The nation’s capital has been secured with checkpoints, tens of thousands of National Guard troops and miles of fencing and barricades, security at the cost of normalcy.
Chuck Weathers was waiting Monday morning on a bus in Columbia Heights, a residential neighborhood of shops and quaint homes about four miles north of the Capitol. It was cold, the bus was nowhere in sight and Mr. Weathers was annoyed. “We didn’t do a damn thing,” he said, referring to the people of Washington. “But now it’s our problem.” The problem he was confronting was the simple act of moving around the nation’s capital, which seemed to be getting increasingly difficult as the city shored itself up against potential violence for the inauguration on Wednesday of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. Thousands of troops have poured into the capital, where armored military trucks are parked in the middle of streets to block traffic and subway stations and roads are closed. Downtown Washington is locked down, boarded up and on guard for the ushering in of the new leader in hopes of preventing a scene like the one that played out to the nation’s horror on Jan.6 as a mob stormed the Capitol. The tight security has left Washington anxious, as rumors spread about threats of attacks by domestic terrorists looking to upset the transfer of power from President Trump to Mr. Biden. At one point on Monday, an inauguration rehearsal was postponed and the Capitol was put on a brief lockdown for what turned out to be a fire in a nearby homeless encampment. All of this turmoil has picked away at wounds not close to being healed over from a summer of racial justice protests and the damage done by some in the crowds. Mr. Weathers,56, had planned to spend the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday with a few friends. But they lived on the other side of the city. “The Metro trains are all screwed up,” he said. “I don’t know when a bus is coming.” What’s worse, Mr. Weathers, who works in a restaurant downtown, had no idea how he was going to get to work Tuesday. “I guess I’ll have to walk,” he said, adding a string of expletives about the protesters who attacked the Capitol.
