Happy Inaguration Day America!

Today, America celebrates the Inaguration of President Barack Obama. The historical significance of this moment, combined with the seemingly overwhelming challenges our nation faces, is both awesome and sobering. While we at WOW celebrate the election of what I suspect may be our first "feminist" president, and look forward to seeing President Obama's work on women's issues, we are also realistic about the very difficult moment that America finds itself in today. Rampant unemployment, a healthcare crisis, foreclosures in every neighborhood, disappearing savings - these issues of growing poverty affect us all, and won't be solved after President Obama takes the oath of office this morning.

There's a saying going around that I think bears repeating -

"Rosa sat, so King could walk. King walked so Obama could run. Obama ran so that we all could fly."'

It's up to all of us to take a cue from our grandparents, members of the post-WWII "greatest generation" who found themselves in a very similar place several decades ago, and undertake large scale committments, both personal and national, to creating the change we want to see in the world. I think that one of the smartest things that President Obama has done is to put the ball back into the court of the American people, and I encourage you to listen to his latest YouTube video below.

Today, make a commitment to yourself that you will undertake one single thing this year to make the change you want to see in the world. Whether it is as small as changing your lamps to environmentally friendly lightbulbs, or as grand as lobbying your Senator for universal health care, whether it is as personal as reaching out to a lonely relative or as communal as joining neighbors in collecting items for homeless people in your neighborhoodl, whether it is as local as tutoring at the community center down the block or as global as sending pencils to schoolchildren in Iraq, make one committment to yourself today that you will be a part of this historic moment. That when you look back in ten years at today, you can say, I was a part of that. That when your kids and grandkids ask you, what was it like to be alive in January of 2009, you can tell them how you didn't sit on the sidelines of history, you were a part of the living history that is the definition of America itself. Are you with me? Leave your commitment to change in the comments section!