After waiting 8 years for this moment I feel a bit of mixed emotions. First off the lack of governmental services, poor planning and customer service failures that I and thousands of inaugural fan-goers experienced underscores the severity of neglect that we have had to endure for these past 8 years. Let us start with the morning attempt to commute to the mall for the inauguration. With train after train coming by with over capacity riders the lack of foresight to put a larger number of cars on the trains created a travel nightmare. Then the number of times the train had to stop because of a red signal compounded the problem. This possibly led to a man passing out on our train directly behind me. Hitting his head on the train floor. After a member of my party called EMS and knowing that their response would probably take a while I had to get off the train before something else happened.
We walked from the train station (two stops before we wanted to get off) to the downtown area and were ecstatic to see the Greyhound bus terminal so we could use the bathrooms. Finally arriving at the downtown area through the bitter cold we encountered the security checkpoint blockade from hell. We were constantly turned away at every turn when trying to make it to the mall (seeing on CNN later that many of the areas we tried to get to were unnecessarily barren of people). We had to walk 18 DC blocks to 18th street to encounter a mass of people having been led to the same place. This was an ordeal for my 70-year old parents and I am so proud of them for going through this experience with courage, determination and patience. We finally reached a jumbo tron and after securing a spot that we could look through the heads of tall people we watched an amazing historical event.
What Obama's election means to me is a resolution of many dreams and desires on the part of many Americans especially African-Americans. It is by no means a vindication of the years of slavery and oppression but it is a huge milestone in the history of America.
We watched the ceremony on the screen and when people saw Obama's kids and Michelle they erupted in to cheers. When they saw any members of the Bush Administration they booed. And when they saw Bush they sang "na na na na hey hey hey goodbye." When Obama came out people were cheering and let out chants of "Yes we can" and "yes we did." We watched the whole speech and then began to leave.
Leaving the mall was as bad if not worse than coming to the mall. They had fences along the whole mall and when all the people came up to the fences and tried to get out of the small space at the end of the block, there was a huge traffic jam of people. We moved slowly by inches in wall to wall people and had to continually reassure ourselves that we would get through eventually. People got impatient and started chanting to the police on the other side of the set of fences "let us out. " They got so impatient they broke down on of the inside fences and ran into the small space to try and get out, only to meet with the same difficulty.
We finally got to the end and got out and began to walk back up 18th street but quickly realized there was a wall of people all the way up 18th street because again, the planners had poorly organized the exit strategy. We stopped at this point at Constitution Hall on the steps and rested because we were soooo exhausted. I thought that if we moved to 19th st we may be able to go out on Virginia ave because it goes out diagonal. We started that way and heard from people walking the other way saying that it was closed but when we got there the military guards started waving their hands for people to come forward. They saw our plight and said "come on." We finally got out and walked over to the shops by GWU and got some coffee and soup.
My brother met us over there an hour later and we started to walk to his car on 16th and Florida ave many blocks north but were able to get a cab to his car. I drove his car to my house because he hadn't slept for 2 days and was actually sleepwalking while he was in the crowd as it moved along 18th street. We got home and despite being behind tired got ready to go to the gala.
The end of the day went a whole lot better. After dropping off my cousins at their Ball, I played at a gala event put on by Pamela Alexander the organist at my church (St. Georges) and the former music education director for the DC Public Schools. I had a great evening with church folks and met a Tuskegee airman. I also chatted it up with Cuba Gooding Sr. It was great to see my parents have a good time at the gala and my dad got a chance to talk shop with Father Harris from St. Georges. We left the gala and went to pick up my cousins then came back home to get some much needed SLEEP!!!
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