UPDATE #2: New video located that shows not only the HUGE crowd on Constitution Avenue (not even at the starting point, yet), but also a snippet of a Kos bandana being worn by MSOC's husband/photographer, as he crosses in front of the AP cameraman trying to capture Cindy Sheehan and Jesse Jackson. See it
Here
UPDATE: Several new images found showing the crowd at the beginning of the march, taken by a wingnut infiltrator, I mean infilTRAITOR:
Honestly - how can anyone really know how many people showed up? I'm sure with some mathematical models and good fly-over pictures, one could extrapolate by taking measurements of one block on a grid, then multiplying by the number of equally populated grids. I believe that's how it has been done in the past.
Following the fold is my first-hand observational analysis and some wild-eyed speculation about the "official" count in the press...
Yeah, I was there. As if I hadn't pimped my diary enough! (Which BTW, you can read
here.)
From my vantage point, having trudged over to the Ellipse from the Federal Triangle Metro station around noon, there were a ShitLoad (official statistician's term) of bodies gathering.
Now, as one of the many protesters queued up at the intersection of Constitution and 15th, there's no way we could possibly see how many people were there from our vantage point. But my gut was telling me this was much bigger than the 100,000 expected and eventually reported by the media.
But where did that figure come from and why is it the number not only used BEFORE the protest, but, more importantly, used by virtually every media outlet as the "official" count?
Let's look at one source, DC Police Chief Ramsey, as quoted in the WaPo and excerpted in several diaries here at Daily Kos:
The rally stretched through the day and into the night, a marathon of music, speechmaking and dissent on the National Mall. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, noting that organizers had hoped to draw 100,000 people, said, "I think they probably hit that."
And, this:
[Ramsey]...when asked whether the protest drew at least 150,000 people, said, "That's as good a guess as any."
So, what is he saying? That the total most likely was 100,000, but that an estimate of 150,000 isn't something he's comfortable underwriting? Well, if you look at what he said, you could just as easily interpret his non-answer as indicating that the number was higher - much higher.
And THAT'S what I believe. My gut (briefly mentioned above) feels that there were at LEAST 300,000 people there at the start of the parade. I wasn't in a position to see how many more streamed in over the next several hours, so the number must have been much higher still.
Some basic calculations from an admittedly math-deficient Kossack - yours truly:
I understand that the parade route was roughly 2 miles, or, 10,560 feet. (It sure felt like much more at the end of the day!) Let's assume that the average linear density across 15th street is 40 people. Now multiply that by 2 miles to get a figure for the number of people who were queued up and completed the march in 3 hours. By my math, that's 422,400 "first wave" marchers. Now, add 50%, assuming that new arrivals kept marching for another 3 hours at a density of half the original flow. That's another 211,200 people.
Folks, that makes the total, using my less-than-scientific means, a whopping 633,600 protesters!!
But why, oh WHY did the media keep going back to the figure of 100,000? Because that's all Chief Ramsey would commit to? Maybe.
Here's another possibility: March organizers ANSWER and United for Peace and Justice pulled permits for an EXPECTED 100,000. This was a figure quoted by ABC News only a few days before the protest.
Is Ramsey playing it safe by only confirming that figure, or is he playing games for unknown gain?
It stands to reason that the RWCM would try to downplay the number (in addition to engaging in smear tactics, innuendo, and seeding liberal discontent here via trolls). Just what stake does the media have in sticking to that number?
My guess is that it is pure laziness: "Oh, look. The Post has confirmed a number of 100,000 and that comes directly from DC's Chief of Police, so it's official. Let's call it a day and head to happy hour!"
But not all the media outlets were going with that figure, at least not before the Post put their article up for public consumption on the web and ultimately on the stand and in driveways.
As I've learned from the many diaries and comments here, C-SPAN had estimated 500,000 and CNN had reported 600,000. HEY, wait a minute!! That sounds pretty close to my calculation!
For your amusement (or to get your blood boiling), here are excerpts from a Washington Times Op-Ed by Editor-in-Chief Wesley Pruden from 2 days ago, found while researching this diary:
Saturday's rage at George W. seemed real enough, but the march against the Iraq war, like a march against the war in Vietnam, is the social life for a lot of frustrated folk who are excessively angry and terminally grateful for a reason to be permanently estranged from the land of the pleased and the home of the saved. They can never forgive America for bestowing on them an abundance of the good life.
The young reporters tried to recapture the sordid intoxication of the '60s they never knew, pumping empty drama into their coverage of a demonstration that was to the real thing what the Little League World Series is to the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 at Yankee Stadium. The cops have learned better than to get into arguments with march organizers over crowd estimates -- to be fair, 5,000 can look like 500,000 to the untrained eye -- and the fiction of "more than 100,000" became conventional wisdom overnight.
The usual suspects stirred what there was of the crowd, whatever its size. It was considerably less than 100,000 even counting the dogs and their fleas. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a half-step slower and puffier than he used to be but still the equal of Arianna Huffington at bumping others out of the way when a television-network camera crew looms on the horizon, was there to make his usual rhymes without reason.
The homemade posters seemed stripped of imagination: "Bush lies." And "Bush liar." And "Lies by Bush." None of these had the imagination or resonance (but all of the derivative hatefulness) of "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many babies did you kill today."
What a tool! And the Times' readership of - now, let's play their same game - maybe 7,000 will actually believe him!
I wonder what his take on this AP story about Sunday's counter-protest is going to be:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Support for U.S. troops fighting abroad mixed with anger toward anti-war demonstrators at home as hundreds of people, far fewer than organizers had expected, rallied Sunday on the National Mall just a day after tens of thousands protested against the war in Iraq.
...
About 400 people gathered near a stage on an eastern segment of the mall, a large patchwork American flag serving as a backdrop.
Here are the few aerial shots of the protest I've seen over the last few days, just to give you an idea of how friggin crowded it really was. Anyone who can find comparable shots of earlier protests in the same area, please link them in the comments.
Here's the full uncropped version I found two days after posting this diary:
P.S. - I still owe y'all Parts 2 and 3 of my protest diary. I'll get to it shortly, but this business about the true count of protesters has been gnawing at me.