
What had started out as one of the most inspiring and memorable days of my young life quickly devolved into a show of everything that's wrong with people. With little or no direction as to where we could/should go to get on the Metro and cops who had seemingly no control over the increasingly unruly crowds on the Mall and along Independence Avenue SW, our trip home from the inauguration proceedings turned into a four-and-a-half-hour ordeal.
We found ourselves literally trapped in a Safeway at the Waterside Metro station, forced to choose between waiting outside in a line that stretched for two blocks or to hole up inside a grocery store where already disgruntled people had to wait over two hours to use a bathroom and others quickly resorted to stealing food. When we finally got in the station and at a train, people were pushing so hard that a woman nearly lost her son, and I heard her screaming his name as the doors shut.
While I did see many displays of kindness and goodwill that spoke to just how much Barack Obama has brought our nation together over the past year, I will never forget the people who pushed, shoved and cussed their way through the crowds, the men who tried to pick a fight with me after I asked them to quiet down so I could hear Obama's speech. It reminds me that we have still have far to go as a people and as a nation.
(See attached photoset.)






2 comments:
Why do you credit Obama for bringing the nation together but you don't give him credit for you almost getting beat up.
Seems to me if he's responsible for bringing that mass of people to see him he's responsible for their safety as well; no?
President Obama might be bringing the nation together in terms of proving that the content of the character and the achievements of the individual -- not the color of the skin -- are the only limiting factors on success.
That being said, all too frequently folks are likely to encounter people who never quite understood the phrase "free your mind, and your ass will follow".
Thus, just because it's the dawn of a new era, don't expect triflin'-ass fools to vanish from the earth overnight. And in any crowd scene in DC, such folks are guaranteed to be in evidence.
Kudos, though, for braving the melee!
Metrorail and the crowd-control planners definitely have room for improvement. See also my reporting on the success/failure at the July 4th 2008 testing of the pedestrian-subway evacuation system. It would seem that it still needs a little work.
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