A tale of two inaugurations

Four years and a day ago, I boarded a bus with what felt like half of my journalism school class and traveled to Washington, DC, for the inauguration of Donald Trump and the Women’s March the day after. I’d arranged to cover the events for Pacifica radio and ended up writing a short dispatch for my hometown paper back in the UK—my first “real” bylines. I woke up early for the inauguration, anticipating a long wait to get onto the Mall, but the line was relatively short and there was plenty of space inside to rove around and interview Trump supporters. (So much for the biggest inaugural crowd ever.) I spoke to the Naked Cowboy, and to young families and kids on school trips; I steered clear of a group chanting “Lock Her Up,” but never felt threatened myself. “I think it’s kind of ridiculous not to go to the inauguration,” a student wearing a Hillary Clinton lapel pin told me, when I asked him why he was there. “It’s a testament to American democracy to have one president leave peacefully and another come in.” The sentiment—and the number of friendly, first-time political participants I spoke with, at the inauguration as well as the Women’s March—stuck with me. Despite my initial “sense of foreboding,” I wrote in my dispatch, the proceedings “may, just, have buttressed the foundations of a shaking democracy.” Today, Joe Biden will be sworn in as president, and there will be no crowd on the Mall—the consequence of a deadly viral pandemic that his predecessor refused to try... Continue reading at 'Columbia Journalism Review'

[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2021-01-20 13:36:57 UTC ]

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