GMC students attend historic inauguration
Capitol crowd, as viewed by GMC students.
BY MELISSA MARKSTROM
After a slew of long lines, a chanting metro, and rushing ahead of the crowds to hit a fresh port-a-potty, we arrived. At 5 AM, GMC alumni Liz Clare and I were 200 feet away from the closest we could be without having tickets. We spent the next seven hours desperate to stave off the cold while we waited for Barack Obama to take the oath of office.
Up until we arrived, I assumed the crowd would resemble the only other march I attended in DC – a 2004 Women’s Rights March stuffed with one million, singing, poster-holding, young, college students. Instead, the mall was jam-packed with families, thousands of mothers reprimanding the rude behavior of strangers.
Despite rumored efforts to protest the prayer of anti-gay Rick Warren, the only thing organized about us as a crowd was our stance against people pushing to the front. The only chant was for Obama and the only sign was an inexplicable cut-out of Owen Wilson on a horse, a useful marker for attendees calling home on their cell phones.
Event organizers attempted to distract the crowds from their frozen toes by opening gates early, showering us with inflatable balls, and replaying the Inaugural concert on the 20 JumboTrons dotting the mall. The antics of roof-bearing snipers with their sites pointed our direction received a great deal of cell phone camera attention in those first seven hours.
When mini flags were passed around, a young man in the audience grabbed one and held it high. “Finally I can be proud of my country,” he said, a sentiment I shared. Since eight years is a third of my lifespan, as long as I’ve known politics I’ve known Bush. If only for a day, it was a relief to put down protest signs and hold up our country’s flag in the frantic rush of patriotism instead.
Fast-forward through George W. Bush and Dick Cheney serenaded by the classic Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye, Obama-mania amplified in Beatlesque screams, an endearingly jumbled oath of office, and finally to the speech the world waited to hear. “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers,” Obama declared, in what must be the first time a president’s inaugural address gives credence to nonbelievers.
The Boston Globe ran a photo montage on their website featuring people watching the inauguration in bars, army bases, retirement centers, huts, and colleges around the world. Among them were an American soldier in Iraq, residents of the Kenyan Kibera slums, Olympic medalists who protested the 1968 Olympics, and Pakistani children whose signs were covered with doves and Obama’s portrait. The world was simultaneously braced for what our professors call a paradigm shift.
“We can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to affect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it,” he said. The president went on to say that science would be restored to its rightful place. Regardless of the play-by-play commentary following the inauguration, Obama’s words disappointed only those who’ve grown lazily accustomed to measuring the success of a president’s message by applause lines.
Though the National Park Service didn’t conduct an official count, satellite images, news reports and those standing in the crowd estimate the range from 1.8 to 3 million people. It was the largest gathering ever held at the National Mall and regardless of its size it was the most accommodating, polite, and resilient crowd I have ever experienced. Despite authorities blocking throngs of people from leaving the area, transportation breakdowns, and people so squished I slept standing up, there wasn’t a single arrest. The atmosphere remained light as one gentleman jokingly wondered, as we stood outside the metro for four hours, whether FEMA was running the operation.
Reporters and pundits who thrive off polarizing politics continue to remind us that nothing changed. We still have increasing student loans, job losses, and war. What I hope is that our nation is very rapidly undergoing a consciousness shift, a lifting of the veil. In the days following President Obama’s entry into office, Americans are finally learning about the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, the Military Commissions Act, CIA run prisons, and Blackwater. As a witness to that first day, I realize that it isn’t so much the new president that has me relieved, but the potential for change in the way we regard each other. Instead of the paranoid violence of people willing to throw each other under the bus, Americans could finally be willing to demand an end to fear-mongering, censorship, torture, and genocide.
Despite the long drive back to Poultney, and a near fatal moment where, after falling asleep waiting for an accident to clear, I alerted my sleeping bag wearing driver that we were at a full stop in the fast lane with cars whizzing by, we made it back safely.
As if trying to ensure that we remembered everything, Liz and I talked the entire way back about the events of the day and their meaning. When we ran out of things to say, we turned up the radio to hear NPR interviewing one of the countless elementary school teachers who aired the inauguration for her students. According to the reporter, they were too young to understand the true enormity of the event. To Liz, this marked the beginning of a new generation. What will for us forever be the first day in a new period in America, will for these younger generations, and the ones yet to come, be just another date to remember in their history books.
Short URL: http://www.themountaineer.org/?p=364
Posted by Melissa Markstrom
on Feb 11, 2009 Filed under Photo Gallery, World.
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