A dream deferred

by Ryan Brown

They came from all over the United States: from Durham to Denver to Detroit, from George Bush’s Texas and Barack Obama’s Illinois, from every precinct and campaign office and state party headquarters. Many traveled for days by bus or train; others walked from as far away as Virginia and Maryland. All waited in line for hours Tuesday morning as the temperatures plunged below freezing in the nation’s capitol.

But for many would-be attendees of the 56th Presidential Inauguration, this tenacity would not be enough. While more than a million people flooded the National Mall for Barack Obama’s first speech as U.S. President, an unknown logistical snafu left tens of thousands of others stranded outside the Capital gates.

I was among the ticketed guests who never made it to the actual events, and witnessed the chaotic crowd mismanagement firsthand.

Like most Inauguration-goers, my day began early. I was on the Metro by 6 a.m., but it was already packed to standing-room only. As the train clattered toward downtown from the Maryland suburbs, a man near me yelled out “this train is headed for the promised land!” The car dissolved in laughter, but there was also a strange seriousness to the moment. We were, we all knew, about to witness history.

Well, that was my plan.

After getting off the train at Union Station, I followed the heavy crowds making for the National Mall. In my hand was a purple ticket--the coveted pass that put me among the 240,000 attendees granted access to the grassy area just beyond the Capital steps. As I got closer, I followed signs for purple ticket holders, but it wasn’t long before I was caught in a crush of people all after the same thing as me--a place to line up and wait.

We soon realized there was no such place. But it was no matter. All around me, throngs of the warmly dressed and over-caffeinated milled excitedly. We all had tickets. We had all been waiting since sunrise. The situation might look chaotic, but it would sort itself out.

So we thought. As minutes turned to hours, the crowd never moved, and it certainly never became the line we all thought it would. Instead, I watched nervously as 9 a.m.—the supposed opening time for the ticketed gates—passed, then 10, and finally 11. Four hours after getting in line, I finally hit the eject button and made for the exit. On my way out, I passed block after block of ticket-holders, some chanting “Barack Obama 2008, let us in the purple gate!”; others waving their unused tickets above their heads angrily.

Around noon, The Washington Post quoted Police Chief Phillip Morse saying, “There's nobody that didn't get to see the inauguration today who had a ticket.” Morse has since reversed his prognosis, but there is yet no official word on what went wrong this morning. As for me, I’m staying inside and out of the crowds for the rest of the day.