As early as the DNC in August, we had been toying with the idea of going down to Washington to witness Barack Obama's inauguration: it was sure to be a seminal moment in American history and we wanted to experience it first hand. After a few weeks of consideration, on September 27, confident (or maybe just hoping) that Obama would beat John McCain, we booked a hotel room and plane reservations. Already, over a month to go before the election, the city was filling up. The only room we could find anywhere near DC for less than $600 anight was at the Four Points Sheraton in New Carrollton.
New Carrollton, if you don't know your DC suburbs (and why would anyone want to?) is the easternmost stop on the DC metro line, 45 minutes from the Capitol; the hotel itself is a five-minute cab ride from the metro stop. Still, we had a place to stay. We paid for everything in advance, so we were doubly happy when Obama won on November 4. We were heading to Washington!
January 20, 2009
3 a.m.: We don't have tickets to the parade or the Inauguration itself, so our plan is to get to the National Mall as early as possible and join the throngs. The metro station opens at 4 a.m., so we're up at 3. Our hotel room's plumbing leaves something to desired: the tub's tap hangs loosely from the wall, and getting the hot water to flow requires a complex pagan ritual involving a wrench and lots of cursing.
Bathed, and dressed in layers suitable for either an unusually cold January day in Washington or a warm January day in Ottawa, we embark on our journey.
3:55 a.m.: As we drive up to the New Carrollton station, we get our first glimpse of how massive today is gong to be. The trains don't start running for a few more minutes, and it's six hours until the festivities start, but there's already a massive line of hundreds of people waiting for the metro station to open. Everyone is glittering with Obama paraphernalia -- buttons, hats, t-shirts, scarves. Some are dressed in heavy coats and mittens, others wrapped in colourful blankets.
4:02 a.m.: We catch the second train downtown; it's crowded but nothing like the crush that we would see later in the day. The mood on the subway, despite the early hour, is upbeat.
4:40 a.m.: We get off at the L'Enfant Plaza stop, the closest to the Mall's 7th Avenue entrance, and join the massive line snaking down the block. While we wait for the Mall to open, we listen to the people around us talking about where they'd traveled from, why they are there and what the day means to them. There's a lot of "I never thought this would happen in my lifetime" going on.
Like the people on the subway, the crowd's mood is excited, but remarkably peaceful and mellow. When a group of folks try to cut in line and push their way to the front, they're rebuked with an indignant: "There's a line here, everyone's waiting, don't push to the front." When some other people tried to squeeze between the line and the fence, one woman shouts, "Obama doesn't want you to push; he wants everybody to get in." This invocation of Obama works, and the crowd calms down.
5:15 a.m.: The street is filled not just with people, but with several large, idling buses filled with (warm) police officers.
Even though the Mall isn't supposed to open for almost two hours, the line starts to move, which we think is a good thing.
5:45 a.m.: We're very close to 7th Avenue when things get weird. The line has stopped moving, but no one's quite sure why. Eventually we overhear a volunteer on the other side of the fence, and later a single police officer, tell someone on our side of the fence that the area on the Mall up to 7th Avenue is already full, and that we should all move down to the 12th Avenue entrance. But most people don't hear this, and so everyone for the most part just stands there, waiting. Oh, except for several red-toqued Girl Guide volunteers, who have to get inside and are reduced to trying to shove their way through this tightly packed throng. Apparently, security had not thought about how volunteers would be able to use this entrance. Security incompetence would become a recurring theme throughout the day.
Volunteer leaders try vainly to push through the crowd, leading Boy and Girl Scout volunteers, all holding hands and wearing red volunteer hats. The leaders plead with the crowd to let them through but there's nowhere for us to move.
At this point the crowd starts getting a bit agitated, or as agitated as blissed-out Obama supporters can get. No information is forthcoming from security and no one but a few volunteers are getting through the gate. With all the confusion -- is the entrance open? What's going on at the front of the line? -- we began to worry that the situation may become dangerous. It would only take a few people shoving toward the entrance to cause a panic and to crush people.
Keystone Kops to the rescue
So. You're in charge of a really big security operation. You know that millions of people will be descending on the city, but you've had months to prepare. It's a scheduled event in a known location. You know that crowds are going to show up early. Obviously, you're going to have a plan that involves the orderly entrance and exit from the area. You're going to have your officers in place before people show up, ready to go when the crowds start gathering.
Ah, but Bush is still in power, and systematic incompetence is still the order of the day.
Exhibit A: While everyone's trying to figure out what's up with the 7th Avenue entrance, and we're all packed together like the proverbial sardines, the crowd suddenly surges backward, and we're all crushed together, even tighter than before. Natasha can't breathe and the two of us are pushed apart.
It turns out that the police decided that right that moment would be the perfect time to drive several police cars through the crowd. They then establish a corridor so dozens of police officers (one of them, hand to God, carrying a box of donuts) could march into the area where they probably should have already been. People all around us are crying out that they're being hurt and are yelling at the police to stop moving through the crowd.
The police continue their march, oblivious.
It would have been nice if they had helped the volunteers into the site, but I guess that never occurred to them.
As the police officers finish their march through the crowd, the two of us are finally able to push through, on our way to the fabled 12th Avenue entrance. Several people, still unaware that the 7th Avenue entrance is "closed," ask us why we're leaving. As we flee the scene, thousands of people are still crushed around the entrance.
6 a.m.: Keystone Kops Exhibit B: Several blocks away, we find a walkway to the Mall through the grounds of one of the Smithsonian buildings. We've arrived. There are already thousands of people here, mostly gathered around the many Jumbotrons, but the place is nowhere close to capacity. And there are no security guards, no checkpoints to be seen. We still have no idea why they had a checkpoint at 7th Avenue.
Some people have evidently been on the Mall for a while, and are curled up in sleeping bags, barely visible in the dim light. We carefully step over their bodies, heading toward the Capitol. We cross 7th Avenue and get a great spot near the second-closest Jumbotron to the Capitol and settle in for the five-hour wait for the festivities to begin.
More to come...
For some excellent pictures of the inauguration, see this link. And here.
1 comment:
This is an excellent description of the scene leading up to the inauguration. Initially, at around 4:30am, we ended up in the Silver ticketed area unbeknownst to us....no security whatsover, until after an hour someone told us we all had to move (maybe 1,000 people). So to have the 7th blocked off was 'window dressing' by the security folks in my opinion.....
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