AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

On Saturday night in Washington, D.C., Busboys and Poets hosted the 2025 Inaugural Peace Ball, which first started in 2009 with the inauguration of President Obama. The theme was “A Gathering for Positive Change.” While the event had once been held at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, this year Busboys and Poets founder Andy Shallal was quoted in The New York Times saying that the museum had complaints about, quote, “the tone of the event,” even though some of the featured speakers are also featured in the museum, including the abolitionist, the author, the professor and longtime activist Angela Davis. The event did proceed, however, at the Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater. This is Angela Davis.

ANGELA DAVIS: A lot more is happening in the world than the inauguration of someone who represents fascism in this country and the world. And if we look back at struggles for justice and equality, we find that there aren’t often propitious moments for those struggles. We’ve always confronted waves of conservatism. And while we cannot create the conditions for the struggles in which we engage, we can bring our determination. We can bring our vision for a better future. And even as we express the deep disappointment — and I’m not going to try to enumerate all of the things about which we are collectively disappointed, but we can’t find ourselves so ensconced in that disappointment that we don’t create the kind of hope that will allow us to move forward and pass legacies to the next generation of people who are struggling. And we do — we do — we do want to join that celebration that Linda Sarsour talked about on the sands of Gaza. We want to be able to look forward to that moment.

Now, I guess I should at least mention the fact that the conditions of struggle today are horrendous. And when I try to imagine what it might mean to confront, you know, all of those who are the billionaires, who once were opposed to Trump, who are now offering themselves up to him, but when I think about the move toward fascism, I also celebrate the fact that we have never seen as many people stand up for the freedom of Palestine. People who were dissuaded in the past by Zionist propaganda are standing up and powerfully demanding a free Palestine. Free, free Palestine. And that is what we are celebrating this evening. That is what we are celebrating.

Now, I think it might be propitious — I’ll use that word again — that the inauguration is happening on the same day as we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King. And in that context, I want to remind us that it was Dr. King who said that we cannot capitulate to finite disappointments, and what we do is we confront those finite disappointments with infinite hope. And that is what we are in the process of doing.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Angela Davis, the abolitionist, the author, the professor, the longtime activist, speaking at the 2025 Inaugural Peace Ball at the Arena Stage on Saturday night. Special thanks to the whole Democracy Now! team and to Guy Warner.