Latest Update: Glenn Beck appeared on Greta Wire tonight and said the latest attendance count they got (from a flyover helicopter scan) was 1.7 million
Leaders of Saturday's 912 Project rally in the Nation's Capital are dismissing estimates that the crowd numbered only "tens of thousands" as "intentional misrepresentations."
Crowd estimates of the event varied widely. ABC News reported that the crowd numbered 1.5 million and then were pressured by the powers that be to change their estimates to between 60,000 to 70,000. The Associated Press reported it was in the "tens of thousands," a figure echoed Monday morning on MSNBC. Both of these estimates are ‘ridiculously low’, according to rally organizers.
The London Daily Mail reported "as many as" 1 million people attended. The Daily Mail reported that the crowd "shocked the White House." But if so, that was not reflected by the administration's official statements. Instead , White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs issued the insulting report that he “I don't know who the group is when asked about his reaction to the demonstration. In fact, the administration's remarks before the event appeared to echo statements made prior to the July 4 Tea Party protests, suggesting the event wasn't even a blip on President Obama's radar… HMMM guess that is why the President decided to get out of town on that particular day and why a memo was intercepted from Congress that the Dems wanted to show the event as a failure?!? ABC initially reported 1.5 million in attendance and then retracted. And the highest estimate was 2 million.
Bill Line, communications officer for the national capital region for the U.S. national park service, told Newsmax that ‘no official’ estimate of the crowd's size had been issued; a bit strange don’t you think? "For any event national mall or in any of the various related parks adjacent to it, we do not give crowd estimates," Line said. HMMM… I don’t quite remember that being the case for the Million Man even for Promise keepers, President Obama’s Inauguration and others!
More than 20 different conservative grassroots organizations – including the 912 Project, FreedomWorks, Tea Party Patriots, and Grassfire.org – participated in the rally. And you know that the White House and Congress know who Armey Archer/FreedomWorks is… Mr. Gibbs!!
Demonstrators chanted "Enough! Enough!" Others waved signs with messages such as "Go Green, Recycle Congress," and "I'm Not Your ATM" and "Just Say No to Chicago-Style Politics."
Everett Wilkinson, a national leader for the Tea Party Patriots group, says the crowd size caught the park police by surprise – so much so they ordered the event to begin several hours earlier than planned to maintain crowd control.
"I showed up a little before 8:30 a.m. at Freedom Plaza, where we were staging for the event," Wilkinson told David A. Patton of Newsmax. "I was there about a half hour early and it was hard to get to the stage at that time. Around 9:20 or so, I was on stage and the park police came up and said, 'If it keeps growing at this rate we're going to have to ask you guys to start early.' "About 20 minutes or so later they came up, a little before 10, and said, 'You need to start the march NOW!' It was about an hour and half or so before we had expected to begin. We had overwhelmed the area. From what I understand, we had a couple hundred thousand minimum at that time."
From Freedom Plaza the crowd marched down Pennsylvania Avenue for hours toward the Capitol.
Videos on YouTube show an overflow crowd on the Mall stretching from the Capitol back toward the Washington Monument.
A USAToday report during the Inauguration demonstrated that such an area could easily contain over one million persons, perhaps even up to two million, but accurately estimating the size of any crowd can be problematic. That's because the number of attendees depends on crowd density. Estimates of density often require expert analysis of aerial photographs.
Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests the actual attendance may have been far larger than reported by several media outlets.
"Looking out from the stage," Wilkinson says, "people appeared to be lined up all the way to the Washington Monument. I could tell the crowd kept growing until at least two or three o'clock…. It was shoulder-to-shoulder people, and there was nowhere to move…"
Wilkinson wouldn't rule out the possibility that up to 2 million attended the rally. As for media reports that the number was far less, Wilkinson says: "I think it's intentional misrepresentation. The most novice and naked eye could see the video in the shots taken that there were hundreds of thousands, millions of people there.
"When you have the park police and the D.C. police literally telling us to march two hours before hand, from an area that holds a couple hundred thousand people, saying, 'There's no room, you need to march NOW' … we had tens of thousands probably by 9:30. It was millions by 1 o'clock.
"We literally shut down the highways, the red line rail station had to change things around," he adds. "Looking at the videos posted on YouTube, you can tell it was millions. We completed surrounded the Capitol."
The mainstream media also overlooked the many regional rallies held throughout the country on Saturday to show support for the D.C. event.
The Salt Lake Tribune reported that over 1,500 people gathered Saturday for a rally on the lawn of the Utah state capitol. Similarly, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that over 1,000 people braved heavy rain to march in that city's downtown area, chanting "You lie!" and "No more czars!" And there were many other rallies (many in bad weather) all over the country… California, Minnesota, Indiana, etc etc.
Monday, September 14, 2009 1:09 PM
By: David A. Patten
© 2009 Newsmax
Contributor from Reason.com
Here's one way to think about it: Those who estimated 60,000 to 70,000 would have us believe that if a capacity crowd from the Orange Bowl would fill the yellow areas shown here.
He supplies this schematic, which suggests ‘far more’ than the 75,000 estimate floating out there:
Other attempts at estimating the crowd size include Rand Simberg's two calculations that are very interesting and yield ranges from around 250,000 to 2 million Hat tip: Mark Hemingway at The Corner.
And there's this Pajamas Media analysis, which yields an estimate of 850,000, the same number apparently that actually showed up for Obama's inauguration (after initial reports of 2 million). Funny who we didn’t get any question of that number or the accurate re-estimate?!? Having been in DC for both the 9/12 march and Obama's swearing-in, there's no question the latter event was much, much more populated… just more Obamaland spin!
Amazingly the liberal New York Times wrote a very fair coverage piece on the 9/12 March on Washington. The Problem was they buried it on pager 37. Kudos to the L.A. Times who ran their story in Sunday’s paper on page 1.
And about the Liberal Democratic “Angry Mob” thing… Official stats: “0” Zero arrests!
Posted: Knowledge Creates Power- Cross Posted: Daily Thought Pad
Related Resources:
- Yes the Picture Is Real
- Celebrating the 9/12 rallies; Turnout estimated at 2 million; Update: How many?; FreedomWorks in error
- Tea Party Express – 9/12 March On Washington Update… Updated
- Tea Party Express Hits Washington for the 9/12 March on D.C. – Obama Skips Town As Dems Plan to Claim Event is a Failure~
- 9/12 Revolution Has Begun
- Some Blacks Now Have Doubts About Obama – Star Parker
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