75,000??? What say we stop inflating protest counts...

One of 75000? Or one of 16000? And it does matter.

I count marches. I’ve been doing it for some decades. There are others here in NYC who do it as well, and we collaborate to sharpen our methodology and compare our results.
 

At Saturday’s Climate Crisis march in Manhattan, I set myself up on an elevation at around the halfway point on the route, and a full block ahead of the front contingent. After the end trickled past me one hour and 42 minutes later, I had counted 16,000 marchers. Another counter contacted me later and said they had it at 14,500. Neither of us could count how many people left the march before the line went past us, nor how many had gone straight to the rally point near the UN so that could conceivably bump the number as high as 20,000.

BUT…

A currently recommended diary here stated that 75,000 people took part, using the word Estimates in the headline. To which I can only reply, “Sez who?” I saw that number elsewhere, citing unnamed “march organizers.”
 

You might well ask “Who cares?” Well, for one thing, throwing around overinflated and unverified numbers is a feature of the MAGAsphere and its inhabitants and should be left to them. The crowdcounting crew tries to live up to the directive laid down by African revolutionary Amilcar Cabral: "Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories."
 

[I kept  this short and will try to be available for questions and controversion this evening.]