‘Hopefully, this is where the page turns’
Danbury reacts to Biden inauguration
DANBURY — Glenda Armstrong thought about her 6-year-old granddaughter Wednesday when Vice President Kamala Harris was sworn in, and about a T-shirt the girl wears that says “My Vice President looks like me.”
Camila Bortolleto swiped through a swath of social justice posts on social media.
Will Love got chills listening to Lady Gaga sing the national anthem.
Love, a lifelong Danbury resident and leader of the Greater Danbury Area Justice Network, had one word to say about how they were feeling: hopeful.
“I’ve got my pearls on today,” Love said, referencing a popular homage to Harris, who has been known to don pearls on big occasions. “It’s a good day.”
Danbury residents are eager for a whole host of changes under the Biden administration: new leadership, legislation that might ease student loan debt, changes to immigration and educational policy, laws surrounding the Voting
Rights Act. Some voiced more abstract hopes: healing, unity, safety, “something different.”
“I can call him President Biden now,” said Michelle James, executive director of the Community Action Agency of Western Connecticut. James loved Biden’s speech, and said it was a “big day” for American women. She plans to drink some champagne with her family tonight.
The national event resonated for local advocates who have been watching and waiting for this moment.
“I think that when we are looking at a community like Danbury, as diverse as it is, we have to be mindful and appreciative of that diversity, and understand that everybody in this community has a level of value. And nobody should be compromised by who they are and what they are,” said Armstrong, president of the Greater Danbury NAACP. “We have to listen and learn and celebrate what we learn from each other.”
For Armstrong, the ceremony was representative of America in its diversity. She said the 22-yearold poet Amanda Gorman captured the sentiment best in her inaugural poem: “…while democracy can be periodically delayed, It can never be permanently defeated.”
Julie Schmitter, executive director at Danbury Youth Services, said she was looking forward to having someone in a leadership position that “may be a better role model for our children,” someone who makes them feel safe and secure in the U.S.
“I’m just really looking forward to moving forward and something different,” she said. Schmitter was at work Wednesday morning, but had been listening to National Public Radio and hoped to catch some of the festivities on her computer.
Not everyone took as bouyant a view. Juan Fonseca Tapia, an Air Force sergeant and community organizer for the Queer Unity Empowerment Support Team, said that while he felt a sense of relief watching clips of the inauguration, Biden and Harris were not his candidates of choice, and he doesn’t think of them as progressives. Still, he said that this moment provides opportunity.
“We are definitely at a pivotal moment as a country, especially after the past few weeks” he said. “Today is the day that the real work is going to have to start,” he said.
Others in the community share Fonseca Tapia’s tempered view of the events.
“It’s been, obviously, a rough four years for our community,” said Bortolleto, the 32-year-old co-director of CT Students for a Dream, a group that advocates for the rights of undocumented children and their families. “So it’s good to see moving beyond that and moving to a new chapter. But we’re not naïve.” She wants longterm change.
Bortolleto, who watched the event alone at home, said she remains cautiously hopeful — hopeful the new administration will, among other immigration policies, accomplish a new pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but cautious about her expectations. “We know this isn’t the end. But for the moment, it’s good to see some hope.”
On Wednesday night, Armstrong planned to pop some sparkling cider knowing that her granddaughter will see a vice president in office that looks like her, and that a new administration has taken the place of the old.
“Hopefully, this is where the page turns,” said Will Love. “There’s no bandage that is just going to make everything better, but one thing that we can take, just from what this administration has done in its transition phase, is hope.”