Inauguration Day

This morning I had a meeting at one of the adult education centers. At 11:00, we all took a break and joined one of the classes to watch the Inauguration. If I couldn't be on the mall, this was certainly the second best place. Teachers, students, tutors, staff and we gatecrashers from our meeting watched together; sometimes silently, sometimes in tears, sometimes with cheers. Yeah, there was one guy on his cell phone, and someone was doing her homework (hey we always tell them that they need to put their studying first and turn off that TV), but 95% of the class was listening and there was this feeling going around, like we were part of something. And we were: many of these students voted for their first time this year, either due to age or because no one ever gave them reason to think that their vote mattered before. I couldn't stay for the class discussion afterwords, but I've got that warm fuzzy feeling that these students, most of them labeled only as high school dropouts, gang members, single moms, or slackers, felt like they had helped elect someone who possibly saw them in those terms, but also sees them as parents, churchgoers, community members and people who don't always have a voice, but definitely have something to say, and that maybe that something is worth listening to. I've got a whole lot a hope in them, in him and in us.