Obama oath sounds in immigrants' hearts

A group of people watched the inauguration together in a Pita Grill in CA: students and teachers in an adult ESL class, recent immigrants, people born here and people here 25 years. This is the American Way. DP

By John Bogert, Columnist

There were people I wanted to reach on Tuesday morning, people who died long ago from being black, people who never understood why it took the vast weight of government to make it so a black man could eat a dinner out, and people who just never would have dreamed that a smart cookie of wonderfully confused heritage could finally transcend all of that.

If I can't be with those ghosts, I might as well be here on this warm inauguration morning, in the back room of a Middle Eastern restaurant owned by a ball-cap-wearing Muhammad Jaradat. A man 25 years in this country who, smelling change on the wind, threw open his Torrance Boulevard LaZeez Pita Grill to a bunch of Torrance Adult School English as a Second Language students because the big-screen images filtering down the satellite dish just begged to be shared.

"This is history," said Jaradat, an American citizen now living through a big business cycle downturn. "There has been so much damage done to our country in the last eight years, so much that needs to be healed here and abroad. And I think that this is the man to do it. Still, never in my life, never in 1,000 years, did I ever expect to see a man of color doing this. This is why I invited everyone here."

Meanwhile, all 30 people in the room - short-term visitors, recent immigrants and job transplants - are being guided through the historic mega-morning by English teachers Susan Ross and Linda Hargrove.

"This is the oath of office," said Ross, passing out small slips of paper bearing a photo of President-elect Obama and the 35-word oath he would take. "Standing out in my memory are the `I Have a Dream' speech, the JFK assassination and this, the three defining moments of my life."

For Hargrove, too, this is all about exposing her adult students to the real event, in real time and it seemed to be working.

President Obama calling our "patchwork heritage" a "strength, not a weakness" caught the attention of Siva Prasad Thota, a retired government worker from India who is here for a few months just absorbing American culture.
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