America 250 · Oakland · Saturday, September 12
Three hundred drones over the Coliseum at 9:15 pm, ten minutes, twenty formations. One story: the people who came here from somewhere else and built the place we call home.
Seven chapters, in the order the drones will draw them.
The land under the Coliseum is Lisjan Ohlone land, and the Ohlone are still here. Every American immigration story starts there. So does the show: an oak tree drawn in light, the tree Oakland is named for, roots first.
a spreading oakAlexander Hamilton arrived from Nevis as a broke teenager and built the country's financial system. Lafayette was nineteen when he sailed from France to join Washington. Von Steuben, a Prussian, taught the army to drill. The founders knew America was an idea people could choose, not only a place they were born.
a quill and the year 1776Hundreds of thousands of Africans were brought here in chains, and their forced labor built the early republic's wealth. The show opens this act with broken chains. Then the builders who came by choice: Chinese and Irish crews who met in Utah in 1869 to finish the railroad, and the Punjabi, Filipino and Mexican farmworkers who have fed California ever since.
broken chains, wheat, crossed pickaxesEllis Island processed twelve million people, then the 1924 quotas shut the doors for forty years. The few who got through in the 1930s changed everything: Einstein fled Germany in 1933, Hedy Lamarr left Austria in 1937 and co-invented the radio technique behind Wi-Fi and GPS, Fermi built the first nuclear reactor under a Chicago football stadium.
radio waves, E=mc²An eleven-year-old refugee from Prague became the first woman Secretary of State. A toddler from Havana grew up to put Latin rhythm on American pop radio. An Austrian bodybuilder ran California. A singer from Barbados and an actor from Canada became two of the most recognized faces on earth.
a handshake around the globe, a microphone, a crownJensen Huang came from Taiwan at nine and co-founded NVIDIA in a San Jose Denny's. Sergey Brin came from the Soviet Union at six and co-founded Google. Nearly half of America's largest companies were founded by immigrants or their children. The next 250 years are being built by the same kind of people.
a glowing chip and a constellation networkThe flags of every country of origin spin into the American flag. The flag becomes a glowing 250. The sky spells out five words. Then a raised hand lifts a torch, the way the statue in New York Harbor has for 140 years. Over Oakland, for ten seconds. Look up.
a hand with a torchSwipe, drag, or use the arrow keys
Five of the figures the drones will draw on Saturday, one from each act.
Born Charlestown, Nevis · Arrived New York, 1772
An orphaned clerk from a small Caribbean island, he talked his way to a New York education, became Washington's aide, and then the first Secretary of the Treasury. He designed the national bank, the mint, the customs service and the Coast Guard, and wrote most of the Federalist Papers.
An illuminated quill beside the year 1776.
Born Vienna, Austria · Arrived Hollywood, 1937
She escaped an arms-dealer husband and a darkening Europe to become one of MGM's biggest stars. Between films she invented. In 1942 she and composer George Antheil patented a frequency-hopping radio system to keep torpedoes from being jammed. The Navy shelved it. The idea became the basis of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS.
Radio waves radiating across the sky.
Born Prague, Czechoslovakia · Arrived New York, 1948
Her family fled the Nazis in 1939 and the Communists in 1948, landing in the United States when she was eleven. She became a citizen at twenty, a professor, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and, in 1997, the first woman to serve as Secretary of State.
A handshake wrapping around the Earth.
Born Havana, Cuba · Arrived Miami, 1959
Her family left Cuba when she was a toddler. With Miami Sound Machine she put Latin rhythm on American pop radio, sold more than a hundred million records, survived a 1990 tour-bus crash that broke her back, and was back on stage within a year. Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2015.
A stage microphone with rhythm waves.
Born Tainan, Taiwan · Arrived Kentucky, 1973
Sent to the United States at nine, he washed dishes at a Denny's before studying engineering at Oregon State and Stanford. In 1993, back at a Denny's in San Jose, he co-founded NVIDIA. The chips it built for video games became the engines of modern artificial intelligence.
A glowing chip and a circuit grid.
Immigrants, we get the job done.
The last words the drones will write on Saturday night.
Stay in your seat when the match ends. The show starts at 9:15 pm and flies over the field.
Each formation holds for about ten seconds before the drones re-form into the next. The whole story, prologue to torch, takes ten minutes.