Obama Was Here!

Today was a big day in Baltimore's history: Obama passed through the city on his train "Whistle Stop Tour" to Washington DC for the inauguration on Jan 20. Maybe this was not one of the greatest days Balto has ever seen (I don't know enough of its history yet), but definitely a major thing.



Obama obviously copied a travel that before him another president-elect had undertaken - Abraham Lincoln, commonly seen as one of the greatest presidents of the U.S., and who guided the country through one of its greatest challenges, the Civil War. Obama alluded to great difficulties ahead as well, talking of the economy in blood-sweat-and-tears terms.





He obviously drew a huge crowd (Maryland having been one of his staunchest supporters in the elections), the anticipation of which had driven mayor Sheila Dixon (a black woman, in a city of around 2/3 blacks) to instate road closures across a large part of downtown. Instead of opening the streets up to people completely, they were instead partitioned into go- and no-go-streets, and then in turn cascaded into a kind of gigantic rat maze that the visitors had to pass through, circumnavigating the same blocks over and over from different sides, completely uselessly and annoyingly. Obama's speech (as well as MLK III's and the (probably) governor's before) were transmitted on big screens across downtown.