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Hundreds of thousands of people are participating in volunteer activities nationwide in honor of President Obama's second inauguration and Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. But with budgets tightening and volunteerism stagnant, nonprofits hope they'll get a more permanent boost.

Unlike with his first swearing-in, Barack Obama does not face two ongoing wars and an economy on the verge of collapse. But thorny issues remain, and there's less hope than there was four years ago that Obama can bend Washington to his will.

Join "It's All Politics" blogger Frank James and other NPR journalists to talk about the day's events and the issues coming up in President Obama's second term.

"Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness," he says. "But it does require us to act in our time."

A group of women traveled 18 hours by train from Chicago to Washington, D.C., for Inauguration Day. We hear about why they and others decided to attend this year's festivities, which fall on Martin Luther King Day.

Staten Island's PS22 student choral group performs as people file onto the National Mall hoping for a glimpse of President Obama later.

Four years ago, the National Mall was packed with record crowds. People gathering as President Obama prepares to take the oath of office and deliver a second inaugural address share some of the same sentiments as the crowds from 2009. But the crowds — and the vendors — are less numerous.

Richard Blanco became the fifth poet to read at the inauguration of a United States president.

The actor stars in a new Fox series about a former FBI agent asked to help apprehend a serial killer he once put behind bars. The series is well done, but the violence in it is alarming — especially for network television.

In his new book, The Double V, Rawn James Jr. argues that to understand race in America one must understand the history of African-Americans in the military. While the turning point came between the world wars, the struggle began with the American Revolution.