Jessica Siegel, Associate Professor of Journalism, is a respected journalist with an expertise in New York City's Public Schools performance. She is in Washington for the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama and will be filing a series of reports on the College website.
Wednesday Morning, January 21
Riding up the long elevator at the Federal Center metro stop station in Washington at 6:45 am. Ahead of me several deaf people are signing each other back and forth. I turn to the woman standing next to me, she smiles and nods. "Obama," she says, "they’re saying 'Obama'." That’s what the day was like. Millions came to the capital to rejoice, to cheer, to witness, to be together and, together, to breath a sigh of relief over Obama’s election.
That, and lines everywhere; lines waiting to file into the metro stations in the early morning hours, the crowds expanding out into the streets. Lines to pick up tickets for approximately 250,000 of us who are lucky enough to have them. (Most of the people who came didn’t have them). Lines to get into the Mall after they took your tickets, standing in the 'ticket holders' area, cordoned off by metal barriers from everyone else. Masses of people lining up around the jumbotrons, the gigantic video screens. And after it was over, the same lines to get out of the Mall and back into the metro stations again, and find your way out of D.C. The police closed some of the metro stops, and wouldn’t let any more people in.
Does it sound like a recipe for chaos? (Think: four and a half hours in a crowd in that kind of cold, feeling like one marble in a jar of hundreds locked in a refrigerator.) But that’s the point—it wasn’t. All I experienced and witnessed was patience, chatting among strangers, sharing of memories of the campaign, offers from others to take digital photographs of family and friends, and the instinctive, sometimes nonverbal and sometimes not, sharing of congratulations about this historic election.
The crowds mirrored the "patchwork heritage" Obama spoke about in his speech. African-American family clusters of several generations, groups of college friends, older white couples, white or Asian or Latino families with kids with Obama knit caps (some of the extensive Obama memorabilia was available on every corner), Native Americans, gays. In fact, the lines themselves engendered conversations, but none of it would have happened it there wasn’t a sense of shared cause.
The 46-year-old senator, now our President, told us in his inauguration speech that we’re a young nation but that "the time has come to set aside childish things." Perhaps that’s why, despite the crowds, the cold, and the lines, there was such a feeling of relief and joy yesterday on the Mall. People wanted to be there and savor both Obama’s triumph and the way he's succeeded in making the many into one. Our better angels won this time, and people wanted to be there and share the victory.
Tuesday Morning, January 20
So on Sunday, I climbed on one of the Chinatown buses with a diverse collection of New Yorkers to go down to Washington. It was strange. Over the years, I've been on many buses down to Washington, usually for demonstrations. This one was different. There was no bubbling mixture of anger or anxiety about what was going to happen. This time the bus was filled with quiet conversations. The hard work had already happened. We were going there to savor what had been accomplished.
We were dropped on the edge of Washington's tiny Chinatown and the passengers dispersed to the winds. I grabbed lunch and headed by D.C.'s modern metro, which looks like a Hollywood set for a subway, to the Mall, where the Inaugural Welcome concert was to take place. The Mall, from the Lincoln Memorial, far past the Washington Monument was filled with people—families with kids, 20-something groups, older couples—to hear everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Beyonce, from Garth Brooks to Herbie Hancock, Mary J. Blige to Pete Seeger sing songs that echoed and wove together the themes of the Obama campaign. Singers were paired and tripled in interesting ways: Betty Levette and Jon Bon Jovi sang Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come," Stevie Wonder, Sheryl Crowe and Will.I.am on Stevie's "Higher Ground." One of the most moving songs was one I had always thought of as kind of corny, Rodgers and Hammerstein's "You'll Never Walk Alone." Sung by opera star Renee Fleming and a gigantic chorus, it now seemed redolent of what Obama had talked about so often: in many we are one.
When Obama spoke, he pointed out the monuments that fill our nation's capital. "But as I stand here tonight, what gives me the greatest hope of all is not the stone and marble that surrounds us today, but what fills the spaces in between," he said, standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial on the other end of the mall. "It is you—Americans of every race and region and station—who came here because you believe in what this country can be and because you want to help us get there..."
I knew why I dropped everything to use that ticket. |
