So much relief.  So much emotion. So much to celebrate; the ability to breathe again.

Yes, “We stopped the neo-fascist threat,” in the words of Dr. Cornel West. 

“A day of hope, renewal, resolve: a day for Democracy--the cause of democracy,” in the words of our new president on his inauguration yesterday. 

Like I said in yesterday’s blog post, we are commanded in this week’s Torah portion to remember--even before we have walked to freedom!

Yet! “America is that country that forgets--willingly...we were all there,” in the words of journalist Maria Hinojosa this morning on Democracy Now! 

Just as we are to remember the bondage and the suffering and the locusts and fire and hail and lice and blood and death of the firstborn; just as we are to remember the Holocaust, let us remember that the three men who stood together and made a video for Joe Biden’s inauguration yesterday are responsible for crimes against humanity, along with the Old Biden himself. They started the machine that Donald Trump continued.

So, let us remember that it was, collectively, Clinton and G.W. Bush and Obama who are responsible for Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran, for the so-called Welfare Reform Bill that led to the intensification of poverty in this nation, for mass incarceration of Black and Brown people, for the beginning of the building of a border wall, for the greatest deportation of immigrants in the history of our country, for bailing out Wall Street instead of common Americans, for increased militarism,...We were all there. Did we forget already?

Yes, let us give the New Biden a chance, but if we keep talking about “returning to normalcy,” then we are talking about continuing an old system, a system not so different from Pharaoh’s, with continued bondage and suffering and hail and fire and blood—things we know exist in our country and world today!

I end with Amanda Gorman’s words from her poem yesterday:

“While once we asked, how can we possibly prevail over catastrophe?

We now assert

How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?”

“We will not march back to what was but move to what shall be.”

“If we merge mercy with might,

and might with right,

then love becomes our legacy

and change our children's birthright.”

“When day comes we step out of the shade,

aflame and unafraid

The new dawn blooms as we free it

For there is always light,

if only we're brave enough to see it

If only we're brave enough to be it.”