Trump Inauguration: Inside the Surreal Scene at Donald J. Trump’s Swearing-In Ceremony and Parade
The new president’s speech and inaugural ceremony marked the beginning of the Spray-Tan Age, where facts are ignored and protesters are tear-gassed for protesting on capitol hill.
The Orange Level passes got you closest to the ceremony, at the inauguration of Donald J. Trump earlier today. A strange if fitting choice given that the penultimate tier, still far down the National Mall, was silver. In the way that the Gilded Age referred to a society that seemed glamorous but hid profound inequity, this was pretty much the beginning of the Spray-Tan Age.
The concept of tiered entry itself seemed incongruous on the relatively uncrowded Mall. The streets of Washington’s downtown were empty apart from scattered groups of occasionally tear-gassed protesters. The town seemed not to be populated by people at all, just fences and overlapping security forces. Inside the gates was a throng comprised not of Republicans or Democrats but Trumpists eager to stop what their candidate described as an “American carnage” in his inaugural address.
“No oranges,” said a TSA agent going through an older woman’s lunch bag, before the speech. He removed two clementines.
“Is that a rule?” someone nearby asked.
“No hard fruit,” he explained.
A group of high schoolers posed for a photo in front of one of the gates. They hailed from around the country and were in town for the Presidential Inauguration Leadership Summit, which featured talks from the likes of Tucker Carlson and Carly Fiorina, whom they all agreed was the best speaker. Asked what they were most excited about what President Trump would do for their future they said: “Jobs.”
It would just be nice, said Alexandria Murphy, 17, in a Make America Great Again hat, to have a president who wasn’t a career politician, “someone who knows what it’s like to live in the real world.”
“Obama’s out!” screamed a middle-aged woman with relief, at the end of the oath of office. She declined to give her name and instead lit up a USA Gold brand cigarette. Her companion, Hope King of Durham North Carolina, 63, said now that President Barack Obama was out of office he would most likely “try to ruin Warshington D.C. on the outside.” How? “Agitatin’. Lyin’. Murderin’. Ain’t that what Chicago’s all about now, murderin’? He did a pretty good job of that, in Chicago.”
Inside the Surreal Scene at the Inauguration of President Donald J. Trump
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
Scene from Donald Trump’s Inauguration in Washington D.C.
The drizzle started right as the new president began his speech with a dog whistle to restore the country’s promise “for all our people.” He claimed to have written the speech himself and it contained enough oddities that that may even be true. The references to “our young and beautiful students” and “the mysteries of space.” One man on the Mall stopped photographing one of its Jumbotrons to turn to his wife as Trump declared the phrase “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.” He frowned positively at his wife as if to say, “pretty good line, right?” Poetry, basically. That’s what comes from writing on a legal pad unsupported by any surface.
“For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry,” said the man whose former campaign is under investigation by law enforcement and intelligence agencies over its communications with Russia. “Subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military.”
At this Joe Sloop, of Greensboro, North Carolina, 30, crowed. Foreign aid was a major issue for him. He was apparently accompanied by his mother and in the same breath decried Dick Cheney’s alleged profits from the Iraq War and the idea that President Obama might be profiting from his promotion of green energy, which is something I couldn’t even find a fake news story about.
Asked about Trump’s ties to the Kremlin he said he would need to see “hard data” on them and at any rate wasn’t bothered by them. “Russia is not our enemy,” he said. “Russia has never killed a single American citizen.”
In its age, whiteness, sparse attendance (just 250,000, according to estimates, a fraction of the 2 million who came for Obama in 2009) and music choice (e.g. “Simply the Best,” “I’m Still Standing,” “Rocketman”) the Mall resembled some kind of county fair–”And this here is my bride,” one older man said, Facebook Live-ing his wife on a viewing stand near the parade–but one where the passive aggression of those crowding the barricades along Pennsylvania Avenue belied the underling tension in the air.
After one woman put up a neon pink sign that said, ironically enough, “Hate Won’t Make America Great,” a Venezuelan man in overalls started screaming at her.
“Get the sign down!” he screamed. “Get the sign! Down!” He tore it out of her hand threw it on the ground, and began yelling at her male friend who stepped between her and him. “You got a problem?” he asked her friend. “I’ll beat you up. You don’t wanna f— with me okay? So back off. Back off! I’ll show you how we do in Tennessee.” The friend backed down and the Venezuelan received congratulations from several older men with beards.
“I was just defending myself after he manhandled me after I pulled the sign down,” he said. The other man had not touched him at all but all the men with beards agreed that the friend had been the aggressor. As for the Venezuelan, he worked in the Tennessee court system, and had in the past worked private security in Kuwait during the first Gulf War, when I probably hadn’t even been born, and good luck guessing which of Tennessee’s 95 counties he was from, along with his name. He also wanted to know how many times I’d been in a locker room.
“We all have the right to see the parade,” he added.
It was not a crowd that acted like it had just won an election that threatened to disrupt nearly every tenet of American government; they were still acting like outcasts. At several points along the parade route, loudspeakers announced exactly what brigade of what division of the armed forces we were ogling, or who was in what SUV (“Thomas Barrack Jr. chairman of the Presidential Inauguration Committee,” whoa!). This crowd didn’t have much to say about any of that, even the applause for the various military divisions was pretty tepid.
Here’s what they did know. When the loudspeaker announced the names of House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and Supreme Court justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, the crowd booed viciously (loudest for Pelosi), even though they weren’t even visible in their tinted SUVs, indistinguishable from those that carried their conservative counterparts.
The loudspeaker naturally didn’t announce the flatbed trucks carrying the photographers and camera crews preceding the president and vice president. But the crowd booed the media so loudly that many of them probably missed their shots, looking into the crowd confusedly.
Then the president and vice president sped by so quickly that most of them probably didn’t get a chance to cheer.
Meet the Women Who Are Making the Women’s March on Washington Happen
The executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, Linda Sarsour — a Brooklyn native, mother of three, and now one of the national co-chairs of the Women’s March on Washington — has been working at the crossroads of civil rights, religious freedom, and racial justice for 15 years. Once an aspiring English teacher, she joined the Arab American Association in its infancy, succeeding founder Basemah Atweh, her mentor, as executive director with Atweh’s death in 2005. “I grew out of the shadow of 9/11,” Sarsour said. “What I’ve seen out of bad always comes good, is that solidarity and unity, particularly amongst communities of color who feel like they’re all impacted by the same system.”
Tamika D. Mallory’s roots in community organizing and activism extend back to her early childhood: her parents were two of the earliest members of the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network nearly 30 years ago, an organization for which Mallory went on to act as executive director. But it wasn’t until the death of her son’s father 15 years ago that Mallory found her niche in civil rights and flung herself headlong into activism. Now, she’s one of the four national co-chairs of the Women’s March on Washington, balancing organizing the march with her day job as a speaker and civil rights advocate. “We’re centering this march by having women to be at the helm of it, to organize it, and to be most of the speakers,” she said. “At the same time I think it’s very important that we never forget the fact that our men, our brothers, our young brothers particularly need this support.”
Fashion entrepreneur Bob Bland was nearing the due date of her second daughter, now seven weeks old, when she posted a Facebook event calling for a march on Washington during inauguration weekend. Nine weeks later, she’s one of four national co-chairs at the heart of the Women’s March on Washington — where she’ll march with her infant, her six-year-old daughter, and her 74-year-old mother. “We’re activating people who were previously content with sitting behind their computer and posting on Facebook,” she said.
For Carmen Perez, executive director of Harry Belafonte’s Gathering for Justice and one of the four national co-chairs of the Women’s March on Washington, work permeates everything else: “There’s no real life outside of activism,” she said. Just over two decades ago, Perez’s elder sister was killed — the anniversary of her burial coincides with the march, and with Perez’s birthday — and navigating the justice system motivated her to work with incarcerated young men and women, first as a probation officer and then with The Gathering, operating on the intersection of race, criminal justice, and immigration. “Oftentimes, when I’m in spaces, I am the only Latina and I have to speak a little louder for my community to be part of the conversation,” she said. “The work that I do around racial justice, it’s not just about Latino rights. It’s also about human rights.”
Californian ShiShi Rose, 27, moved to New York a year ago to develop her activism and writing. She previously worked at a local rape crisis center and assisted in educating therapists and counselors before turning her focus more squarely towards race, first via her Instagram account and then through public speaking engagements and writing. As part of the national committee for the Women’s March on Washington, Rose runs the group’s social media channels, from Instagram (where she has a substantial following) to Facebook. “Women encompass everything,” Rose said. “If you can fight for women’s rights, you can fight for rights across the board.”
A law student-turned-actress-turned-activist, Sarah Sophie Flicker was born in Copenhagen, the great-granddaughter of a Danish prime minister who has been credited with bringing democratic socialism to Denmark. She grew up in California before moving to New York to found the political cabaret Citizens Band, eventually joining the production company Art Not War. “Once you start breaking it all down, you realize the most vulnerable people in any community tend to be women,” she said. “All our issues intersect, and something that may affect me as a white woman will doubly affect a black woman or a Latina woman or an indigenous woman. So when we talk about a women’s movement, we need to be talking about all women.”
Vanessa Wruble, a member of the national organizing committee, is the uber-connector of the Women’s March on Washington. She’s also the founder and editor of OkayAfrica, a site connecting culture news from continental Africa with an international audience. It was Wruble who first messaged Bland on Facebook to connect her with the women who would eventually become her co-chairs: “She said, Hey, you know, you need to center women of color in the leadership of this so it can be truly inclusive,’” Bland recalled. Within a day, they were meeting for coffee; now, they’re marching together in one of the largest demonstrations in support of a vast array of causes in United States history.
Paola Mendoza, artistic director of the Women’s March on Washington, is a Colombian-American director and writer whose work has focused on immigrant experiences, particularly those of Latina women. “Women have never convened this way in our lifetime,” Mendoza said of the march, “and it’s being led for the first time ever by women of color.”
Janaye Ingram, who Michelle Obama once described as an “impressive leader,” is Head of Logistics for the March, in addition to being a consultant for issues like civil, voting, and women’s rights in Washington D.C.
Cassady Fendlay, communications director for the Women’s March on Washington, is a writer and communications strategist whose clients include The Gathering for Justice — the organization helmed by Women’s March national co-chair Carmen Perez. As the spokeswoman for the march, Fendlay is tasked with acting as its mouthpiece, ensuring its message is accurate, unified, and coherent.
In addition to being a producer of the march, Ginny Suss is the Vice President of Okayplayer.com and the President and co-founder of OkayAfrica — she does video production for both. Her background in the music industry runs deep, and she’s worked closely with The Roots for the past 13 years, serving as their Tour Manager for some time. She’s also produced large outdoor events like The Roots Picnic, Summerstage, Lincoln Center Out Of Doors, and Celebrate Brooklyn — vital experience for organizing a march of this size.
Last year, Nantasha Williams ran for the New York State Assembly as a representative of the 33rd district — which encompasses a region just east of Jamaica, Queens. Though she lost to Democrat Clyde Vanel, she’s putting her organizing skills to good use in the aftermath of the election, working on the logistics team for the march and assisting national co-chair Tamika Mallory.
When Alyssa Klein isn’t managing the various social media accounts for the Women’s March, she’s writer and Senior Editor at OkayAfrica, the largest online destination for New African music, culture, fashion, art, and politics. Based in both New York City and Johannesburg, Klein’s passion is movies and television, and has made it her profession to highlight creatives of color in both industries. Juggling social media is no easy side project, however. The Women’s March has approximately 80,000 followers on Instagram and Twitter, plus a over 200,000 on Facebook.
Shirley Marie Johnson is the March’s head administrator for Tennessee, as well as an author, poet, and singer. Primarily, though, she’s an activist and advocate for those who are victim to domestic violence, a cause that’s not only her focus at the March, but in her day-to-day life through her group Exodus, Inc., which aids those affected by rape, human trafficking, and other abuse.
Born in Shanghai, Ting Ting Cheng studied human rights at the University of Cape Town — and became an award-winning Fulbright scholar to South Africa — before heading to New York, where she’s now a criminal defense attorney at the Brooklyn Defender Services. All that’s no doubt come in handy for her role as Legal Director of the March.
Heidi Solomon is one of the three co-organizers for the Pennsylvania chapter of the Women’s March. Although she doesn’t have a long background in activism, Trump’s election moved her to take action, and she’s helped rally approximately 6,000 people from her home state.
Deborah Harris is a grassroots organizer and feminist self-help author who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, and served as a community activist for 10 years in the fields of fashion, healthcare, at risk youth, and supportive women’s relations.
As Illinois’ state representative for the Women’s March, Mrinalini Chakraborty has taken the lead in coordinating the Chicago-area charge, organizing bus rides for well over a thousand women and other supporters. She’s also on the National Committee and is a coordinator for all 50 states coming to D.C.. And that’s in addition to her day job: She’s a graduate teaching and research assistant at the University of Illinois at Chicago for anthropology, not to mention a student and a dedicated food blogger.
After earning her Ph.D in psychology, Dr. Deborah Johnson is now studying social work at the University of Oklahoma in Tulsa — and making sure she stands up for both her and her daughter’s rights at the March, which she’s helping lead the way to for other Oklahomans.
Renee Singletary is an organizer, mother of two, wife of one, marketing consultant, and certified herbalist living and working in Charleston, South Carolina.
A yoga instructor, theater graduate, and local organizer, South Carolina native Evvie Harmon has brought her skills and energy to the march as its global co-coordinator alongside Breanne Butler. Together, they facilitate partner marches and local organizers around the world, bringing the whole thing into synergy.
These Women Are About to Make History as the Organizers of the Women’s March on Washington
These Women Are About to Make History as the Organizers of the Women’s March on Washington
