Thoughts on Obama's inauguration

Yesterday, January 20, 2009, Barack Obama became the 44th President of the United States. For me the inauguration began in Dec. 13th, 2008, when I met with a group of Obama supporters for a house meeting sponsored by the Obama campaign.



The goal of this house meeting was to come together and to to reflect on what we've accomplished and plan the future of this movement." So about 30 people met in a Westchester house in downtown Bakersfield, to reflect on the "future of the movement." We brainstormed about the issues raised in the campaign: healthcare, education, Iraq, the financial crisis.



The second part of the meeting was spent trying to determine a community service project we could do on the Martin Luther King Holiday. We were informed that President Elect Obama and Vice President Elect Biden were going to be doing community service projects that day. That impressed me at the time.



So we came up with a list of projects. The project we chose was to paint over graffiti in the area adjacent to Martin Luther King Park in Bakersfield. We were partnered with the Bakersfield Police Department's anti-graffiti program and Stop The Violence. That area was drive through country for me, so I got a chance to see how other people in Bakersfield lived. There is a lot of public housing around the park there are properties that are abandoned but also properties that are well-maintained. I was in a group of about 10 people and we walked east 4 blocks and then south another two and painted over graffiti in the Alley behind Clinica Sierra Vista's East Bakersfield Community Health Center. It was interesting to see the reactions of the people of the neighborhood. Children stared at us as if we were visitors from another planet, in my case Southwest Bakersfiled. Most of the adults smiled at us whether it was in gratitude because we were helping their community or amusement because were just a bunch of one-day do-gooders who would never walk through their neighborhood again, I don't know.

We spent about 90 minutes painting and when we had completed the job, we went back to the park to turning in our painting supplies. As soon as the painting was over, I went home and crashed. I was exhausted. But I was happy as well. The Obamas and Bidens did community service during the holiday and I had done community service with them as well.

Inauguration Day was like a holiday for which I had to go to work. It was a busy day for me I had a lot of work to do in the morning. At 9 a.m. one of my co-workers announced "it's official, he's been sworn in." When I heard that, I said "Free at last. Free at last. Thank God we are free at last."

After work I came home and watched the inauguration on CSPAN. I enjoyed President Obama's speech and the performance by Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma. It was a powerful speech, both somber and sobering. It totally repudiated much of what was done by the previous administration and left no doubt that the path ahead will require hard work and sacrifice from all Americans. Meanwhile President Defect Bush sat listening to the trashing of what passes for his legacy.

The inauguration and its celebration is over and now real work must begin. I imagine I'll be doing more community work in the future, painting graffiti, writing to political representatives, or working to get certain leglislation passed. But after seven years of "partisanship, politicization and incompetence" as The Economist wrote in a briefing, such work is not only necessary but welcome.

Capitano Tedeschi

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