Get On The Bus: T.O. Supports Obama Trip

January 20th, 2009

Yesterday, three busloads of young Canadians departed Toronto at 9am and headed to Washington D.C. for the historic Presidential Inauguration as part of the “Get On The Bus: T.O. Supports Obama” trip. It was supposed to be a 10 hour ride, but two of the buses got held up at U.S. customs for an astonishing seven hours. Among them is Tyrone “T-Rexxx” Edwards, a MuchNews Inauguration Correspondent, and Gavin Sheppard, co-founder of the Remix Project, who sent along this report via Blackberry from the road.

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Hour 4 of waiting at customs. Our “problem” is that we seem to have some people of possible interest on board.

These consist of; a set of Canadian born and raised sisters aged 16 and 20 years old have to be fingerprinted, photographed and questioned. There has been no reason given for this. Their last names are Mohammed. Naturally. A young youth leader from Toronto who was born in Saudi Arabia (though has been a Canadian since early childhood and travles to the USA regularly). And ironically, our fearless leader Tyrone Edwards (we suspect because he was sitting with the young man of Somali/Saudi origin and has himself grown a long beard over the last couple of months).

During the questioning, fingerprinting and photographing, the official says to one of our young companions: “I don’t see why a bunch of Canadians want to go to this thing in the first place.” To which our friend answered: “Well, as a young black man, it’s pretty inspiring to me and I want to be there.” To which the guard replies: “It’s not that big a deal. It’s not like I would come to one of YOUR ceremonies.”

Just over 5 hours at the time of this writing we are still waiting for Tyrone to get fingerprinted, photographed and questioned.

The mood on the bus has been patient, tolerant and fairly upbeat. People’s nerves are starting to fray though. With about 95% of the bus consisting of young black men and women the obvious stereotypes are being felt and the almost casual underlying racism of a major institution is being brought to the surface.

Some people are taking the attitude that “no matter what happens today, tomorrow a black man takes office so it’s all good.” Some are taking the attitude of “See, nothing changes”. Most are just tired, hungry, in need of a public restroom and frustrated.

Every hour or so they say they will have us moving in 10 to 15 minutes. This is obviously not the case. To even a casual observer, this is ridiculous.

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Tune in to MuchOnDemand today at 5pm ET to hear T-Rexxx’s live inauguration report and to find out how their journey has developed!

Posted on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 10:52 am by Celine and is filed under Headlines & Current Events.