Anti-Bush Activities at Dupont Circle

A few of the anti-Bush signs around Dupont Circle.

An obvious theme at the inauguration was relief at getting rid of a president and administration that clearly had their own interests in mind when running this country.  We traveled to Dupont Circle and witnessed open disdain for the Bush era.  First we came upon a giant Bush with a large pile of shoes in front of it.

Throwing shoes at Bush.

Everyone was throwing shoes at Bush.  There was also a man doing a concert singing anti-establishment songs like, “don’t be a cop-dude”.  We also came upon a banner that had the preamble of the Constitution and thousands of signatures.  The banner is there to represent the public holding our new president accountable for the promises he has made to all of us. 

Cody signing the banner.

 The banner will be going on tour to eleven different college campuses this year. 

What Jess wrote.

Here are a few pictures of the signs and people around Dupont Circle:

Just someone walking around.

This sign summed up how we felt.

The Atmosphere and People of Inauguration

Last night as I (Jess) was walking out my backdoor here in Kentucky, I thought I noticed a sniper on top of the neighbor’s house.  (It was a chimney, but it was dark).  We saw snipers everywhere in D.C.!  It’s pretty sad that we came to D.C. and had to get accustomed to seeing snipers on every rooftop!

Snipers on a D.C. building

The Capitol building had at least 6 snipers on the rotunda on the backside of the building.   Any building where Obama was going to be outside was under heavy surveillance.  The police were from every state and surrounded the Capitol building.  Because there were so many people walking around, streets had to be opened and closed to let other police and secret service through.

The police trying to get through

The mounted police were also in D.C.  Some where there to participate in the parade, such as these nice officers from Washington State.  Others were there just directing traffic.

The mounted border patrol from Washington State/Canada border

The police were suprisingly nice and helpful during our entire time in D.C.  We even joked with a secret service man (we were under the impression that they didn’t talk to the public let alone joke with them).  Except for immediately surrounding the capitol building or Obama’s motorcade, most of their weapons were not visibile.  It seemed that most officers were there to give directions to 2 million people.  If you have never been to D.C., many of the buildings look alike.  At times, we were literally asking an officer every 15 feet which direction to head. 

A Native American woman leaving the Swearing-in Ceremony

There wasn’t a race or ethnicity that we didn’t see sometime during our 4 days in D.C.  We saw people wearing turbans, Indians, Native Americans, Africans, African-Americans, White people, Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Australian, English, etc…

Just one glimpse of the different races represented

Despite being the largest gathering of people in the history of the United States, the scenario was not mass hysteria or pandemonium.  We were excited, don’t get me wrong!  But the atmosphere was definately controlled chaos.  We were all there celebrating CHANGE!  We suffered for 8 years without genuine, representative leadership.  Not one arrest was made on January 20, 2009 in Washington D.C.  We were there to celebrate, not take advantage of each other.  Another member on our trip viewing the inauguration from near the Washington Monument (almost 1.5 miles behind us) said two men almost started a fight.  It was the first time the crowd encouraged peace and didn’t egg on a fist fight. 

People gathered in celebration of peace, hope, and change.

You can also tell by some of the pictures of the crowd, for once in our lives we were the minority.  It was nice.  An African American woman on our trip told us, “we weren’t going to win this election without y’all (caucasions).  It took for you guys to put aside your fear and put your faith in the black man”.   Yes we can, Yes we did!

We wish everyone could have been there.  It was really a once-in-a-lifetime expereince.  For three fulls days in downtown D.C. we shared an insivisible energy of excitement, acceptance, hope, and joy.

After the Inauguration

As you can probably imagine, trying to leave the same location as 2 million other people took some time.  (The Secret Service told us their were 4 million people in Washington D.C.)  There was no way to walk to the left side of the national mall because the parade route was blocked off.  So we had to walk to the right and try to find a metro stop.  Of course, everyone else was heading for the metro as well.  Along the way we witnessed the damage caused by millions of people in one location.

Museum security guards trying to mend a fence destroyed by the crowd.

There was garbage everywhere!

There was garbage everywhere covering the streets and the national mall.  We ran into a police officer who said every piece of the trash would be gone by the time we arrived into the city the next morning.  He said that workers would spend all night cleaning up all the litter.  And for the most part, the garbage was gone the next morning. 

The line to the metro after the swearing-in ceremony.

The line to the first metro stop was so long, we figured we would get somewhere to eat faster by walking to the next metro stop.  This is when we noticed something happening at the Capitol building.  We saw marching bands lined up and this was when we saw Obama, Biden, and their wives coming down the Capitol steps.  Another hour later, we make it to Union Station to board a metro. 

Another glimpse of the new President.

On the news and more posts to come!

I apologize for the delay in posting, but we want to add a lot of pictures as we re-tell the inauguration events and atmosphere.  We will be posting more tonight and tomorrow, so please come back and read how the rest of our adventure went.  We will share meeting Mitch McConnell, seeing John McCain and John Kerry pal around, and walking for miles, seeing some monuments, etc…

Also, we were on the 6pm news on WBKO.  If you missed the interview, check on their website at www.wbko.com.  They will post the video tonight or tomorrow.

Inauguration Day

Cody and Jess amid the inauguration crowd

Inaguration Day was insane.  We headed out from our hotel at 4:15 am in the morning.  It then takes an hour and fifteen minutes to our metro stop.  It took us 3 hours to go 2 miles on the highway to the metro exit.  Traffic was horrendous!!  Then when we finally made it to the metro, we had another 2 hours into the city (twice the normal amount of time).  The train was so crowded that Landon, our classmate, had to get off the train to let the conductor on.  So he ended up in our car.  It was standing room only and so crowded that the conductor threatened to unload the train if people didn’t stop packing so tightly. 

Finally we get to our stop in D.C. with our silver inauguration tickets.  These are the standing room in the back of the ticket holders area.  The line to get in was over a mile long.  By this time, it’s 10:30am.  So we make it to the back of the line and it’s moving along at a pretty slow pace.  We were pretty pessimistic about making it into the ceremony on time.  Then all of a sudden the line is moving really fast, but only because everyone dispersed.  Security closed the gate and wouldn’t let anyone else in!!

S

The crowd

o we start walking towards the capital building anyway because we have been traveling for 6 hours at this point and WE ARE GOING TO WITNESS THIS EVENT!!!  There are silver ticket holders everywhere shaking their tickets when an officer agrees to move a barricade to allow us in anyway.  There is a stampede and the crowd tramples two fences.  We decide to just go for it.  We have tickets, what are they going to do?  Tell 50,000 angry ticket holders we can’t go to our spot?  So we start running to get as close as possible.  Lo and behold, we make it right where we should have been in the first place.  We were approximately 10-15 feet behing the capitol building pond.  We could not see the stage because it was blocked by some massive trees.  We also were too far away to see the jumbo tron, but we did end up right beneath the speakers. 

When they announced the current President Bush, the crowd booed so loudly, you could hear it reverberating off the buildings on either side of the national mall.  A woman from our group was actually on the platform with Obama and she said she could hear the booing too well.  So we do have confirmation that George Bush heard 2 million people boo him.  It was awesome!  After confirming with various people we met throughout the day, it seems the crowd from the capitol building to the Lincoln Memorial also broke out into singing “Na Na Na, hey hey, goodbye”.   Of course we all heard/saw the swearing in ceremony. 

The Capitol Building

We were so tightly pressed into the crowd that turning around was impossible.  There was no going anywhere once we were in place.  It was a good thing because it kept us warm.  After the cermemony, we were freezing.  Even with thermal underwear, hats, gloves, wool socks, and warm winter coats.  It took us 4 hours to walk from the front of the Capitol building to the metro on the opposite corner of the building.  We did stop for 30 minutes directly behind the Capitol building and waited on the steps of the Library of Congress to watch our new President begin the inauguration parade.  This is the picture we got and it was worth going 14 hours without food to experience this moment.  Yeah we each had a bagel at 3:30 am and didn’t get food until 6:30pm that night.

It was the most amazing social movement we will probably ever experience.  For one day, in one city, the racial barriers just disappeared.  Every nation, color, language, culture, etc… was represented. 

So long Bush!

We made it to our hotel!

Well since we apparently have at least one reader (thank you Kayla!), we thought we should update after the first leg of the journey.  No matter how you look at it, fourteen hours on a bus is not a pleasant experience.  BUT, we did have some movies to make the time go faster.  

I (Jess) took a bunch of pictures of the trip so far, but it seems my laptop lacks the right port size for my digital camera’s memory card.  Small technical difficulty!  I’m very sorry that you will miss the pictures of the bus, the luggage, and checking-in.  (At least for right now!)

Tomorrow will be a different story because we have a second camera that shouldn’t have the same problems.  So tomorrow, there will be MANY pictures to share with you.  We haven’t caught up with the news yet, but the excitement is building.  Everytime we stopped, the locals and truckers knew we were on our way to watch the Inauguration.  It seems the coal areas of Tennessee and Virginia have never witnessed such a diverse mass of people before.  Before the week is over, the surrounding states should no longer be in an economic crisis from all of the tourism.

About halfway through Virginia, the highway signs were warning of Inaugural delays!!  We didn’t notice horrible traffic or massive bus loads of people, but we are still 70 miles from Washington D.C.  So an hour ride to and from the city each day awaits us.

Well, we are tired and still feel like we’re riding on the bus.  It’s time to eat some dinner, wash off a day on the bus, and get some much needed rest. 

Good night,

Cody and Jess

Inauguration Anxiety

Hi everybody!  This is Cody and Jess writing our first blog for the 2009 Inauguration pilgrimage.  For those of you who don’t know who us, we are both sociology graduate students at Western Kentucky University.  We are taking this trip with the Political Science department at WKU to witness the largest predicted gathering of Americans EVER!!  We are also two of 240,000 “invited” guests to the inauguration.  (That just means we have standing room only tickets in the farthest section of the swearing-in ceremony.)  We plan to keep updates on the feeling of being at the inauguration, what 2+ million people look like, and other surprising happenings that we will surely encounter. 

Our journey begins tomorrow morning at 6:00 am from Western’s campus.  We will be arriving to our hotel in Winchester, VA by 8:00pm.  So a very, very long charter bus ride is in store for us.  Our next blog can be expected when we settle in our hotel. 

Monday morning we will head to Mitch McConnell’s office to pick up our tickets.  Then we will hopefully get in some sight-seeing.  We will post some pictures along the way with our blog.  So wish us luck and check back to see how the adventure unfolds!

Right now we are packing our bags and experiencing many emotions.  We are SO excited, but we are really nervous too.  TWO MILLION PEOPLE???  What does that even look like?  We are also worried about leaving our two year old son for five days with grandma.  We’ve never been away for so long before.  But the excitement reigns as the supreme emotion right now!  To be a part of the must-see historic event of our entire lives so far is a privilege we will never forget.  So until tomorrow evening, this is Cody and Jess signing off.

Later,

Cody and Jess