Purple Ticket Blues
Text by Sarah Phelan
When Sup. Chris Daly recently asked that a measure “commending Sen. Dianne Feinstein for her successful chairing of the 2009 Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies” be sent to committee for a hearing, some folks asked, what gives?
Turns out that Daly holds Feinstein responsible for the infamous purple ticket holder fiasco, in which thousands of Obama volunteers were stuck at gates and in tunnels, thereby missing the historic inauguration of their candidate,
“As chair of the inaugural committee, Feinstein was responsible for major f-ups in terms of lack of organization,” Daly told the Guardian. “Because of these failures, thousands, most of them core Obama volunteers, missed his inauguration.”
To date, the inaugural committee has apologized and Feinstein has initiated an investigation, but many ticket holders like Lindsay O’Grady aren’t satisfied.
O’Grady, who is dating Sup. Daly’s brother-in-law, recalls how she was given a purple ticket for being an Obama field staffer in Wisconsin.
The idea was that folks who had worked their asses off for the Obama campaign would be granted special access to the inauguration ceremony to help ensure that they could physically see their candidate sworn in as the 44th US President.
O’Grady recalls how she caught the red-eye to D.C. on Inauguration Day with the aim of being at the purple ticket gate by 8:30 am. When she got there, it was, however, pure chaos, with massive crowds, ambulances driving through, and a gate where only a trickle of purple ticket holders was sporadically let in.
“Up until noon, an announcement came over the loudspeaker, saying, this is a purple ticket gate only, and everyone would hold up their purple tickets, and a trickle would be let through and then the gates would close,” O’Grady recalls. “Thousands of people were still standing there, when the cannons fired, right after Obama was sworn in.”
To add insult to injury, O”Grady later discovered that a general admission gate was still letting people in, right around the corner from where she was waiting, but no one ever pointed it out to the purple ticket holders
“What made me angry about the Board of Supervisors’ resolution was that it made it look as if Diane Feinstein did such a great job of making sure all ticket holders were processed, but clearly, that was not the case,” O’Grady observed, adding that she has tried emailing Feinstein’s office but with no response, so far.
“Some chaos was inevitable, obviously, but I felt that overall there was not enough training,” O’Grady said. “On the day of the Inauguration, I felt that a steak dinner at the Whitehouse, now that might be a once in a lifetime event that would be comparable. And there were many fun moments that day, including seeing the helicopter that was carrying Bush, leaving, and lots of people clearly delighted by that, and not using the nicest of gestures to show it. But it was really sad not to get in. I don’t want to take away anything from Sen. Feinstein, but I don’t want anyone to think that everything was smooth and wonderful on Inauguration Day.”
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Comments (1)
My understanding, based on personal observation and hearing accounts from other ticket holders, was that the disorganization at this event was a pervasive thing which touched (at the least) the purple, blue and silver ticket holder areas, screening stations, and lines. As well, it seems to fall into several categories of error; poor planning, ineffective execution, failure to adjust to real-time scenarios, resulting in a chaotic and unsafe experience for 10s of thousands of people. I have not seen any formal numbers published but the satelite photo posted by the Washington Post indicates that 10s of thousands of ticket holders were affected. Has this ever happened in history? Has there ever been a situation where the most committed supporters were denied access to the inauguration?
I thought it was disgraceful.
Posted by Nicola Burton | February 28, 2009 07:51 AM