To celebrate the inauguration of Donald Trump Friday, J.D. Van Brink is throwing a party and making his signature chicken and smoked sausage gumbo. That's the dish that, when he's not giving it away, people pay him to cook.
“Friday night, a big party,” said Van Brink, who lives in Acworth and is chairman of the Georgia Tea Party. “It’s a celebration of the changing of the guard.”
But Carrie Genova is refusing even to watch the event. She and her husband do self-employed construction work and they have twin 13-year-old boys with moderate autism. She’s afraid that Trump’s plan to dismantle Obamacare will lead to an attack on the Medicaid health insurance that her kids receive.
“It’s my way to personally boycott it,” said Genova, 39, of Sugar Hill. “I don’t want to call him my president.”
And so go metro Atlanta, Georgia and the country. On Friday, the New York business tycoon will place his hand on a Bible and take the oath of office before an intensely divided nation.
Some people see Trump taking the oath as the joyous coming of a new age in which America will thrive in the world. Others are experiencing a kind of politically induced nausea, if not outrage.
Patti Garrett, 63, of Lawrenceville will take part in the "Atlanta March for Social Justice and Women" on Saturday. She is among those still hitting the panic button over Trump becoming president.
“I find him so against the things I believe in,” said Garrett, adding this is her first protest march. “It’s a matter of standing up for what you believe in. I find that a little empowering at the moment.”
Meanwhile, Rosalie Parkey will travel from her Alpharetta home to Washington to attend the ceremony. This is a “bucket list” event for her. The kids are off to college and she scrambled to score a ticket.
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She’s packing four extra batteries for her smart phone, as she expects to take a lot of video.
“I didn’t like the direction the country was going,” said Parkey. She likes Trump’s ability to look at problems with a business eye and to “cut through the crap.”
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