DATELINE: New York, New York

“There are three types of people in America right now: people who get it, people who don’t, and people who are insane”.

Right. And how will these groups be voting?

“Obama, Clinton, and Republican respectively.”

Alfie grins. Like many of the young professionals gathered in Union Square in Manhattan, he likes Obama’s youthful dynamism. He particularly likes the fact that the Senator for Illinois knows enough about high-tech jobs to make esoteric jokes on the subject (Alfie is a software developer). So what does he think of his own Senator, the woman who looms so large over New York that she seems to block out the sun – to the point that no other Democrats seemed like they would compete for the state’s 31 electoral votes?

“Ah, Hillary.” He makes a face. “That first line of her victory speech in New Hampshire, ‘Tonight, you helped me find my own voice’.” He makes another, even less happy face. “Don’t make me sick.”

At this point our attention is summoned by the organiser of today’s Obama march through New York for a short briefing, a hugely charismatic young man called Lamont Carolina. This briefing echoes what my cousin Sara was told upon volunteering for the Obama NYC group: namely, that there are three key messages if you want to help Barack Obama get elected -

1) Change,
2) Hope, and
3) Don’t attack the other candidates

This last point is integral to the etiquette of today’s march through Hillary’s home turf. “If the media try and talk to you, don’t attack the other candidates.” Lamont says. Alfie has already broken this rule – oops. “Let’s not even refer to you-know-who today. This is all about The Movement. This is all about positivity. If the Police ask you anything, be very co-operative. If you get hecklers – and this is New York, so you will – just say ‘thank you very much, have a nice day’.”

A cop wanders over, intrigued by the huddle of 60-odd people with signs. She just wants to check what’s going on, check this happy, well-dressed assembly of grown-ups aren’t about to start engaging in ritual sacrifice or drug-fuelled orgies. Lamont, permacharm at the ready, sweet-talks her into submission in the space of thirty seconds. As she starts to retreat, he says “thank you officer!” He pauses, casting around for an appropriate compliment. “You smell like fruit and rainbows!” The crowd laugh. Even the previously inscrutable policewoman smiles. “Let’s have a round of applause for Officer Thompson!” The marchers oblige.

At 12.30pm, with the warm winter sun gracing New York with a peculiarly autumnal feel, we set off on our march around Manhattan in six staggered groups of around ten people each, tripping over Sunday strollers and street vendors, skirting deftly around gazing tourists and idle construction sites. From either side of the long walk down Broadway the different groups fill the air with call-and-response chants:

‘O-bama! 0-8!’ ‘Ba-rock the vote!’ ‘Yes we can! Yes we can!’ And the Pavlovian back-and-forth Obama standard: ‘Fired up! / Ready to go! / Fired up? / Ready to go!’

Outside Broadway’s import/export fabric stores our ethnically-diverse, largely middle-class group gets its most enthusiastic response of the day, from the black and immigrant guys hanging outside the store-fronts. “That black man is going to DO it!” a 20-year old says with genuine pride from beneath his Yankees cap, as his friends sign up to the Obama mailing list in droves.

We leave in our wake a human Benetton billboard of people smothered in Obama stickers, speckling the Broadway sidewalk. A lot has been written about why Obama can’t – and shouldn’t – take the black vote for granted, which is fair of course. But I would just say this: if you’d witnessed the USA’s oh-so-recent civil rights struggles first-hand, or had your parents tell you about them, how would you feel about the genuine possibility that the US was about to elect a black president?

Halfway through the two-hour march, ‘New York’s Finest’, the NYPD, attempt to run some interference. Apparently the marchers can keep waving their signs, but will have to cease chanting for five blocks; the cops don’t like the noise.

“We’re going to have to keep it down,” Lamont tells the excitable crowds. “Because I don’t want to go to jail! The police officer said it could be a felony; up to ten years for ‘inciting a riot’.” So the crowd dutifully keep the noise down through Time Square, miming their rally-cries to bemused tourists in furs and Nikons.

The nastiness of the cop’s hollow threat (”find me one civil liberties lawyer and we’ll see if that felony charge sticks” Sara says, unsurprised at NYPD bullshit) is tempered by the fact that the next police officer along politely requests an Obama badge and sticker.

As we exit Time Square’s seizure-inducing, multi-sensorial consumer onslaught, and gather with other lost sections of the Obama group in Columbus Circle on the edge of Central Park, it’s clear the numbers have pretty much doubled in the course of the march. Beating She Who Shall Not Be Named in her own back yard won’t be easy, but with 150 people gathered for this march at only two days notice, a bigger, advance-planned march in the next two weeks before Super Tuesday could really rock the Clinton vessel.