Devoted readers of my blog know that Clare and I drove down to Washington, DC on Sunday afternoon to be there for the inauguration. We were lucky that we could stay with a family friend who lives in Chevy Chase.
Clare slept for about half the drive, so I amused myself while she rested by singing along with my favorite tunes on my iPod and guessing if the cars that passed me were heading for the inauguration. If I saw a car full of twenty somethings, I waited for the telltale bumper sticker to come into view. I was also fairly confident that any car from Massachusetts, Illinois, Colorado or Vermont was going my way. My favorite handmade rear window sign:
GOIN TO C OBAMA!
We couldn’t leave home until midday, so we arrived in DC just as the inaugural concert ended. Sadly, we missed our chance to hear Bruce, John, Pete, Beyonce and Bono. Yet, thousands of people were still milling about on the mall, even though the performances were over. Twilight descended quickly and the sky to the west went streaky with pink.
On Monday morning, we took the metro to RFK stadium to participate in the Day of National Service. We helped assemble care packages to send to soldiers.
I have often heard politicians and older journalists (Tom Brokaw, for example) expound on the unified commitment and dedication that Americans showed during WWII. Lots of windy rhetoric about Americans pulling together … moving mountains … sweeping away injustice … accomplishing the impossible.
On Monday and Tuesday, I stopped being so skeptical about all those words.
Unexpectedly and unintentionally, I discovered my faith in the power of the American people. I believe.
Clare and I joined a long line of people on the sloping entrance to the stadium. Cheerful, upbeat volunteers handed out clipboards, pens and forms that asked us to fill in our contact info, including e-mail addresses.
And there was a question at the bottom of the form with a box to check: Would you be interested in volunteering at this kind of event in the future?
We were let inside with a group of about 100 other volunteers and directed to sit down in a section of seats. A young man named Spencer, who told us that he had volunteered in the Obama campaign, welcomed us, thanked us for participating in the national day of service called for by President elect Obama and explained how we were to assemble the care packages inside the heated (hallelujah!) tent that had been erected inside the stadium.
Inside the tent, there were volunteers like Spencer everywhere, and they weren’t all young. They cheerfully directed us, thanked us (the assembly line workers) over and over again and dropped the stuff for the troops (pens, papers, toothpaste, toothbrushes, gum, etc. — all donated by Target) into our bags.
The upbeat spirit in the tent was amazing. Americans of all ages, races and ethnicities were there. People pushed wheelchair-bound volunteers along the assembly line. Music blasted. Everyone smiled and chatted. People exchanged stories about why there were there — many were first-time visitors to DC who had come for the inauguration, of course.
Here’s Clare on one of the assembly lines:
Members of Obama’s incoming administration showed up to work on the assembly lines. We saw Eric Holder, Janet Napolitano and Susan Rice while we there. They were greeted with wild applause and enthusiasm. Here’s Holder coming in.
Other politicians also made appearances, including Senator Christopher Dodd and the governor of Massachusetts, Patrick Deval. Here’s Clare with Senator Dodd:
Clare and I worked for about two hours. When we exited, we were directed to another short assembly line for our gifts (!) — a bottle of water, a brownie and a beautiful card commemorating our participation, all to be stuffed in a red Target bag. Here’s what the card read:
On this day, the eve of the inauguration of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden, we honor the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with this Day of National Service.
This commemorative card is our personal thanks to you, one of the volunteers this day of January 19, 2009, at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium.
Your work today to assemble 100,000 care packages for our brave men and women of the United States Military is an example for all Americans of what we can do united as one nation and one people.
The amazing experience was not yet over. Volunteers invited us to sit down and write a letter to an American soldier before we left the stadium. Beautiful stationery and ballpoint pens were provided. Everyone, it seemed, sat down to compose a letter, even though it was very cold outside the tent.
The whole event was so well organized and thought out.
It seemed so simple to encourage people to participate, to care about our military personnel, to invite Americans to take part in volunteer activities that benefit their communities and their country, and to say thank you for helping out.
People responded with an air that felt like, “Well, all you had to do was ask.”
It was remarkable, uplifting, exciting. Exciting was the word I heard over and over again — people talking with each other or on their cell phones to friends and families who weren’t in DC.
We left RFK stadium and took the metro back to the mall to check out what was happening and feel the energy.
I have to note here that all kinds of Obama and inaugural souvenirs (posters, calendars, pins, hats, blankets, bracelets) were being sold everywhere, and they seemed to be selling briskly. Clare’s favorite — Obama air freshener.
People wanted to share their stories — why they were in Washington, what this inauguration meant to them.
On the metro, two women, sprawled across the plastic seats, told me that they were from North Carolina. They had driven up on Sunday. One of the women’s son was hawking disposable cameras on the mall. He had called his mother and told her that she needed to come to DC to be part of history. She and her friend had driven all the way up for one day because she had to work on Tuesday — they wouldn’t even be able to stay for the inauguration.
In a line at a ladies room, another woman told me that she was a DC resident. Her daughter was flying up from Texas for the inauguration. She told me that she had started working in the lunchroom of Washington’s five and dime many years ago. At the time, blacks could only work in the lunchroom, not on the selling floor. Eventually, she became the store’s first black salesperson. She said that Obama’s election meant so much.
African American families posed everywhere, proud and exuberant.
I talked with a Nigerian man who wore an “Africans for Obama” sash and told him that I had visited Kenya and Tanzania recently. I said that it had been wonderful to be an American there at this time — the Kenyans and Tanzanians were so happy about Obama’s election.
“The whole world is happy about Obama,” he responded calmly.
On Tuesday morning, Clare and I boarded the already crowded metro around 7 a.m. The air was achingly cold and seeped into every small joint between the many layers of clothing I wore.
One extended African American family had boarded the metro earlier, farther out along the line. They sat and stood. A little well-bundled girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, cuddled up on her mother’s lap for warmth. Her mother said, “She’s cold,” to her grandfather, who stood, hanging onto a pole.
“Never mind,” he answered, not unkindly, “she’s old enough to remember being here.”
Clare and I had tickets to enter through the purple gate — the gate that has become infamous because it never opened and many purple ticketholders never made it into the inauguration.
Anyway, we did, despite the lack of police or security to direct the huge masses of people trying to cram into the inauguration from every direction.
We managed to get onto the Capital lawn, where we could see …. very little. Even the jumbotron screen on our side was blocked by a tree!
But it didn’t really matter. We were there, too, and we could hear Obama’s words and observe and feel the crowd’s reaction for ourselves.
The people who stood around us listened intently to every word President Obama said. People inclined their heads toward the loudspeakers. No one moved or pushed or shifted positions during his inaugural address, despite the aching cold.
When Obama said, “… but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things,” people around me nodded and a man in front of me said, “Amen.”
What amazed me most though was the reaction to these words of Obama’s:
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and ideals.
The crowd murmured and clapped its approval, more loudly than for any other statement that Obama made.
The crowd’s focused attention on Obama’s speech, and its response to the one phrase in particular, heartened and inspired me. My experiences in DC on both Monday and Tuesday made me believe in the amazing spirit of the American people that can be tapped, as it has been in the past, as I said at the start of this post.
To be there at President Obama’s inauguration and to feel the longing of Americans to re-commit themselves to the words and ideas on which this country was founded was to be present, I hope, at the start of a new era in American history.
An inspiring and exhilarating decisive moment, leading to a better future for my children, for the United States, and for the world, I hope and pray.
