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A special report originally published on the Saint Louis Beacon
Tommy Xie shares his photos from Washington D.C.
More SoJ Inauguration related items
Cole Singleton of O'Fallon, Ill., is one of the 98 Southern Illinois University Carbondale journalism students and friends who boarded a bus at 2 a.m. Monday to start the journey to the inauguration of Barack Obama. After a short night in a motel in western Maryland, they'll get back on the bus at 2 a.m. Tuesday to join the crush of people converging on Washington.
For Singleton, a promising senior advertising student who headed the National Association of Black Journalists' chapter on campus, the inauguration is the climactic moment of a centuries-long struggle. "This is the culmination of my grandparents' and their parents' work," he wrote in an e-mail. "All that they went through and Obama is the end product. They suffered so I can witness this with my own eyes and live to tell about it. This is a once in a lifetime event that I will always remember for the rest of my life. I will tell my kids and grand kids that I was in Washington for the inauguration of our first African-American president."
Zlatko Filipovic is covering the event for River Region, the SIUC student TV station. For him, the history-making nature of the event is also important, but from an entirely different vantage point. He and his family came to the U.S. from Bosnia a decade ago. They see the Obama victory as proof of America's promise. "I am very excited to go to Washington," he wrote, "because this is truly a historic event: the first African-American president who is not divisive, but inclusive and a president, who for the first time ever, sees all American people and people of the world as one, no matter what religion, nationality, political party, sexual orientation, etc. He is a true role model. And because I came to America ten years ago from Bosnia with my parents and older brother, it makes me believe that I, too, can truly do anything and that the sky is the limit." (See Filipovic with Obama on his Facebook page)
And then there's Elissa Hopkins-Renzaglia, a Southern Illinois winery worker who believes in the "hope" and "change" that Obama promised. "I have endured eight years of the Bush administration's ignorance, embarrassment and corruption," she wrote. "By voting in this past election my vote represents a newer Washington, a place where hope prevails and prayers will be answered. A place where the heart is. Very simply stated Obama gives me a reason to celebrate good times to come in this country and I look forward to attending his inauguration and proud to be an American."
Barack Obama, not known outside Chicago five years ago, is now dependedupon by a large segment of the American people to restart the economy, end the war, kindle a new kind of politics and re-establish American moral authority in the world. There is enormous potential for achievement, but also enormous possibility for failure and disappointment. But don't tell that to the students or the faithful descending on Washington. They are determined to be happy.
Karyn Graham, an advertising student at SIUC, put it this way: "I am going to the Inauguration because I have never been this excited about America, or America's future, in the 22 years that I have been alive. When Barack Obama was elected, it seemed as if there was a weight lifted. There is an ease in the air that I have not felt for over eight years. I can't wait to witness history while in D.C. and watch it play out over the course of the next four years, and hopefully beyond."
Filed 11:55 a.m. Mon., Jan. 19
Just under 100 Southern Illinois University students and friends left Carbondale for the presidential inauguration, just after 2 a.m. Monday - right on time. The efficiency of this forced march is the work of Martin Dubbs, who rose to sergeant during his eight years in the Army, which included a year working intelligence in Iraq.
 Martin Dubbs
In fact, this great inaugural adventure was his idea. Martin (right) is a student worker in the Journalism school, and just before the election suggested to me with great enthusiam that we take students to the inauguration. He has spent much of the time since then organizing the trip like a military operation.
Last week, at a moment of low enthusiasm approaching dread on my part, I asked Martin why we were doing this.
"Because this is what journalists do," he said.
Martin went on to explain that the election had been particularly exciting for him because he thought "this was a significant diversion in the ideas and where (both candidates) would take the country. I thought Obama had a better position on Iraq and Afghanistan because he was more flexible and could adjust."
Martin is a grad student in public administration and hopes to make a career in federal service. After our departure from Carbondale, we promptly ran into a snow storm that slowed our march. We've just finished inundating a Kentucky McDonald's. Tonight we're at motels in western Maryland before the final push to the capital begins, again around 2 a.m. under Sgt. Dubbs' direction.
Filed 2:05 p.m. Mon., Jan. 19
Dennis Van de Laar is my seatmate on the SIUC trip to the inauguration. He just filed a blog for a Dutch paper back in his native Netherlands.
Dennis, 26, is a very smart graduate student in aviation administration. Even though he's not a professional journalist, his blog was written like a real pro. He writes a regular blog called Double Dutch.
In his inaugural blog, he did a good job of describing the historical context of the inauguration occurring one day after Martin Luther King's birthday and two centuries after Abraham Lincoln's birth. Obama's election is rooted in both their legacies, he wrote.
Like me, Dennis has some qualms about whether this trip is worth it. "24 hours on a bus for one man," he says as he translates the first sentence of his blog from Dutch into English. Also like me, Dennis wonders if Obama can meet the sky-high expectations. He says Obamamania is even stronger at home in Europe than here.
Filed 3:24 a.m. Tues., Jan. 20
A waning, crescent moon hangs in the predawn sky over the nation's capital as our two buses from SIUC approached from western Maryland.
Most of the students are sleeping. I'm reminded of the dozens times I drove this same route on the way back from family vacations, our four children sleeping in the back of our VW bus. It feels like a homecoming. The route our school buses are to take to our designated parking spots is the highway along the Potomac that I commuted along for a dozen years from our Bethesda home to the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau near the White House. Service to our country is incredibly important to me -- and to our incoming president, whose staff has kept my cell phone buzzing with texts.
Filed 5:14 a.m. (CST) Tues., Jan. 20
Driving into Washington was eerie because it seemed abandoned. Of course it was before 5 a.m. Still, we had expected to at least run into a jam of buses.
We got a prime parking space at 21st and K, about eight blocks from the White House.
Now it's about 6 and the streets are filling up. We're having an All-American breakfast before heading for the Mall.
Posted 10 a.m. Tues, Jan. 20 WASHINGTON
A sliver of a crescent moon still shown in the dark sky when wave upon wave of inaugural attendees began streaming down the streets of the capital and onto the national Mall to see Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. They had a long time to wait, but a festive, expectant atmosphere prevailed over the bone-chilling cold.
By the time the sun rose behind the Capitol, the Mall was densely packed from the Capitol steps to the Smithsonian castle and merry-go-round nearly a mile away. From there the brightly lit podium where Obama would take the oath of office five hours later was just barely visible.
It appeared that a larger percentage of the crowd was African-American than at previous inaugurations. Roughly one out of every four or five attendees was African-American.
Some women wore long, fur coats as if decked out for Sunday services. Hawkers sold hand warmers and sold Obama souvenirs to those streaming toward the Mall. On the Mall itself, long lines formed to buy official Obama paraphernalia or to get into the the warmth of the Smithsonian museums.
Those determined to save their places sat on blankets as if at very cold picnics. Groups of people huddled together on the ground in hopes of keeping each other warm. Temperatures were in the 20s as the crowd gathered around sunrise, but it felt much colder because of the wind. A sunny sky promised a small measure of relief as the ceremony approached.
Ushers sponsored by the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, some in red tops and red stocking caps, cheered the crowd as they filed to their places.
Many attendees oriented themselves around the huge jumbotrons that lined the Mall every few hundred yards for the entire two-mile stretch from the Capitol, past the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial. They cheered when Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, appeared on the screen, followed by the Obamas. It was a replay of Sunday's festivities at the Lincoln Memorial, but the crowd was happy to see the reruns nonetheless.
Much of the crowd gathered around the eastern side of the rise that surrounds the Washington Monument. Part of the group braved the stiff wind to stand on the prominence where they could see the mall stretching up to the Capitol. Others found a more sheltered area off to the side of the monument where they could watch a jumbotron a bit more comfortably, even though they had no view of the stage itself.
Another group gathered a few hundred yards away around a jumbotron at the edge of a sweet gum grove by the World War II memorial. And away from the Capitol, people already were lining the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, two miles and more than a million people away from Obama.
A few small groups walked along the length of the Vietnam Memorial at the edge of the Mall farthest from the Capitol. Without nearby jumbotrons, the Memorial was something of a respite from commotion all around.
Joining the crowds moving down 18th Street toward the Mall was a line of hooded men in orange prison suits, part of a protest again the Guantanamo prison. Obama is expected to issue an order closing Guantanamo in the future and ending the system of military commissions established by President George W. Bush.
Updated 4:50 p.m. Tues., Jan. 20 - WASHINGTON
President Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office with a call "for a new era of responsibility" amid stormy times created by the "failure to make hard choices." But the approximately 2 million people stretched out before him responded most enthusiastically to his refusal to compromise American values in confronting terrorists and engaging the world.
The huge crowd stretching the length of the national Mall was jubilant and partisan, booing at one point when Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on the TV monitor. Many in the crowd could get no closer to the Capitol than the Washington Monument more than a mile away, leaving them with no direct view of the podium. They craned necks to watch jumbotrons around branches and tree trunks. They responded especially warmly to several of Obama's points:
- His declaration that "our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions" is "surely passed" and that it's time to "pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again."
- His embrace of the "the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness."
- His implicit rejection of Ronald Reagan's 1981 call for smaller government. "The question we ask today," he said, "is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works."
- His assertion that "false (is) the choice between our safety and our ideals," an apparent criticism of his predecessor who sat on the podium. The Founding Fathers faced peril when they wrote a charter assuring the rule of law and human rights, he said, adding, "Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."
- His vow to defeat the terrorists with the power of ideas. "We say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you." He also warned leaders who seek to sow conflict "your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy."
- His pledge to "all the other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."
Obama said that in facing down Nazism and communism, America learned "our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint."
In one of several references to slavery, "We have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace."
In other references to America's racist past, he spoke of forefathers who "endured the lash of the whip," and remarked that "a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath."
When the speech ended, people's faces reflected enormous satisfaction and pride. African-Americans, especially, seemedto be beaming.
Filed 9 p.m. Tues., Jan. 20
It's hard to understand why the Obama inauguration hasn't provided enough of a stimulus to save the nation's economy.
 unsold papers
There were dozens of designs of buttons. There were dueling portraits -- some including John F. Kennedy, others Malcolm X, others showing Obama in a famous Muhammed Ali pose of triumph over a fallen fighter.
One item that wasn't selling fast was commemorative special editions of newspapers. It may just have been too cold to hold them.
Filed 12:25 p.m. Wed., Jan. 21
Most of the hundred SIUC stidents returning from the inauguation of Barack Obama were dead tired Wednesday on the long bus trip home. But Lei Xie, a star grad student in communications, was exhilarated.
 Lie Xie
Xie (right), who grew up in Shanghai, was impressed with the open, participatory way that the president had been chosen and sworn in. In China, the results would have been decided behind closed doors and announced on television, he said.
When China recently opened up a designated place for protesters at the Olympics, nobody took advantage, either because they didn't know how to do it or because they felt intimidated.
Xie was surprised by both the boos directed at Vice President Richard Cheney and President George Bush, and by the protest signs of some anti-Obama, anti-abortion protesters calling Obama supporters baby-killers. No president in China would face such insults.
Xie recently got a tenure-track job from a college in Connecticut. He plans to teach in the United States until he gets tenure and then possibly return to teach in China.
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