Cecily Strong Instagram – Always a day (or more) late on everything but you know I had to get in on Obama Day. From the first day I heard of Barack Obama, working the AFL-CIO dem candidate debate coat check in 2003(?!?) and the sweet woman next to me said “oh my gosh… that’s Barack Obama” and I knew he was special by the way she cheered for this state Senator I’d never heard of. To the times I was carrying my little pink purse around California at college with an Obama senate sticker (and everyone would ask what the hell my sticker meant) to that amazing day in Grant Park to saying yes to do the WHCD even though everyone warned against it because it’s a tough room, you can’t win, etc -but you just can’t say no to getting to sit next to Michelle for a night! I was angry for so long and Obama was finally a leader who also felt like a role model in how to be effective in channeling that and sometimes working around it in order to be able to get things done. And how many leaders can motivate using hope and kindness as opposed to anger? There’s so many candidates who run for president and seem to hate our government- but if anyone actually had a “right” to hate the American government it was him (at least in all but the most recent years looking at the major contenders). But he didn’t and still doesn’t. He went there because he loved it enough to want to make it better. He asked career politicians to be willing to lose their jobs to pass healthcare reform, knowing that people wouldn’t get to see the positive effects until a couple years down the line and knowing negative political spin takes far less time. But country over party- and I know plenty of people whose lives were saved and that’s more important than D or R. And no matter how I feel today, nothing can change the pride I felt as an American to know this was our first family. And since this is a public post, and in the spirit of being on the right side of history (even though words feel small compared to the pain and frustration and anger that is so unfathomable it is felt across the globe) BLACK LIVES MATTER and BLACK TRANS LIVES MATTER