Nearly five decades after Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a Dream” speech, we are here at the National Mall where approximately 2 million people are prepared to converge on the historic inauguration of our new president, Barack Obama.

Pretty symbolic to have inauguration day be the day after the celebration of Martin Luther King.

When you think about Dr. Martin Luther King, he’s the dreamer. But Barack Obama is the actual dream.

It had to happen sooner or later, and I’m glad that it happened sooner.

Some of the things that Martin Luther King talked about in the days that he was on the trail for civil rights, that’s coming to, it’s manifesting now, and it means a lot for us. It’s a year where we have our first African American president. A time that a lot of people thought that they would never see. I’m only 32, and I never imagined that I would see it.

Rosa Parks sat, Martin Luther King walked, and Barack Obama will fly.

And even though that’s kinda hokey, I think it’s true.

The promise that America holds is that every participant, citizen, and those who hope to become citizens, has an opportunity to get that dream realized.

All nationalities voted for him, and they did not judge him by the color of his skin, but the content of his character.

There’s a spirit of hope in everyone, I mean, just look at the number of people that came. You know, the economy’s doing not well, but everybody’s here. Because we believe that tomorrow starts a brand new day.

Have to be here, have to be here to see it, history.

It allows us to bridge that Gap between hatred and love. So now folks are starting to see each other in the store and open the door for each other. Folks are starting to speak to strangers, and this is what the dream was really about. It really wasn’t about electing a president, its about the world becoming what the world really was supposed to be, and that’s one. And as the beetles say when the world become one, each will prevail.

This is our best opportunity in years, with the Obama administration, because one, they want to go green, and they want to go renewables, and they want to get off of foreign oil.

Getting off our addiction to fossil fuel and helping the rest of the world economy get off of fossil fuel is going to be a great empowerment for this planet.

I lead our national effort to address the largest single source of global warming pollution in the United states, which is coal. Are you going to move forward and start investing in clean energy, or are you simply going to go out of business because you don’t have an answer to address our most pressing problems?

I’m a patriotic American. I know I don’t have long to tell the story. I’m 80 years old. So get out and tell the story, hope younger people like you are going are going to pick it up and take the responsibility forward.

I know that from this point on we have our chance to redeem the heart of our country.

Hope for the future in this instance is president elect, who is very serious about transitioning off of fossil fuel and hopefully on to other sources, like a transportation system fueled by electricity or fueled by renewables.

Well if you go with the 200,000 mega watts of power that the dept. of energy in April ‘07 came out that we will need in the next 10 years, if you do that with wind in the corridor from Texas to Canada, you will create a lot of jobs. You’ll start off the first year with 138,000, and by the time you are in the corridor for 10 years, manufacturing and everything else will come in, and you will have created 3.5 million jobs.

This is about placing our earth and sustainability at the center of every action that we take and our own lives.

Hi this is Greg Reitman, and we are live at the green inaugural ball and we are doing a two-minute video blog called “on the green line,” and we have today Jerry Rice, associate producer of Fuel. Hi Jerry. Hi Greg, it’s great to be here, it’s an exciting moment in history, and I wouldn’t have missed it. Jerry, what does the green ball mean to you personally, There’s lots of balls, There’s the peace ball, the purple ball, the Illinois ball, When someone says a green ball, what does that resonate in terms of the meaning for you?

Well, I think the green ball is all about new beginnings, new beginnings for America.

I think the world is really aware that it’s the whole world that is at stake.

It’s not only up to our future president Obama. That sounds good, doesn’t it, president Obama.

We have elected Barack Obama to be our next president of the United States. This is a party. We’re here to celebrate.

That’s what it’s all about tonight. Its’ about celebration, but it’s also to look forward and
to mingle with like-minded individuals, to celebrate, and hopefully an environmental president.

We have an overcoat, which is composed completely of door hangers from the Obama campaign. What’s the lining made of? Can we check the lining? Yeah, sure. It’s 100% recycled material.

We said that by 2015 we’re going to be carbon neutral as a company. We have our considered products, which is all about creating sustainable products. We said that 100% of our footwear by 2011 is going to be considered, and we look at the same thing for apparel by 2015. So I think Sustainability is all about a journey, and we want people to see that we’re on the journey to get better and better.

Here at Al Gore’s green inaugural ball, the people are going nuts, the emotions are high.

I believe that a black man can work hard and succeed. We, we could be content to believe, that he, he will be in charge of the free.

What’s most important is that people see change, and the change looking for is what Barack Obama has provided to the green community.

Tomorrow a new day begins. We need to change the way we use energy, the way we treat the earth, and you’ve heard me say it, many places on many occasions. We’ve got everything we need, save perhaps political will, but we prove tomorrow at high noon, that in the United States of America, political will is indeed a renewable resource.

The constitution of the United States. Preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States. So help you god? So help me god. Congratulations Mr. President.

It’s packed out here. People of all faiths and all colors are all coming out for the celebration of our new president, Barack Obama. It is true, America’s spirit is alive today. You can feel it, you can see it. The spirit of independence. The spirit of what it is to be in American, to be free.