Long before President-elect Barack Obama was declared the winner of the presidential election in November, Beeline Transportation’s event coordinator Dwayne Evans was thinking about Inauguration Day.
‘We were sitting around after Obama came back from Germany, and we thought ‘wow, if he won the election, there’d be a lot of interest in actually going to D.C.,” Evans said. ‘We booked the hotel rooms right then and there.’
Since that day in July, Evans said tickets for the trip have not sold as quickly as he expected. About half of the hotel rooms he booked were left vacant in the middle of January, but he was still excited.
‘This is history. Nothing like this has happened in my lifetime,’ Evans said. ‘I grew up listening to my mother talk about the civil rights greats, and now, we have the chance to witness history in the making ourselves.’
While some people said they plan to make the trip to D.C. to see the inauguration in person, many of them said they would celebrate here in Boston.
Members of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jamaica Plain will ‘sing in’ the inauguration to celebrate Obama’s presidency and the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday, which was on Monday.
‘We’re uniformly delighted about the election, and we’re excited it’s occurring so closely to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday,’Reverend Anne Fowler of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jamaica Plain said.
Obama’s inauguration is important to the church because it will be a ‘prophetic moment’ in American history not only because the country elected its first black president, but also because Obama embodies progressive Christian values, Fowler said.
To Fowler, progressives are people who are ‘concerned about poverty, the environment, inter-faith relations and open minded discourse.’
‘He’s making a statement that all Christians aren’t on the Christian right [wing],’ Fowler said.
Fowler and her church have been particularly active in the fight for gay marriage and equality. Obama’s inauguration team declared a National Day of Service on Martin Luther King Jr. Day as one of many events planned for the inauguration weekend.
As such, Vice President-elect Joseph Biden and his family are not the only people joining the Obama family to encourage community service. North Shore Labor Council President Jeff Crosby is planning Party with a Purpose, which will include food, music and presentations from labor and service groups to encourage attendees to participate in community service.
To be admitted to the party, attendees are encouraged to sign up for a community service activity, according to the NSLC website.
‘Our commitment is to service and organizing,’ Crosby said. ‘Senator Obama, having come from a community organizing background, would appreciate it.’
Crosby said he expected a variety of people to attend the community service celebrations.
‘This is a day of hope for us, but for hope to be effective, it requires work and commitment,’ he said.
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