Comments on: For Those Who Got Screwed At The Inauguration

By: bogfrog

bogfrog — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:28:26 +0000

You people sound so “entitled”.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:55:29 +0000

As someone who works at one of the Federal agencies managing this, I can safely say that there was poor coordination between Congress (Stuff at the Capital was their party), City, Federal agencies, and the Obama’s group. The fact that a major intersection of humanity like Washington and C Streets, SW had zero event staff directing three different groups (orange tix, Siver Tix, and no Tix) coming from threedifferent directions (RFK, South Cap, Points West) was just Stupid. Worse was the company of Iowa National Guardsmen keeping the streets of Shaw safe from the massive crowds up there (joking about the crowd, serious about the troops). that company could have easily been deployed to merge the groups on the mall for better crowd movement. I would encourage to fax Senator Feinstein a letter describing your experience and request a calm and reasoned after action review whose focus is not to assign blame but to make improvements for the future. Email will not work as she only responds to CA mailing addresses. Speak up or they idiots will do it again. The Senator’s fax number is 202-228-3954.

By: Darkside

Darkside — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 20:09:01 +0000

This is all Obama’s fault…

By: Kalia

Kalia — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:57:35 +0000

Just looking at that picture makes me feel ill. It’s almost as if I can feel the walls closing in on me.

By: Neener

Neener — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:54:53 +0000

Why did there need to be security screening at the monument?

By: PetworthRes

PetworthRes — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:28:09 +0000

I agree with CB, it’s a miracle no one was seriously injured or killed. Given that there was NO security screening at all at the part of the mall near the Washington Monument, why did they have the whole freaking area walled off? The dangerous part was when the whole crows was pushed against jersey barriers and chain fences trying to get out, and people had to stop and climb over barriers. If there had been more ways to get on or off that part of the mall, it would have made it a whole lot safer.

By: CB

CB — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:16:54 +0000

Huge amounts of incompetence in the *ticketed* area, which should have been the best-managed due to proximity to the President.

The two worst examples:

- Silver ticketed area was flooded with *unscreened* spectators when the crowd simply surged through a barricade.

- The Purple ticketed area, despite Chief Gainer’s lame excuse that it was “at capacity”, is clearly shown to be very sparsely populated in the 11:19 am satellite photo published in the Post. Either Chief Gainer is lying, or worse yet, his people who made the decision were completely unaware of what the many observers in helicopters, platforms, etc could plainly see.

This inauguration was fatality-free through sheer luck. Crowd control was abysmal, and consisted mainly of *creating* dangerous crush-inducing chokepoints, rather than preventing them. Many people went to the ticketless section of the Mall assuming they couldn’t bring chairs and backpacks (due to misinformation of the official inaugural site, and lack of any straight answers anywhere else), and thus made themselves much more vulnerable to hypothermia. Emergency vehicle clear-lanes through the crowd were not established. And I could just go on and on.

This inauguration was a triumph of a well-behaved crowd over the incompetence of our overly-militarized police agencies; all of our police agencies are too focused on getting their cool-looking military-style gear and keeping *themselves* out of any harm, and have totally lost their focus on “protecting and serving” the public.

[Excepted from my diatribe is that one Houston transit cop who jumped onto the metro tracks to save the lady who fell in front of a train. Kudos to him.]

By: clearbluewater33

clearbluewater33 — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:15:42 +0000

I want a west wing tour. they’re hard to get unless you know someone same as the coveted purple tickets. I would stop bitching if i got that or a speech somewhere by Obama. Wont get back the once in a life time opportunity i missed but its something

By: peaceyall

peaceyall — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:15:09 +0000

i was in the blue ticketed area and got in without a problem – was there around 6:30am. when we got in, there was soo much space for a while after the inauguration events started. then partway through a lot of people began streaming in from who knows where. not sure if they were ticketed or not, but when they finally made it, they were hugging and kissing. it felt like people had just broken out of jail and were happy to be free and in the presence of obama.

By: New2CH

New2CH — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:48:27 +0000

What can and should be done is hold, in a month or so, a special event for ticketed folks who were denied entry featuring Barack himself as the speaker. Even 30 minutes of Barack’s time would mean the world to those folks …