Karen Dabdoub is a convert to Islam.
Friday morning, just minutes before Donald Trump took the oath of office, Dabdoub spoke to a group of 50 people in a pro-diversity event.
“This time in our country is like when a tornado hits a community,” said Dabdoub, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Cincinnati Office since 2004. “There is devastation. But eventually people come out their houses.”
She paused to fight back tears. She apologized for letting emotion challenge her composure.
The audience in the former Catholic church waited through her short delay. They sat in rows of folding chairs and at round tables in the Community Matters center in the low-income Cincinnati neighborhood of Lower Price Hill.
“So people come out of their houses, roll up their sleeves and start rebuilding their community,” said Dabdoub, who wore a white hijab and an ankle-length dark blue skirt.
“That’s what I am going to do. I am going to rebuild my community.”
The event “We the People: United in Diversity, Pursuing Peace and Justice” was sponsored by the Cincinnati-based Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center, a social action nonprofit with roots in Cincinnati’s Catholic Archdiocese.
The group then watched Trump’s inauguration speech projected onto a white wall.
Audience members listened carefully. Several reacted in laughter when Trump said, “When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.”
People also gasped when Trump said, “Most important, we will be protected by God.”
“Oh, no,” one woman said.
The audience sat in silence for several minutes after Trump finished.
The formal event ended with the viewing of a video. A group of adult learners at Redwood school in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky — a vocational school for children and adults with disabilities — learned how to sing the civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome” in American Sign Language. A soft audio version accompanied the Redwood students, reflecting the overall somber mood of the event.
Before leaving, most of the people took a few minutes to pen hand-written notes to Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, the Terrace Park Republican, asking him to support the Affordable Care Act.