My Pre-Inaugural experience...

On Saturday night I heard that President Elect Obama would be giving his first speech at a free concert in DC....My sons wanted to go to inauguration soooo bad, but I was afraid to take them because of the crowd. The older two are eleven and eight. If anything I would let the eleven year old troop, but my eight year old...I don't know. I didn't even think about bringing the four year old. However, when I found out about this concert on Sunday, I said to Howard, let's go. So we left Brooklyn at around 4am..... "on the road again" this is our travel song. I only brought Amal and Che because I still thought it would be too much for Kofi. We arrived in DC at around 8am. We dropped our things off at Aunt Cookie's house and got right on the Metro to the Lincoln Memorial. When we got off the train we saw signs that led to the Memorial.

As we walked down the sterile, army patrolled blocks surrounded by government buildings, several thoughts ran through my mind: "Will my children be warm enough" "Hopefully we can find something to eat" "I'm going to make sure they use the bathroom before we get out there" "I hope they don't have to go into those smelly porta potties" "damn, I wish I had a press pass," "I wonder if any of the photographers that I know are here," "shux, I wish I knew about this earlier, I would have gotten a press pass."

We found a little spot to get something to eat and then made our way over to the memorial. The walk to the memorial was great. I saw children, elders, teens, adults of all races and ethnicities. People sold hand warmers, flags and Obama products along the way. When we finally arrived, we went through a security check and then walked about two miles to the memorial. It was not at all what I expected. People were basically camped out on the floor with blankets. Wow, I thought, that's what we needed, blankets so that we could at least sit down on the floor too. It was only 9AM and the concert was supposed to start at 2:30 PM. I didn't like the right side of the memorial, it looked like we could get closer to the stage on the left side. So we started to make our way over to the left of the memorial. While walking I heard a man preach to a crowd of people, "Obama is not the answer," he said. "I know that you all do not agree with me," he continued, "but, Obama is not the answer." He continued to speak about the bailout and the economy....People stared at this man in shock. One man stood up and sang in a deep strong voice, "My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land were my fathers died...." He continued to sing and got a standing ovation from the crowd. What a beautiful site this was to me. It showed the conflicts that exists in our society. Some people have hope for a brighter future, while others feel that much more work needs to be done to obtain real change.

I thought that I would witness more dissent within the sea of people, but that was not the case at all.

It was definitely a wonderful site to see people gather from all over the world to witness this historical event. I met people from London, Amsterdam, Arkansas, South Africa and Bosnia. They all said they came to DC just for this event.

The man from Amsterdam said that Europeans have already begun to feel the change that Obama will bring. This man is literally loved all over the world. I heard that today is a national holiday in Kenya. Wow.

We passed the time in the cold interviewing people and just experiencing all of the powerful energy. At 2:30 on the dot, the show began. It moved rather quickly and by the time we knew it Barack Obama took the stage. My sons watched in awe and I was excited more for them than anything else. Regardless of how the next four years turns out...this man has officially opened the doors of possibility in this country. Amal and Che will remember this day forever.

Although we were so far away, I did my best to capture as much of my perspective as possible.

some video and pics soon come