Real Estate Investor · Harrisburg, PA · Member since 2008 · 716 posts · 41 votes
Various reports are reporting various sizes of the crowd for the 12 Sep 09 March on Washington DC. I have read/heard anywhere between 1 Million to 2.3 Million.
That is a HUGE range. However, this is what we do know.
This makes it the biggest MARCH or PROTEST in DC, ever. Yes, the President's swearing in was 1.2 Million, so the 9/12 march was either bigger or smaller than that, depending on which report you read.
Some other well-known marches:
Vietnam War protest: 250,000
'Million Man March": 150,000
My family and I to Memorials: 5
Don't believe everything you read on the Internet. Do some research...
The actual numbers are much closer to 60,000-70,000 people...
The bigger numbers have been circulating ever since Matt Kibbe (from FreedomWorks, the organizer of the event) announced at the rally that ABC News had reported numbers between 1M and 1.5M people.
This was a lie. ABC News never reported those numbers; ABCNews.com did report this though:
Not surprising that the organizers of the event would lie about the numbers, but he should be more careful about quoting a source, when that source puts your numbers at about 5% of what you're claiming... :)
Of course, then there are the pictures of the Washington Mall being overrun with protesters.
Such as this one that's been circulating the Internet blogs:
Unfortunately, this isn't really a picture taken from the rally. This picture was taken from sometime before 2004 (at some other event), as evidenced by the fact that a very large museum building (the Museum Visitors Center) is missing from the upper right-hand portion of the picture. It was built about 5 years ago.
And, most blatantly and disturbing, Michelle Malkin has been spreading pictures that can't possibly be real:
I SAW THE LIVE FEED on Saturday - are you saying that the live TV footage was also fake?. The mall was completely filled and overflowing - that is over 1 mile from the White House to the Lincoln Memorial FILLED with PEOPLE.
60k? at least you gave me a good laugh.
Let me reset the parameters for you, AGAIN. It is somewhere between 1 MILLION and 2.3 MILLION.
There is no "official number," as they didn't sell tickets or have someone counting...
Originally posted by Christian Malesic:
Let me reset the parameters for you, AGAIN. It is somewhere between 1 MILLION and 2.3 MILLION.
Let's see, even Michelle Malkin has retracted her assertion that there were 2 million people, so unless you think a highly conservative blogger who has been propagating exaggerations about attendance is now under-reporting the turn-out, then it's safe to say it was well below 2 million.
According to Rick Moran, who works for the organizer (FreedomWorks), attempts to "meter" the protesters put the number at "over 450,000." So, even the organizers are agreeing it's a good bit less than 1 million.
As far as I know, every non-partisan journalistic organization is reporting the attendance was between 60,000 and 700,000...
So, if you really want to argue that there was over 1 million people, you'll be arguing with the organizers of the rally and with the leading conservative journalists who are making claims.
Perhaps you just need to "reset the parameters" for them...