indian Trust has never been paid. Politicians sold off reconstruction, and the KKK rose up. My great-aunt graduated from Harvard at the top of her class and could not get a job. Heroes are fleeting; their ideas are what must endure in the form of their supporters' actions.

America is in crisis, and unless we all fundamentally change how we think and act, Obama's election will have only been the eye of the storm. His election is an historic opportunity, but it is up to us to take it.

Claire McManus

senior-international politics