WASHINGTON - About one million people braved the 31 degree weather and crushing crowds to see the inauguration of Barack Obama, America's first black president.
They flocked to the National Mall in droves as early as 5 a.m., waving banners and flags, contending for a front-row seat to watch a pivotal moment in American history.
Mothers bundled up their babies and carried them down the street and men marched together in groups chanting, "Obama, time has come. Obama, time has come."
People spent days in advance searching for spare tickets to the swearing-in ceremony and parade outside of the Gallery Place-Chinatown subway station.
There were 5,000 tickets available for bleacher seats at the parade. They cost $25 and sold out in 15 minutes.
Tickets to the swearing-in ceremony were free, but they could only be obtained through state congressmen or through the Democratic Party to Obama campaign volunteers.
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UNM graduate Kelly Seibert was one of 240,000 people to receive a ticket to the swearing-in ceremony.
Seibert, a former member of College Democrats of New Mexico, spent her final semester at UNM working as the campus coordinator for Tom Udall's senatorial campaign. She managed a group of Udall's interns, committed to six-hour-per-day voter registration shifts and was a volunteer for one of Obama's fundraisers.
Seibert said she had previously worked in D.C. as an intern for Udall when he was a congressman and took a full-time position working as one of his staff assistants in Washington after he won his senatorial campaign.
"Honestly, I went to D.C. thinking that I would do my internship, realize that I never wanted to come back and be able to kind of check that off my list, but obviously things have changed," Seibert said. "It is really an amazing opportunity to be here at this time in history and to be a part of history books."
Student Alexis Hassley said she decided to pack her bags and head to Washington after she received an offer to participate in the Presidential Youth Inaugural Conference.
She said the conference is designed to engage students in discussions of political issues the administration will have to deal with and the historical aspect of inaugurating the first black president.
Hassley said she is pleased to have played a part in helping Obama win the presidency. She wore an Obama shirt to the on-campus early voting location and voted for the president even though she is a registered Republican.
Student Suzia Von Swol said she pushed back her graduation date to December 2009 in order to make room for an internship that allows her to work as a broadcast journalist in Washington during the inauguration and through the first four months of the year.
She said the first week of the internship has been intense and challenging.
"For me (the internship) is really going to make or break if I want a career in journalism because everything is so high-paced and everything here is so politically driven," Von Swol said. "It's really the best way to get hands-on experience and figure out if this is really something I want to do as a career. And there's no room for error. When our director was talking to us today, she said, 'You guys are going to sink or swim.'"
Von Swol said she was given special clearance to the Capitol so that she could interview members of the senate and congress. Security has been so tight during the inauguration that access to all of the city's major facilities is limited, she said.
"There's police on every corner right now, and when you go to the Capitol, there's snipers on top of it," Von Swol said. "To get into the Capitol, we had to leave all our purses and everything behind. The only thing we took with us was our ID and our badge. They're very strict on everything, and for transfer from the Capitol to other buildings, they had an underground subway that we got to ride, but you have to have a badge to get into that, as well."
After the inauguration, people pushed and shoved one another as they fought for breathing space. The size of the crowd was crippling and sparked panic in the tunnels of the subway systems. People argued and cried as they congested every street looking for an escape from the melee - all in exchange for a chance to watch the first black president take the Oath of Office.
Seibert said Obama's inauguration not only signifies a change in the country's morale but also a change in the way that Americans perceive presidential candidates from now on.
"You could tell during the campaign that our generation didn't really look at him as the first African-American president," she said. "We kind of looked at him as a very inspirational leader, and obviously it is also very inspirational that he is going to be the first African-American president. It inspires a lot of minorities to think that it is possible for them to do anything that they want to do and . hopefully it will make it so that in the future people will be able to focus more on what a candidate for the presidency is saying instead of what they look like or who they are."
