Inauguration: A view from the Mall

The day started before 3 am, under a 20º F waning crescent moon with a windchill in the teens. By 3:30 am (when Metro parking was scheduled to open), I was about the 15th car in line at the Branch Ave. Metro lot. Everyone wanted to make sure that they were going to get downtown to see this historic event (there are 69,000 parking slots Metro-wide). After I parked, I took my place in line in the cold with some 50 feet of people in line before me; some had walked to the station and were wearing everything from coats to blankets. We were waiting for the subway station to open at 4 am, but people didn’t mind. Here and there, you could hear groups of people cheering: we were going to the National Mall to see Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America and the historic 1st African American to hold the office, the most powerful seat in the world.

 

The Metrotrains were coming about every minute (1.1 million people rode them); so, we arrived at L’Enfant Plaza quickly (maybe about 4:30 am) and unprecedented masses of people began to walk in the darkness down 7th street toward the National Mall. The National Guard was lined up and began to flank us as we walked. They held us at a barrier waiting for the signal to let us into the mall area (the city had enlisted the help of 4,100 DC cops, 4,000 non-DC cops and 10,000 of the National Guard). It was so compressed at the barrier with men, women and children that I couldn’t even bend over to tie my shoelace (so it had to stay undone). Shortly, the word was given and peeps were let out of the gate, some walking fast, some were running. It was at least 2 hours before daybreak and, even with the lighting, it was still hard to see with so many people. You had to just go with the flow and the flow led a huge wave of us to posts linked together by chains as a guy’s voice from somewhere behind us said, “Over or Under; those are your only choices!” There was barely even a second of hesitation: most people climbed over the chains, some folks were helped over the chains by others. I decided to go under on one knee, getting up fast enough not to be run over by the crowd.

 

In the clutch

We headed to the front of the non-ticketed barrier (ticketed folks didn’t have to show up until 8 am). That was more compressed than at the 7th street barrier. ABC News had reported a model indicating that, if 1 million people showed, each person would have a personal area of fully-opened newspaper. If 2 million showed, you’d have the area of the front page. Well, not up front! There was no personal area! As was the case all over the mall, you ended up intimately knowing people that you didn’t know before: leaning on them, laying on their backs and shoulders, etc. That “sea of humanity” term? It was that for 2 reasons: first, everyone was so compassionate, understanding and human and, second, if anybody moved, the whole sea knew immediately (just like a molecule in the ocean, there would be a ripple effect).

 

Now, this is where the pilgrimage truly tested the metal of the citizens. By now, it was 5 am, but dawn nowhere in sight, people that you couldn’t really see in the darkness pressed against you on all sides and about 7 hours to go with a windchill in the teens (I was on my feet for 9 hours that day before I ever sat down once)! The compression spared us from a lot of the cold (and I have Lisa Feyereisen of Crow Village, Alaska to thank for a hat that she made me; it was fantastic! It was definitely designed to handle this kind of weather!).

 

Riding the rush-hour bus in downtown Chicago makes me familiar & comfortable with highly compressed masses; however, a couple of people in the front had to push their way out of the warm mass because they had anxiety attacks and were crying. Some people had to go to the bathroom (the older Black woman pressed against my right side bluntly said, “…weak bladder”). Still, 3 more people just got sick and had to squeeze out of the mass…and it wasn’t even daybreak! I couldn’t take pictures until the sun rose and I still couldn’t see past the clutch of peeps at the front to see how many people were there, but my Samsung could! So, I had to sssqeeeeze my arm out of the clutch so I could snap some pics. Then, I stayed in the mass, immobile, for at least 3 hours; but I had to leave so I could take better array of pictures.

 

In the Cold

Oh my GODDESS!! I had no idea it was that COLD!!! Everyone thought you’d be able to get into the museums and, you could, but only from the non-mall entrances. And it didn’t look like you could return once you left the mall. The cold felt lethal, although no one died. The mall looked like a refugee camp! It was strange. We were supposed to be in the Land of the Free and people looked like they had camped for days in the bitter cold in a country that was about to get its first taste of democracy…ever! That was the level of dedication to the idea that was felt. So much dedication that reporters later said that hundreds of people were treated for hypothermia. I personally saw a couple of people taken away by ambulance for the condition. There was a tent using propane to generate heat next to the souvenirs. I couldn’t feel my left big toe as I stood in a souvenir line to get a button requested by my sister. An Indian guy and I danced the whole time we were in line. After that, I made a beeline to the heat tent only to find that the propane had run out. A white guy and I went in anyway and we both agreed that it was warm enough for us. However, as I excused myself to go in further, I passed a young woman that was sitting there, she looked up at me but all she could do was shiver.

 

I had to squeeze out of the tent through desperately cold people trying to squeeze in and saw another ambulance and peeps hovering around the side. I knew immediately what was going on: they were heating up with the exhaust fumes from the truck. I came over too and stuck my foot in front of the tailpipe with the others (everyone was suffering from foot hypothermia). A black teenage girl (about 15 years old) held her foot up to the carbon monoxide-spewing tailpipe and said, “Is it warm? I can’t feel anything.” We assured her it was. She took her shoe off and put her foot back up, looked at me and said, “Should we be doing this? Is this healthy?” I said, “No.”

 

With all toes working, it about 10 am is when I realized (along with freezing people pressing their faces against the glass doors of the Air & Space Museum) that no one was going to be able to enter the museum from the mall. I smiled from the museum steps at the several people who were now encircling the front of the ambulance, leaning against engine hood architecture.

 

The Inauguration

 

After about 11:30 am, the masses started to cheer because they could see on the jumbotron that Obama’s motorcade was on its way to the Capitol (had I really been out in the cold for 7 hours???).

 

It was kind of surreal: standing under the waning moon in the darkness, all the people – men, women, children, teens, disabled, fit, weak, black, white, asian, all races, religions, conditions that you could think of — visible by the first rays of dawn…all who made this pilgrimage in the bitter cold as if to see democracy that had never existed here before and had to be witnessed first hand, just to make sure it was real. An amazing transition for us all; but, yes, for African Americans especially. There was silence when Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of presidency. His hand was on top and Michelle’s hand was on the bottom of the Bible belonging to Abraham Lincoln as they stood on the Capitol steps built by the enslaved Africans of this country.