My Inauguration Story: Part 3
Originally Posted on nsipress.com
This picture of yours truly was taken just before 6:00am. I may look underdressed, but I was not cold. As mentioned in the previous post the crowd was excited, jubilant, celebratory and generally very agreeable 
There was much joking and laughter. That was a very good thing because, in contrast to the dense paramilitary law enforcement presence around the Capitol, there were only 2 badges, and 2 volunteers for the crowd assembling outside the Blue Gate Security Screening Area.
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Taken about 7:00am from my position in the Blue Line, facing Northeast at the intersection of C and 2nd Streets
The crowd accumulating on the left side of this picture did stir some resentment from those of us in the line, as they appeared to just wander up. A few “activists” began chants of “Don’t Cut the Line” on a number of occasions, and several attempts at diplomacy were made. By the time this pic was taken the line was (as far as I could tell) more than 2 blocks long, so it was not surprising to me that the “cutters” were unmoved.
It was sometime shortly after 6 am that an older gentleman suffered a heart attack not far from me.
Fortunately there was an MD of some kind in our line, and he immediately took charge of the unfortunate victim. He was made to lie down on what I think was a large concrete planter, and someone in the line was found to have aspirin. It wasn’t too long before the guy was sitting up and talking, though it was obvious that he was weak and in need of further attention.
It is hard to imagine worse circumstances for that kind of emergency. Getting an ambulance into the area was out of the question, even though we were keeping our street clear. It took about an hour for a pair of paramedics to arrive with a gurney. When they left our two uniformed law enforcement reps left with them.
Not much later a few other events happened that transformed a mostly disciplined and well-behaved line into a mob-rush for the gate.
At some point (I didn’t note the time) before 8 am we began to receive waves of small crowds coming south and east from the unticketed areas of the National Mall. Several of these (eastern-most) standing areas had reached capacity and latecomers were being directed to the now infamous 3rd St tunnel. Our line was just north of the tunnel mouth, and these small groups of increasingly desperate people (inlcuding what appeared to be an elementary school class) had to dive into and through our line to gain access. This introduced a certain amount of chaos into the line, and it was frustrating for everybody because there was not a lot of room to manuever.
While this was going on, there was also a steady stream of people coming from the South and Southeast (and probably from the Southwest as well) to join our line. Our line was already wrapping around the HHS building, and this inflow also (apparently) had to cross the existing line to reach the end. Many of these people, upon discovering how far back the line was, chose instead to position themselves just outside the gate screening “funnel” in hope of simply pushing in. This is what began the chanting mentioned above. One guy near me began lobbying for us to “collapse the line”, since it was going to anyway. Many of us agreed that he was right, but most of us didn’t want to cheat on Obama Change Day
The final straw seemed (to me) to break when the line wrapped all the way around the Huber Humphrey HHS building. This put the end of the line within a few feet of the entry to the funnel; all those people had to do was turn around and they were in the front of the line. That was it. There was a mad dash to fill the the remaining space and create a general crush into the “funnel”.
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In: Inauguration · Tagged with: Barack Obama, Blue Line, Law Enforcement, National Mall, security, United States Capitol
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on June 27, 2010 at 9:54 am
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