The whistles sounded. People cheered, danced, lit firecrackers and banged on the lids of the pots. Some even jumped into a fountain as people from many parts of New York City stormed the celebration of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.
News of the Associated Press screening of Biden’s victory instantly spread through President Donald Trump’s hometown. People who did not immediately see an alert on their phone learned the news from the screams coming from neighbors’ windows.
Crowds cheered on the sidewalk outside Trump Tower, the president’s longtime home, and gathered by the hundreds in the public squares that have served as rallying points for the Black Lives Matter protests.
Many spoke of a feeling of intense relief. Kyle Boyd of Brooklyn said he heard the commotion and instinctively grasped the bell he had rung during nightly celebrations for healthcare workers during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I hadn’t imagined it,” Boyd said of the shouting from revelers as a man hoisted a bottle of champagne nearby. “I had no idea when it would arrive.”
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On a corner in East Harlem, José Díaz was selling T-shirts with Trump’s image and the message “game over.”
Diaz, 57, was so confident that Biden would win that he made the shirts two months ago, spending $ 2,000, and had given away 100, he said.
“The game is over. Now people can get back to normal,” said the union blacksmith, who was born in Puerto Rico and raised in Manhattan. “This is America. Everyone has the right to vote. You cannot change the rules of the game yourself.”
In Washington Square Park in lower Manhattan, people waded in a fountain on a normally warm fall day.
In Harlem, the songs of “Black Lives Matter” were mixed with cheers, applause and honks among a multiracial crowd in a plaza on the main street of the neighborhood, 125. Some danced to the rhythms of R&B classics and later, they sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, the anthem also known as the black national anthem.
“If Biden does what he says he’s going to do, we’re going to be a great country,” said Terence Blakes, who calls himself “Born Life,” as he watched.
The 53-year-old, who works at a Harlem school, said he waited two to three hours to vote in his constituency in Brooklyn.
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