Happy Inauguration/day/week/month, whatever you want to call it. As I write this, some citizens have their TVs turned on at home or at work, or maybe they’re scrolling through their smart phones, eager to see Donald Trump sworn in as the next president of the U.S. Others, meanwhile, may still be in mourning, or maybe they’re in DC, at one of the many protests, or maybe they’re choosing to tune out the news.

I’ve been involved in various progressive causes for a long time; I will say, however, that i don’t wish any ill will on this new administration. I hope upon hope that Trump and the GOP Congress realize they have to represent ALL Americans, including the number of groups that Trump attacked during his campaign and even post-victory. I don’t like to see this country as sharply divided as it is, to the point where some of us have stopped speaking to long-term friends or relatives. Even I have cut communication with a few relatives, and the election results are too fresh for me to try to heal that division right now.

That said, there is one good thing that has some from this election. People are engaged. They are  getting involved in their local Democratic Party, pondering running for school board or city council, attending meet-ups, planning rallies, making phone calls to their Senators and Congressman/woman, even their state reps. There is a level of political/civic engagement that we haven’t seen since maybe the 1960s. I do believe that Americans don’t want this divide, and I do believe a lot of Americans are fearful about what comes next. How will Trump govern? Well, we already have some indications of that. His cabinet appointments are a right-wingers dream team, everyone from Betsy DeVos to Jeff Sessions to Rick Perry to Tom Price to Rex Tillerson. Then, we received news yesterday that the budget Trump is leaning towards would abolish the National Endowment for the Arts and drastically cut funding to violence against women organizations, environmental research, and civil rights organizations. According to reports, the budget is essentially a Heritage Foundation “skinny” budget.” Cuts, cuts, cuts. The nomination of DeVos as Education Secretary and Tom Price as Health and Human Services Secretary are also clear signs that the GOP will try hard to fully privatize education and health care, something they’ve wanted to do for a long time.

My hope, moving forward, is that citizens will remain engaged and question statements from this administration, especially when they are  not fact-based. I hope Americans urge the press to do the job it needs to do, and I hope, most of all, that people continue to organize rallies, contact their representatives, and unplug from social media to attend a meet-up, realize they are not alone, and you know, actually talk to people face to face.

I will be at the Women’s March in DC tomorrow. I am attending for a number of reasons, but most of all because I believe in women’s right. Period. Following the march, I will continue teaching, writing, and co-leading a local chapter of a new grassroots organization, Action Together. We hope to keep people involved and get them to run for local political office.

There is work to be done. Since I titled my blog post after a Langston Hughes poem, let me end the post with a stanza from his “Let America Be America Again.”

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.