Post Inauguration: Inspired, Focused and Optimistic

The day after is here. It's time for the hard work to begin. Our President has confirmed what I am sure most of us already knew; to turn around the USS America, it's going to take all hands on deck and that means you and I are going to have to look out for our neighbor a little more carefully than maybe we have in the past.

APTOPIX Iraq Obama Inauguration Global Reax

APTOPIX Iraq Obama Inauguration Global Reax

But yesterday, Inauguration Day was really something. I watched with my mom, at her home in Washington DC as Barack Hussein Obama, our 44th president, took the Oath of Office and gave his first Presidential address. I grew up here, born in the early throes of the Civil Rights movement. My mom grew up here during Jim Crow, praying in the "Colored section" of the segregated pews of her Catholic church. My mom never believed she would live to see a black president.

I believed I would. Still, to see the possibly millions of people together on the Mall, smiling and waving American flags and then to see our new President and his beautiful family moved me beyond words to tears. Instantaneously, this hope filled tableau salved old wounds that I had not consciously felt in decades, and then they melted away into memories that no longer sting and no longer hold any power over me.
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The moment President Obama was sworn in was a death knell to the old ways and old ways of thinking. I think we all know it, even though some are resisting the transformation all around. Some who cling to small power are willing to bloody their fingertips holding on to the slippery, jagged rocks of hate and bigotry. They want to cause harm. But sooner or later, those who are hate filled will be subsumed by a sorrow full sea of their own creation. They will find themselves far away from shore.

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If October and November confirmed anything for me, it is that the people, united, are unstoppable. And to those clinging to the most grotesque shadows of our American psyche, I believe our President was talking to you, too: We say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you. I know that Barack Obama makes me want to do more. The hope in the air makes me want to create more, contribute more, to be a better American citizen. I am inspired. That feels really, really good.

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