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Among the firsts in Amanda Gormanâs inaugural poem, âThe Hill We Climb,â is the concept of democracy that it assumed. Democracy, according to the twenty-two-year-old poet, is an aspirationâa thing of the future.
The word âdemocracyâ first appears in the same verse in which Gorman refers to âa force that would shatter our nation rather than share it.â The insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th took place while Gorman was working on the poem, although the âforce,â one may assume, is bigger than the insurrectionâit is the Trump Presidency that made the insurrection possible, and the forces of white supremacy and inequality that enabled that Presidency itselfââit / Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy / And this effort very nearly succeededâ the poem continues. âBut while democracy can be periodically delayed / it can never be permanently defeated.â
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In his first hours in office, Joe Biden has settledâalmost certainly, once and for allâone of the greatest environmental battles this country has seen. He has cancelled the permit allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to cross the border from Canada into the United States, and the story behind that victory illustrates a lot about where we stand in the push for a fair and working planet.
To review: Keystone XL, a project of the TransCanada Corporation (now TC Energy), was slated to carry oil from Albertaâs tar sands across the country to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. President George W. Bush approved the original Keystone pipeline, and it went into service, early in the Obama years, without any real fuss. A new XL version, announced in 2008, was larger and took a different course across the heartland. And, this time, there was opposition. It came first from indigenous people in Canada, who had watched tar-sand mines lay waste to a vast lands
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At Joe Bidenâs Inauguration, Jill Biden wore a relatively unknown designer, Alexandra OâNeill, and chose to wear the color blue âfor the pieces to signify trust, confidence, and stability.âPhotograph by Patrick Semansky / AFP / Getty
It was a strong day for coats. Senator Bernie Sanders, for instance, arrived at the most pomp-heavy and paparazzied political event of the year in a gruff, no-nonsense taupe parka from the Vermont-based snowboarding company Burton, which he paired with a pair of chunky, hand-knit mittens made from recycled wool. Would we expect anything less? The mittens were not new; Sanders wore several similar pairs along the campaign trail last year (they were a gift from Jen Ellis, a teacher and friend of Sandersâs daughter-in-law who makes knitted goods for craft fairs in her spare time). The jacket was also making a repeat appearance; it was an old Christmas gift from Sandersâs stepson, Dave Driscoll, the