We still can

Note: I wrote this text four years ago, on inauguration day 2017. I did not publish it then. Today, the day Joe Biden was sworn in as President of the United States, I will. It’s inauguration day and we’re still hopeful, happy, determined, and ready - maybe more so than ever.

Eight years ago I was wearing my Obama pin, celebrating with my fellow grad students in the school’s community hall. The TV was on and there were giant screens all around. It was inauguration day, and we were happy, hopeful, and excited.

I had moved to NYC just in time to volunteer for Obama’s first campaign, and I felt proud and maybe even a little bit responsible for what was happening that day too. As a legal alien, I could not vote. But that, I could do - make phone calls encouraging people to vote, making sure they were registered to do so. So yeah, that had also my president being sworn in that day.

Today was quite different.

Today I went to the Brooklyn Museum for a marathon reading of Langston Hughes’s 1935 beautiful, moving, and prescient poem "Let America Be America Again.” I got some books from my Public Library, and made a donation to an organization that helps undocumented teens go to college. I joined friends at Urban Glass, making signs for tomorrow’s NYC Women’s March. It’s inauguration day and we’re hopeful, determined, and ready.