Obama’s inauguration: Why we are here

Barry Artiste Op/Ed
Obama’s Inauguration will certainly be a sight to see, just not for average Washingtonians who in the words of a Popular National News Correspondent we see nightly on TV and a lifelong friend of mine who stated to me yesterday below:

Yes, I got an invite to the swearing-in for Obama, and it is available to any of my colleagues who might wish to take in the formalities. I cannot understand why anyone would want to be anywhere near downtown Washington that day. It will be filled with millions of people, very few toilets, overbearing cops enforcing idiotic rules (everyone downtown must remain indoors between 4 am and 7 am that day while dogs do security sweeps), no public or private transit, and all the general brutishness associated with huge crowds. All so people can stand for hours to see motorcades of cars with blacked-out windows sweep by. I’d rather go to the dentist. But I’m being paid to be there, so I guess I have no choice.

Certainly my Buddy says it all in the above statement, as it  shows the troubling times we are in when Terrorists threats keeps citizens indoors from 4am to 7am.  Obama will have his hands full trying to achieve what many before him failed to do.  I wish him well, and hope he takes a few days before looking at the US Presidents Inbox.  When he does, let’s hope the kids are not around to hear the “Expletives” cause I bet it won’t be pretty.

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Washington, D.C. — “I was there.”

It’s really a simple phrase, but in some cases, it resonates for a lifetime.

Growing up, my dad rarely said the words “I was there.” He once told me about the riots in Hong Kong in the late 60s, “I was there” moments that led him to leave his home for Canada. He told me of another time years later when he took me up on his shoulders at Toronto City Hall to protest against discrimination, a landmark moment when the Chinese Canadian community found its political voice. “You were there,” he told me proudly years later when I was old enough to understand.

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