Inauguration Roundup

A compilation of links to key events during today's amazing
Inauguration of Barack Obama

• Beautiful and elegant new official web site for the White House/President
• Obama taking the Oath of Office
• Obama Inauguration speech, video and text.
• Aretha Franklin singing My Country Tis of Thee
• Elizabeth Alexander reads inaugural poem "Praise Song for the Day" Video. Text.
• Reverend Joseph Lowery benediction (video)
• Air + Simple Gifts Yo-Yo Ma , Itzhak Perlman , Anthony McGill & Gabriela Montero
  

The many faces of the Obama Family at the Inauguration. They embody the real America, people! An excerpt from the story:

The family that produced Barack and Michelle Obama is black and white and Asian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. They speak English; Indonesian; French; Cantonese; German; Hebrew; African languages including Swahili, Luo and Igbo; and even a few phrases of Gullah, the Creole dialect of the South Carolina Lowcountry. Very few are wealthy, and some — like Sarah Obama, the stepgrandmother who only recently got electricity and running water in her metal-roofed shack — are quite poor.

The President and Mrs. Obama dancing to "At Last" at the Neighborhood Ball.
I say, "INDEED! AT LAST!"

More from the Neighborhood Ball -- Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours!

Barack Obama Inauguration Playlist

Here is my playlist for the inauguration of our 44th president. What's yours?

1. A Change is Gonna Come -- Sam Cooke
2. Sister Rosa -- The Neville Brothers
3. Up Above My Head (I hear music in the air) -- Ruthie Foster
4. Many Rivers to Cross -- Jimmy Cliff
5. People Everyday -- Arrested Development
6. Happy Birthday -- Stevie Wonder
7. Reconciliation -- Sounds of Blackness
8. Family Affair -- Sly and the Family Stone
9. Peace Sign -- War
10. Salala -- Angelique Kidjo
11. America the Beautiful -- Ray Charles
12. I Shall Be Released -- Nina Simone
13. Still I Rise -- Melky Sedeck
14. Mercy Mercy Me -- Marvin Gaye
15. Butterfly -- Mariah Carey
16. What a Wonderful World -- Louis Armstrong
17. Melodies from Heaven -- Kirk Franklin
18. Ordinary People -- John Legend
19. Three Little Birds -- Bob Marley
20. Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud) -- James Brown
21. Strength Courage and Wisdon -- India.Arie
22. Strange Fruit -- Billie Holiday
23. Grandma's Hands -- Bill Withers
24. Black Diamonds and Blue Pearls -- Angie Stone
25. Rivers of Babylon -- The Melodians
26. Obama Ubarikewe -- Samba Mapangala
27. A Black Man in the White House -- Sizzla
28. In My Life -- The Beatles
29. Here Comes the Sun -- George Harrison and Paul Simon
30. Overjoyed -- Stevie Wonder
31. Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off that Sucker) -- Parliament
32. A Song For Mama -- Boyz II Men
33. Forever Young -- Bob Dylan
34. Stand By Me -- Ben E. King
35. Oh Happy Day -- Etta James
36. Don't Worry Be Happy -- Bobby McFerrin

One week til Inauguration and all things are not equal

Inauguration Day is one week away. I'm taking the day off work to watch, with my spouse and a few close friends. No doubt we will cry. No doubt we will remember forever that moment as history unfolds.

Obama said this on election night: "If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."

While the dream is very much alive and a global sense of hope and possibility leaped ahead at warp speed the moment he was elected, all things are not equal -- far from it -- and I'm worried about white people. I'm worried about us as a large foreboding mass of ignorance about race and racial injustice. I'm worried that too many white people who have little or no experience with all things African American will believe that racial equality has been achieved in America because we elected a black man as president.

I'm worried that conservatives will use Obama's presidency as a reason to overturn civil rights laws. It's already begun with an appeal to overturn The Voting Rights Act. And affirmative action? A new study suggests that if affirmative action was to vanish, the result would be a 35 percent drop in the enrollment of students from underrepresented minority groups at the most competitive colleges — but little gain for white students.

The truth is, and we hold these truths to be self evident: Obama's election deepens the fissure between those who are achieving and those who are not. We all may be created equal, but we are far from achieving equality.

It starts early. When my kids were in grade school, I remember heading to their school for yet another visit with the principal because my son had been acting bad again. When I got to school -- an arts magnet in the Minneapolis Public Schools -- and turned into the school office, I saw my son and four other kids lined up on the bench waiting to see the principal. They were all black, all boys.

I had peeked into the auditorium on my way to the office and saw the school orchestra practicing -- about 75% girls and and about 85% white. This is a school that was majority kids of color, and of those kids, majority African American.

Now either you fundamentally believe that black children are somehow less capable than white children or you know something is wrong with that picture.

Something was very wrong with that picture -- a snapshot among many in my life -- and something is very wrong with pictures and statistics about how black people, especially African American men, are faring across the country.

Here are few gleaned from the African American Men Project in Hennepin County a few years back:

• 28 percent of African American males enrolled in the Minneapolis Public Schools graduate in four years
• Young African American men are twice as likely to die and 27 times more likely to go to jail as are young white men
• Forty-four percent of young African American men are arrested each year
• Homicide is the No. 1 cause -- 64 percent -- of all deaths

I am absolutely certain that those stats hold up today, or are worse.

On election day, 95% of African Americans who voted cast their vote for Obama. But did you know that over a million African American men who might have voted could not. Not did not. Could not, because of felony convictions. Could not, even if their time had been served.

This is called disenfranchisement. The Sentencing Project has this to say about the issue: "Nationally, an estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of laws that prohibit voting by people with felony convictions. This fundamental obstacle to participation in democratic life is exacerbated by racial disparities in the criminal justice system, resulting in an estimated 13% of Black men unable to vote."

Last fall, the organization released a report, "Losing the Vote," that makes stark this problem. A couple of "highlights:"

• 1.4 million African American men are disenfranchised, a rate seven times the national average.
• Given current rates of incarceration, three in ten of the next generation of black men can expect to be disenfranchised at some point in their lifetime. In states that disenfranchise ex-offenders, as many as 40% of black men may permanently lose their right to vote.
• 2.1 million disenfranchised persons are ex-offenders who have completed their sentences.

I could go on, but I won't. For now.

I just want to make sure we are all clear about this self evident truth -- Obama's election is a dream made real 45 years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood at the Lincoln Memorial and called for a better world for his children, and for ours. It is. But we aren't there yet, not by a long shot. People of color, African Americans in particular, understand this truth explicitly.

But white people.... I'm worried about us. So listen up. Next Tuesday, when Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States, embrace that moment as perhaps the achievement in the fight for racial justice in our lifetime. But more important, embrace that moment as the first next step toward the incredible, difficult work that's left to be done. We must always move forward from wherever we are now, and must never turn back.