Jackson invited the public to attend the White House ball celebrating his inauguration. The crowd overwhelmed and began to damage the building, and the crush was only relieved when assistants poured punch in tubs outside to lure out the celebrants.
When I was in Louisville after Christmas I heard reports of preparations for Obama's inauguration. One shocking little detail was that only a few thousand port-a-potties were being brought in. This would result in lines to use them being of the order of 20 hours long.
I hope the planners are starting to think about the significance of the inauguration. There will be a lot of people coming to see, even from a distance; just to be able to say they were there. There's going to have to be extremely aggressive crowd control, with traffic closed through the city and multiple TV venues. Take the estimates of the largest crowd to date and triple it, and assume that huge numbers of the city folks will show up as well. It'll be faster to walk into town than take public transportation--there are just not enough seats available.
We'll need lots of large TV's, lots of port-a-johns, lots of benches for the infirm, lots of food and water, lots of nurses, and as many policemen as you can bring from all over the nation--plus National Guard to bulk it up a bit. Get every church group you can find to set up food/soft-drink stands, with maybe some music. It's going to last a long time.
Think about it: About 1 to 2% of the population are criminals. If you have a crowd of 3 million people, that's between 30,000 and 60,000 serious troublemakers. And if you don't manage the crowding and provide the simple services, even usually law-abiding citizens can get caught up in a crowd spirit and trash the place.
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