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    Barack in Brooklyn

    Posted Monday, November 03, 2008 2:27 PM | By Meghan O'Rourke
    This weekend, I ran partway through Brooklyn along the marathon route with my brother (who was actually running all 26-plus miles, unlike me). Much of the route is crowded with cheering spectators. But I've run this section a few years and every time I'm struck by the relative emptiness of the streets in Bed-Stuy (a lower-income neighborhood that's mostly African American) and the section heading into Williamsburg where a lot of Hasidic Jews live. The sudden emptiness of the streets is one of those profound reminders of class divisions -- how different a few miles can make in the social geography a city. This year, though, something different took place. There was a group of spectators in Bed-Stuy who avidly cheered on a subsection ofmarathon runners: Those wearing Obama stickers and buttons. "OBAMA!" rung out over and over. I've lived in Brooklyn a long time but I've never seen such a sense of connection across class and race in this area as I did yesterday, for those few moments. 
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