The trials and tribulations of IN staffers Sean Boone and Joani Delezen at the inauguration:
Down But Not Out
An Event Failure Couldn’t Stop Patriotic Pride
I’ll start by saying Joani and I didn’t get into the inauguration event.
But on a positive note, we were still able to absorb a bit of American pride, camaraderie, and of course, previously unthinkable history–which somewhat made up for the event we flew nearly a thousand miles to see (I guess).
Gosh, where do I begin to talk about today?
Let me start by saying we were a bit tired from staying out last night hanging out with my friend/housing host who lives just north of the city in Bethesda, MD and didn’t get up at the hour we hoped to this morning.
Nonetheless, we boarded the crowded Metro stop a few blocks from the apartment complex around 6 a.m. and arrived downtown approximately 45 minutes later to find a seemingly endless sea of people lined up on every street corner in the proximately of the Capitol and Mall areas.
We had an invite to attend our local Congressman Jeff Miller’s morning breakfast gathering at the Cannon Congressional building, but we opted out because we were late from sleeping in, and two, figured it would be wise to get in the growing line so that we weren’t locked out of the scheduled 11 a.m. door closure when the program started.
But, it really didn’t matter since there really was no schedule–or order for that matter.
The streets were as chaotic as a Brazilian soccer game during a hurricane as no inauguration ticket holder knew where or how they were going to enter into the capitol lawn.
Our tickets were colored purple, which weren’t the worst tickets distributed according to the seating arrangement on the Congressional map, but obviously weren’t the best since we were ultimately shafted.
Initially there was some promise bubbling from the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd around 8:30 when a loud roar filled the air near where we were standing. We couldn’t see what was happening because of a bus that was being used as a traffic barricade on the street in front of us where the purple ticket holders were SUPPOSEDLY required to wait in line at.
The excitement ultimately was nothing more than a celebrity encounter with civil rights hotshot Jesse Jackson–which momentarily gave me hope we were progressing–and unfortunately packed the restless crowd even tighter.
TICKET BLUNDER
By 9 a.m. a secret service agent advised all of us waiting behind the bus to move south two blocks and enter the purple gate on Louisiana St.
Although I could barely feel my cold-numb feet, I mustered up enough energy and warmth to get my feet moving toward the pearly directional gates, which come to think of it, were more like purple gates of hell.
From here on out is when (you know what) hit the fan.
Lines wrapping nearly a mile long around buildings and intersections criss-crossed with those, like us, who had no idea which line they needed to be in.
Yellow ticket holders, blue ticket holders and silver ticket holders all found themselves in the same boat of not fully knowing what to do, but no one group felt the pain more than the “purple ticket eaters,” as I now like to call us.
The gate that was promised as our presidential event Mecca was cutoff around 10 without any federal staff notification, reasoning, or direction to move elsewhere. A line that was pointed toward the east now had shifted to the west, putting those of us in the front, in the back.
We were now being forced to enter through a yellow ticket gate–which was a seemingly more important ticket–where we were being placed on standby until the other group had made it through the security checkpoint.
At 10:30 chants of “let us in” began echoing near the fence line, which almost entirely muzzled the opening symphonic conduction from John Williams.
At 11 we found out the gates were not closing, but Joani and I had already accepted the fact that our chances of seeing the 44th president sworn in were beginning to slip through the cracks since we had roughly an hour before he took his oath and we had moved less than 20 feet in line during the entire previous hour.
You know where this story is going, so I’ll stop short of crying for three paragraphs and say that we indeed made history as two of the estimated 4,000 ticket holders who the Washington Post reported as not getting in (which is a very, very friendly estimate).
The “official” reason for the ticket screw up is actually kind of funny:
“6:40 pm. — Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance W. Gainer estimated that several thousand people with blue and purple tickets could not get into the designated sections. It does appear that maybe there were more tickets in purple and blue than bulky people in coats would permit, he said.
PATRIOTISM AT ITS BEST
Being huddled up in 20-degree weather with strangers who all shared the same pride, determination and hope for America was nothing short of breathtaking.
We met people from all over the country who wanted nothing more than to be told the man they had put so much time, energy and faith into was now in power.
By the time Barack Obama began his post swear-in speech this afternoon, most of those who were left outside of the event were standing in circles listening to radios, waving flags, holding hands and crying in jubilation.
It truly was a spectacle that made me more proud than ever to be a part of the greatest country in the world.
Coming from the South, I’m really not used to seeing blacks and whites (or any other ethnic or racial group for that matter) come together to share a moment.
But this wasn’t the South, the North or anywhere else in between. This was America’s day.
This was a day that many, including myself, will remember for the rest of our lives.