It’s Sunday morning at my friend Chris Twarowski’s apartment in the heart of Washington, D.C., two days before Barack Obama’s historic inauguration. Chris is brewing some Kenyan coffee in honor of Obama. Last night, after hanging out with some of Chris’ friends—some Ethiopians, an Iranian guy who works for the Department of Defense, and an incredibly drunk girl from Dallas—I slept on a couch sold to Chris by a JFK conspiracy theorist.
This should be an interesting couple of days.
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Chris, a former Press staffer now writing for The Washington Post, has a group of four more friends—one from the Bergen Record, another from Barons, and one from The New York Times—who will be turning his pad into a makeshift newsroom tonight, but before they arrive, we’re heading to a free U2 concert. Upon reaching The National Mall, the two-mile stretch of national monuments, memorials and museums in the Capitol, it dawns on me that I could, at any time, be picked up by the Secret Service again as I had four months prior while covering the presidential debates at Hofstra University thanks to my laptop being hacked. (The truth is, I was worried about this throughout my five-hour drive down to D.C.)
Once we make it to the Washington Monument on the hill overlooking the Lincoln Memorial—with no Men In Black pulling me off the street—we go about watching the concert, followed by Obama’s “We Are One” speech, and stand awed that we just sang Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” in unison with Pete Seeger and the massive crowd stretched out before us.
It turns out that we got up too late to make it into the seated area surrounding The Reflecting Pool, a mistake we were not about to make again come Inauguration Day. But first, there are sites to see, more people to meet and parties to be had. It turns out bringing a bicycle to beat traffic was a good idea until I found out just how steep Capitol Hill is and I lose my new friends in an insanely crowded Metro station. By Monday night, Chris is growing tired of the jokes about his infamous couch, although he does little to stop the ribbing as the conversation goes deeper down the rabbit hole. (Ever been a part of a conversation with a group of journalists arguing national politics who fact-check on laptops as they debate?) After gawking briefly at Ben’s Chili Bowl, the landmark on U Street that is now the most famous lunch spot in town after Obama ate a chilidog there, we realize that the bars being open until 4 a.m. just for these couple of days isn’t worth it and head home to get a few hours rest before the big day.
And by “few hours,” I’m not kidding. One of the five people I’m sharing a living room with is up at the same time the bars are closing, and she’s offering us coffee. It’s a nice gesture, but most of us just want more sleep. Her persistence pays off though, and as we march out into the 17-degree pre-dawn air, through the back alley of Chris’ apartment complex, and upon turning the corner, I realize that this is going to be a ridiculous day. Hundreds of people are streaming down the street already, heeding the police warnings to get there early if you want to see anything. A woman collapsed on a street corner 20 feet away from a cop, who tells the Good Samaritans helping her to call 911 because he can’t leave his post.
Every corner along the way is set up with police barricades directing crowd flow, and the closer we get, the more people are filling the streets. It looks like one of those apocalyptic movie scenes where everyone is running for their lives and evacuating the city, except there are Obama T-shirt salesmen everywhere and everyone’s in a great mood. It is a pilgrimage of patriots. Once we make it onto Independence Avenue, we learn that the first entry point to The Mall is already closed, so we walk another five blocks and successfully make our way to the closest possible place to watch the inauguration without having to pay, just north of 4th Street. It turned out we were among the last people to get that close. And then we wait.
It isn’t a half hour before I’m wishing that I, like the people lying on the ground below me, brought a blanket, or at least had someone to cuddle up with. At least I brought food, because by the time the refreshment stands opened, there was no point in trying. How I wish I had that Kenyan coffee now.
A man in a tree selling presidential playing cards tosses free pocket heatpacks, the hottest item of the day, into the crowd below with the same reaction the U.N. gets when unloading provisions to refugees. People are sleeping in cardboard boxes and if they’re not, they’re wishing they were. Seven hours of standing takes its physical toll, but we endure the cold dutifully, our only entertainment being the dancing we do to keep warm and a rerun of the concert we saw on Sunday on the Jumbotron before us. Then, once members of Congress and other dignitaries begin getting introduced at around 11 a.m., we have a new favorite game called “What Did They Just Say?”
Apparently no one on stage realizes that there is a live microphone, so as soon as each politician walks out and gives their standard pleasantries, they have several million eavesdroppers. First there was the guy who said, “I love your mom!” Another with a shrill voice shocks us all and makes us not want to play anymore. Then comes the winner: “I can’t see shit.” We’ll leave it up to the bloggers to figure out who said what.
Once the moment finally comes and goes, and Obama takes to the podium, our laughter from the oath gaffe turns to wild cheers and chanting: “Obama!” People of all ages, colors and creeds are crying, hugging and getting in their last photo ops before trying to get home. Picture two mosh pits trying to cross one another’s path and that’s basically the scene on the first street corner. None of us want to wait on the lines at the street vendors for lunch, let alone McDonald’s. We just want to go home and take a much-needed nap, all of us feeling exasperated beyond full sentences besides “Oh my God.”
A few hours later, once the group is rested up, they begin driving home while I stay behind with Chris so that we can meet up with Henok Fente, his Ethiopian friend who held the party the first night, and we get down to digesting the history we just witnessed. Fente, a journalist, is barred from visiting his home because he reports on the misdeeds of dictators who hold pseudo-democratic elections. Henok is so overjoyed with the mere integrity of our process that he dressed in a suit, even though he was not attending an inaugural ball. The handsome 28-year-old is a radio reporter for Voice of America’s English to Africa broadcast, which is the only independent, non-government-run media in many parts of the continent. “To witness the exchange of power without an armed conflict from a ruler for eight years,” Fente says, letting his point make itself, after toasting America, then another later to Obama. “It is one thing to read about, it is another thing to see an election be rigged in your country,” he adds with a wide grin, referring to his homeland and not the 2000 Bush-Gore election. For a guy who’s not even a citizen, he singlehandedly applies the principles of our First Amendment in a continent dying for freedom. He may be the biggest patriot I’ve met.
We conclude our night dancing to a remix of a song set to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at a local jazz club, possibly the most fitting ending to the day.
