Inauguration Show And Tell

The Great Uploading of all the pictures that were taken at the inauguration of Barack Obama earlier this week has been going on since Tuesday.

I've been tooling around the blogosphere, checking them out. A couple of photo essays stood out over at Daily Kos - they were a great blend of artfully composed shots and well written commentary. And the monologue by my man at AverageBro.com is hilarious - it sounds like the kind of blow-by-blow recap my buddies give me when they get back from a special trip.

Thanks to the photographers for giving me permission to link to their photos, and thanks to AverageBro, who always appreciates a few more visitors to his blog.




First up is "JJ from VA", who made this trek with his wife to the Mall on Sunday.

"This was one of the most amazing experiences of my lifetime. I've never been surrounded by so many happy, truly happy people of every imaginable race and ethnicity."

JJ from VA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Flickr Daily Kos

CLICK HERE to see JJ from VA's entire photojournal at Daily Kos.




From my blogroll, which I like to use as my custom built internet newspaper to see what's happening in cyberspace, I read a VERY entertaining account of Inauguration Day from an AverageBro who was just a few hundred feet away from the Ground Zero of the podium.

EXCERPT:

After awhile, ABL and I got antsy and started walking around the Section 11 (which prolly contained 10,000 seats alone) to see who else was around. In no time we ran into Common (nice guy), Tracee Ellis Ross (looks better on TV), Bill Bellamy, Evander Holyfield (sitting waaaay in the back and apparently not happy about it), Stephen Spielberg (nice guy, who oddly had to also sit in the back), Alicia Keys (far away, I only got a glimpse of her), Bill Cosby (also seen from afar), Wyclef (sitting just in front of us in the Green Zone) and finally.. brace yourselves fellas... Halle Berry.

She was dressed down (hat, big shades, no makeup), but well, it's Halle Berry. Do you ladies realize how many male-male debates/discussions have begun with the words "Well, what if Halle Berry...." over the years? She was too far from the aisle for me to ask for a photo (and she had well-disguised security, something few other celebs had), but this still made my day. 50 years from now, my kids will ask me about Inaug Day, and all I'll say is "Good Lawd, Halle Berry!!!!".

Average Bro

CLICK HERE for the entire article at AverageBro.com




Mal Harden also made the trek to D.C. with his wife.

"You may think you can imagine what a million people looks like. You can't. You may think you can imagine what a million gloves clapping sounds like. You can't. Between 20-40 baseball stadiums worth of people. Loud, enthusiastic people. :-) "

Mal Harden

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CLICK HERE to see Mal's entire photojournal at Daily Kos.

The Steps You Take Are Not Yours Alone

The mass of people on the National Mall who gathered to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States on Tuesday was simply stupendous. The anticipation seemed to reach around the globe. The announcers were all falling all over themselves to remind us that Barack Obama was about to be the nation’s first African American president. As we watched the Obama family settle in behind the lectern, I thought back to this time last year, when the frenzy had just begun over this one term Senator from Illinois with the million dollar smile.

How far we had come.

To some people, Barack Obama was simply a man running for president. For others of us who were African American, he was more than that. He was a man who not only looked like us, but remembered us, and sounded like he was going to work to continue to connect to us even after he joined the most exclusive men's club in the world.

In his inaugural speech, Barack Obama recognized the small village that was the birthplace of his father as a part of his heritage, but to many of us watching, he was from Alabama and Mississippi and South Carolina and Maryland and California and Illinois and Georgia and Florida as much as he was from Kenya or Kansas or Hawaii.

The president's steps and the first lady's steps as they walked down Pennsylvania Avenue during the parade weren’t just the steps of two people - they were the steps of generations of men and women denied full participation in American society by the color of their skin, the steps of millions of peoples of color who live in America today whose lives are just beginning to resemble those of our paler brethren, the steps of their long dead ancestors, and the steps for their own children, who may very likely get the chance to live as adults in a world that sees them more for who they are than any generation of brown-skinned people in the history of this country.

Some of us are almost there already. Some of our neighbors are white. Our friends are multicultural. Our educations have been obtained from the best schools in the land.

But this is not the mass of black Americans. Too many of us are still struggling to connect intimately with other cultures. Too many of us are still rolling our eyes at the thought of higher learning. Too many of us are now bound more from within than without, more from our own narrow worldviews than how the world now views us.

Those steps down Pennsylvania Avenue that Barack and Michelle Obama took yesterday, after the inauguration ceremony – they were for the mass of black Americans too. But they are not going to walk up to your home, knock on your door, then come in and take a seat on your couch. You’ve got to meet them halfway.

Barack Obama did not slide into the White House on his silver tongue. He trained his mind to think wider, deeper, faster, and longer than the competition. He took advantage of the best university system in the world. And he remembered, even after deciding to more fully embrace the African side of his heritage, to never forget how to connect to the rest of America that he grew up in.

So conjure up your own parade in your mind. Throw your shoulders back. Hold your head high. And when you walk, whether it's down the street, or in the grocery store, or the locker court, or the mall, remember that the steps you take are not yours alone – that you have just as many ancestors and forebears and modern day cheerleaders who are counting on you to stride into a future filled with all the good things America has to offer.

America Is Finally Growing Up

Inaugurating Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America was like being in a civil rights march without an opposing force; like watching the Apollo moon landing without the need for a telescope; like the end of apartheid, with all of the tears of joy.

America is finally growing up. When we all can acknowledge our entire history, not just the attractive parts, when we all can accept completely the existence of perverse injustices that dominated our pasts - when the entire story of where we came from and how we got to here as a nation is recognized, fully and without restraint - the affirmations we cry out in celebration will ring truer, and the declarations we shout to the rooftops in commemoration shall carry more weight than they ever have before.

Indentured servitude, slavery, segregation, integration - Black America 5.0 is upon us, but even as it includes all of these things, it is bound by none of them. Collaboration is the last mile, the final steps in this journey to be equally accepted into all aspects of American life. Black America 5.0 will be tricky - there are going to be times, in fact, when you will wonder where you end and the rest of the world begins.

Change is good. But it is not quite as simple as flipping a switch in a dark room, instantly turning on the light. I don't know exactly what the steps are that we need to take to travel this final mile, or what order they need to be executed in, or how much the process will demand of us. But what I do know is two things: it will take the willingness and determination of the majority of this country to get there, and we already have all the tools we need right now to get started today.

Congratulations, America, on reaching a milestone for the ages.

Have Metro Cards, Will Travel

I talked to a couple of friends who are going to D.C. this weekend for the inauguration. My girl from Chicago is getting chemically activated footwarmers. My man from Alabama is getting long underwear. They are both stocking up on batteries. They are both putting away single serving snack paks. And they have both already received by mail the D.C. Metro cards they ordered in advance over the internet.

I could feel their Obama mojo starting to kick in as we talked, a mixture of exuberance and uncertainty - these are the kind of people who plan so much in advance that they are rarely surprised by the unexpected. But the number of visitors coming to D.C. for the inauguration of Barack Obama this weekend means that there is really no way for my friends to do anything more than plan to be warm and play the rest by ear.

My man from Alabama, who is an old co-worker of mine, has volunteered to give Brown Man Thinking Hard an account of his visit when he gets back next week. He and his wife were tireless Obama volunteers here in Atlanta last year, registering hundreds of voters and knocking on hundreds of doors week after week to increase voter turnout. They are two of the hundreds of thousands of campaign volunteers expected to throng the Mall on Tuesday to witness the swearing-in of Barack Obama that their tremendous efforts made possible.

I'm looking forward to talking to him when he gets back. He is the kind of guy whose stories are packed to the gills with details, so I'm sure you will enjoy his version of the inauguration. In the meantime, several articles in the nation's leading newspapers do a pretty good job of laying out the 411 on things to do and places to go if you are on your way to Washington. "The Inaugural Pregame Show", "Where to Go in D.C.", "Black History, Alive in Washington", and "A Neighborhood to Explore" are all excellent sources of information.

And if I could remember the name of the neighborhood eatery I went to years ago near Howard University, where I had an experience between two buns called the "Mo Betta Man" burger, I would recommend it heartily - one of those burgers could take the place of two meals.

After seeing the sobering site of that plane in the Hudson River yesterday, I've got to add this - I hope that everyone traveling from across the country to the nation's capital has a safe and comfortable journey.