Yesterday in Washington Square Park was a rally for Barack Obama. I got a ticket the day before from Maz, who received it from a woman handing them out near the Astor Street subway station. When I arrived at the park at 3:30 (gates opened at 5:00 so I figured I would arrive plenty early), I was put into a line with people who had white tickets or no tickets (I had a white ticket). On another side of the park was a line for people with blue tickets or internet tickets. There were also people with green tickets but I have no idea where their line was.
I stood in line outside the park on the sidewalk for about 1 1/2 hours. At 5 they started letting people in and this is when it became chaotic and completely unorganized. Volunteers were supposed to be directing people, but many of them didn’t seem to know where people with the different ticket colors were supposed to go once they actually entered the park. Eventually I ended up in a massive mob-like line where everyone else (ticket or any color or no ticket at all) ended up. This seemed to be the place where all the lines from the outside of the park were merged so people could go through security. So there I was with 20,000 people all trying to get through one of 4 metal detectors…
This mob-line moved about 2 or 3 steps forward every 20 minutes or so. Some people were getting out of the mob and going over the fenced off grass areas to try to get in faster. At about 6:30 some people started to chant “Let us in, let us in”. Around 6:45 the entire crowd started to move forward quickly. Apparently someone made the decision to just let people in without the metal detectors.
So the speech itself…. (more…)