A gathering in Norfolk reflects the mood of a cautiously optimistic nation

By D.D. Delaney

It’s a fragile hope which rests on the shoulders of one man.

Yet worries about that were few on January 20 at Norfolk’s Five Points Community Farm Market, where at least a hundred people gathered to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama on a wide-screen TV receiver borrowed for the occasion from an anonymous local telecommunications provider.

Aside from the fact that it was warm and dry in the Farm Market, being there felt a bit like being among the two million on the mall in Washington, as the local crowd applauded, cheered, wept, and shouted “Goodbye!” with unmistakable enthusiasm when the NBC cameras focused on the stoic profile of ex-President George W. Bush.

“There are people here who have been working for this for eight years,” said Tench Phillips, co-owner of the Naro Expanded Cinema.

He should know. He’s one of them.

But he was referring in particular to Tom Palumbo, who, with Farm Market founder Bev Sell, organized the community gathering to celebrate what Portsmouth playwright Sheri Bailey, brimming with optimism, called the beginning of “the Age of Obama.”
Palumbo, active nationally in Veterans for Peace, coordinates the Off-Base GI Coffee House, which he and peace partner Ann Williams opened in November on the corner of Fawn and 25th Streets in Norfolk, just behind the Farm Market on Church Street.
Word for the most part spread over the Internet and in leaflets distributed throughout surrounding neighborhoods, creating “an organic type of event,” said Palumbo. “It’s about community, engagement, and history. After all, this is Virginia, which was once the capital of the South. That’s significant.”

Bailey, herself African-American, spoke passionately to that point.

“A lot of older people were thinking they wouldn’t be alive to see this day,” she said, calling it “a moment as profound as when Jesus walked the earth, the official beginning of a new age. Obama is symbolic of what that is”—a nation where “all our hopes and dreams can come true
if we work at it” and where “we can all come together with an inclusiveness.”

“None of this will be easy,” she said, but Obama “is the best possible person to deal with where we (Americans) are now. We are at the edge of a cliff, and here we have an opportunity to jump back. That’s no small thing at all. It’s a global event. The whole world is watching” as America shows itself, after all, as “ageless, a place of freedom and justice where everybody has an opportunity.”

It’s not lost on Bailey that Hampton Roads tipped the majority of Virginia’s votes to Obama, and that at 11 p.m. on election day, Nov. 4, Virginia determined the outcome when the TV networks declared it a blue state.

“Hampton Roads, the birth place of America, is the birth place of the Age of Obama,” she said. Indicating the crowd around her, many tending to information tables with their various non-profit callings on display, she marveled at “this gathering of non-profits and social groups, for the first time in a positive setting for this kind of work.

“With a community organizer in the White House, we have a role model who can help us clear out the infrastructure and put in the building blocks necessary” for America’s revival, she said.

“If we can do that here (in Hampton Roads), we become a role model for the rest of society.”

Earlier, in the same vein, spoken-word artist Absolute (Portia Bryant) recited her poem “Obama Response” from a corner sound stage, bringing the message that “if change has come, it must begin in me.”

But discussions and socializing ceased when technicians shut down the background music and beamed in the inauguration broadcast. The emotion in the room became palpable, and when the Obama family made its grand entrance cheers broke out, people stood up from their folding chairs applauding, and many openly wept.

“It’s like a new king,” a young woman behind me said in awe.

To me, Obama looked like a man nearly bursting with emotion himself, though he soon got a grip.

“I’ve got a pouting Republican at home,” the woman sitting next to me confided with a brief giggle.

Pastor Rick Warren’s invocation was met largely with silence, though there was some respectful applause at the end, rewarding his good behavior, perhaps, for crafting a largely inclusive prayer.

The baroque bow on Aretha Franklin’s hat won several admiring comments, while her gospel rendering of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” may have been the real beginning of Bailey’s Age of Obama. At least nothing that emotionally intense ever happened before at any inauguration in my lifetime, which goes back to 1940.

But it was Obama’s oath that everyone really wanted to hear, signaling the end of the Bush regime.

At 12:06 p.m., as the crowd in the Farm Market exploded, it became official. Barack Obama was the 44th President of the United States.

And in his inaugural address, with nearly every point tactfully repudiating the leadership of the last eight years, Obama called on us “to put away childish things,” take responsibility, and rise to the challenges that face us, promising that in time we will overcome all obstacles and emerge once more as the great nation our founders intended us to be.

As expected, it was a strong speech—well-crafted, reasonably inspired, and respectfully brief. It also had something for everybody—except, of course, conservative Republicans.

“It’s a bad time to be a conservative,” remarked Phillips as we chatted informally afterwards.

Certainly relief at the Farm Market seemed unanimous when George Bush boarded the helicopter on his way back to Texas. But not all were ready to give heart and soul to Obama. Some worry his silence as Israel decimated Gaza and the military build-up he’s announced in Afghanistan are early warnings of a policy of continuing, costly wars.

“I don’t want to put a damper on what is a joyous time for African-American people,” said Steve Baggarly, Norfolk Catholic Worker peace activist and poverty worker. “But I don’t want all of us to be like the military. And he (Obama) didn’t say anything about Afghanistan.”

Interestingly, astrology—oracle to leaders and potentates from the beginning of time—also raises a red flag on this inauguration.

Had it happened a half hour later, the call would be considerably softened. But at 12:06 p.m. on Jan. 20 Mercury and the Moon did not favor quick solutions or expected outcomes. According to the stars, an administration beginning at that moment in Washington, DC, will likely find that what is hastily done will have to be undone. It’s also wise to beware of enemies close-at-hand, if history is any guide.

Still, the energy of Aquarius, sign of humanity and a new age, was heavily weighted at the meridian by Sun, Mercury, Jupiter, and Neptune. Not much can overcome this group. It rules the world, for better or for worse, confirming what we’ve already been told—that it really is up to
us, to humanity, whether our future is positive or negative.

By any measure—even astrologically—the hope, indeed, is fragile. But, as Bailey noted, it is also real.

Inauguration Day gave a majority of us a gift of hope, a belief in positive outcomes.

It’s a start. But it’s only a start.

D.D. Delaney is a journalist, poet, playwright, actor and activist. He lives in Norfolk.