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The Tea Party Protest crowd estimates vary. AP Photo David Becker
Since the 9/12 Tea Party Protest, controversy has erupted over the size of the crowd at the event. Some conservatives have argued the event was a tremendous success with over a million in attendance while liberals argue attendance was disappointing with merely tens of thousands.
In reality the only unbiased source (Washington D.C. Fire Department) we have so far has said the number was about 60,000-70,000 which is much more in line with the liberal claim of "tens of thousands" as opposed to the excess of a million hyped by conservatives.
Fox News joined in on the fray today trying to distort the crowd size and portray the protests as a success. As shown in the clip below one Fox News "analyst" claims that she "knows there was 400,000 people in attendance." So we are asked to accept the lay person opinion of a Fox News host over the Washington D.C. Fire Department who make it their business to estimate crowd size multiple times a year. I would ask this "analyst" how she in fact came up with her 400,000 number. Did she individually count all 400,000 protesters making sure not to count anyone twice? Did she use aerial photos with mathematical formulas while also making sure to exclude any pro-reform protesters who were countering the Tea Party protest? The truth is that this "analyst" is just making up a number in between the disappointing reality of 70,000 and the false hype of 1.5 million in an attempt to sound reasonable. For my part I will stick with Washington D.C Fire Department on this one.
Comments
Yawn, could get any more boring!
@ Ryan:
You stick with who you want to sick with and that's fine, but don't go putting it out there as FACT.
Me... I'll stick with the actual PICTURES of the event, and use the CROWD ESTIMATION MAP put out by the National Park Service for the Obama inauguration.
Pictures (and some commentary with Updates)
michellemalkin.com/2009/09/12/yes-the-picture-is-real-nutroots/
michellemalkin.com/2009/09/12/celebrating-the-912-rallies/
www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/09/912_demonstration_a_record_dc.html
rhetorican.com/2009/09/12/time-lapse-aerial-video-of-912-protestors/
Crowd Estimation map:
www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-19-crowd_N.htm
Based on WHAT I CAN SEE IN THE PICTURE... and going by the map used for Obama's inauguration, the crowd SEEMS to be between the 500,000 and 800,000 mark at the time of the photo. This doesn't account for the folks who came, stayed for a couple of hours and then left. It could EASILY have been almost a million.
Doc
Those numbers include the approximately 500,000 people attending the annual Black Family Reunion on the National Mall, Doc?
Big organizers were promising 450 tour buses coming in as part of the demonstration. Assuming 60 pax per bus, which is likely a little high, that's 27,000 as a starting point.
Looking at photos from AP and others, I'd be surprised if it exceeded 100,000.
Doc Navy - Why would you go with an estimate chart in USA Today instead of the actual DC Fire Department estimate of the rally in question? They put it at 50-60 thousand. Definitely respectable numbers, but hardly monumental.
abcnews.go.com/Politics/tea-party-protesters-march-washington/story?id=8557120
From what I've read, the National Black Family Reunion occured ~after~ the 9/12 protest. Also, from looking at past attendance numbers of the NCNW-BFU there is NO WAY the family reunion types helped the crowd by much.
On top of that, when I read the blogs of those who attended the Family Reunion, they claim that there was ABSOLUTELY zero mixng of the crowds. (Of course they cast it as racial and hypocritical on the part of the Tea Partiers)
Finally, doing a location check of where the Family Reunion was located, vice the Tea Party Demonstration, (Via google earth and maps) I find that depending on who you listen to, the Family Reunion was located between 7th-9th or 9th-12th. Using the NPS crowd estimation map and giving the Reunion the benefit of the doubt at exactly 7th street, that puts the Tea Party SOLIDLY in the 500,000 to 700,000 range, minimum.
Here's another guesstimate based on actual photos.
pajamasmedia.com/vodkapundit/2009/09/12/marching-by-extrapolated-numbers
Doc
The FreedomWorks guy has already been shown to be lying about an ABC report.
Malkin's photos have been questioned and are highly suspect.
several bloggers have posted photos that clearly were not taken Saturday; there's a museum missing.
The only folks claiming huge numbers are those with a vested interest - anyone independent is talking 60,000 to 100,000.
@ Joe:
The Fire Dept. came out with those numbers:
1. Early
2. without making them "official", or how they came to those numbers.
3. in conflict with, the National Parks Service, The DC Metro Police, Aerial photographs of the site, several news agencies (including a number of international papers who have NO REASON to lie) and Hundreds of bloggers who were there, (Both for and against the Protesters).
As for the National Black Family Reunion making up the bulk of the people present at the National Mall, look at the pictures... do most of those people look black?? Umm... No.
Doc
Doc Navy -
To your knowledge, are there any official estimates that put the crowd size at anywhere near the numbers you're suggesting?
@ Jim:
Yeah yeah, I read what DKos has to say about it. Let me make sure that I have you straight... DKos is a ~MORE~ reliable source concerning Repubs and Conservatives than MALKIN??!! AAAAHHHHHHahahahahaha! right. Let's get the numbers straight...
the LEFT is reporting 60,000 to 100,000. (We know they are gonna lowball it.)
the RIGHT is reporting 800,000 to 1.5 million. (We know they are gonna highball it.)
Third party news sources (tough to find but they're out there) are reporting 200,000 to 500,000 (with the exception of dailymail.uk which is reporting approx one mil.)
Even at 60,000 I'd say it was a success, but since I'm inclined to believe my EYES and what the folks with no stake in the matter have to say... my bet is the 200,000-500,000 mark.
Doc
Anyone claiming any crowd estimate from the Park Police is simply wrong - the Park Police refused repeatedly to estimate crowd size, as reported by virtually every news outlet.
@Joe:
Nope, there are no official numbers that I know of. That is why I'm inclined to go with photographic evidence and the reports of those who could care less about Libs/Progs/Conservs in the US.
I wonder WHY there has been no "official" numbers from a govt. agency. I can only conclude that city and govt officials have been told not to give any official numbers. That's why they are all off the record about it.
Anyway, it's all really mental mastubat!on. The turnout was huge by any standards and since the left and lefty media have been painting a picture of "Small, fringe, extremist, white, racist, violent, ignorant, yadayadayada..." from the beginning why would they stop now. It's a LIE... but whatever, we'll see what happens next year. if the Lefties are right... nothing will change. If the Conservatives are right, there will be a big "Vote-out" of left-wing Democrats next year. Time will tell.
Doc
I guess it depends on your definition of "huge". 60,000-70,000 people, which is the number I tend to believe in lieu of any official tabulation to the contrary, is a lot of people. Like I said earlier, it's respectable. Then again, at least that many people will be at the Washington Redskins game next week.
In terms of a political protest, they were decent, not spectacular, numbers. At least in my opinion.
Park Service Police haven't given out estimates since the '90s after they were accused of under-estimating the size of the Million Man March (which was no wheres near 1,000,000).
If I recall correctly, they made a sort of exception for the inauguration - and again realized they can't win with these things and went back to the no estimate policy.
@Joe:
Nope, there are no official numbers that I know of. That is why I'm inclined to go with photographic evidence and the reports of those who could care less about Libs/Progs/Conservs in the US.
I wonder WHY there has been no "official" numbers from a govt. agency. I can only conclude that city and govt officials have been told not to give any official numbers. That's why they are all off the record about it.
Anyway, it's all really mental mastubat!on. The turnout was huge by any standards and since the left and lefty media have been painting a picture of "Small, fringe, extremist, white, racist, violent, ignorant, yadayadayada..." from the beginning why would they stop now. It's a LIE... but whatever, we'll see what happens next year. if the Lefties are right... nothing will change. If the Conservatives are right, there will be a big "Vote-out" of left-wing Democrats next year. Time will tell.
Doc
Yeah the pictures are true the MSM would never lie
"oh what's that you say Beck is MSM"
"no no" ( puts fingers in ears)
" beck is the messiah he cares"
" he doesn't work for Faux news"
" they aren't part of one of the worlds largest media conglomerates"
" they didn't shaft Ron Paul last election"
" no no no"
Has anyone heard anything about pictures of the crowd being substituted from a diffferent large gathering in DC... like at another time?
Maybe if the media actually did its job you would know there were at least well AT LEAST 200,000 people there. I heard Liberals say 60-75k max, funny. They werent there and thats about a football stadium if not more, and anyone could tell there was well over a football stadium worth of people there. Why not take a look at the CSPAN video online, it has a nice, big crowd shot from side to side and you can clearly see it stretches all the way back to the Washington monument.
Hi Joe. I was actually there. The crowd didn't stretch to the Monument. It couldn't have: the National Black Family Reunion occupied the Mall from about 8th Street to about 13th Street. It filled the Capitol Grounds to about 3rd Street. The march down Pennsylvania Ave spanned, at its longest point, about thirteen blocks. Bear in mind how loosely packed in that crowd was. Five hundred thousand divided by thirteen is about 38,500. I think you'd be hard-pressed to argue that each block along Penn Ave had almost forty thousand people. A person takes up roughly four square feet. If they stood shoulder to shoulder, one block of Penn Ave would have to be about 154,000 square feet to accommodate that crowd. The footprint of Madison Square Garden is roughly 21,000 square feet, meaning that each block of Penn Ave would have to hold a little over seven Madison Square Gardens.
It's not possible, folks. I was there. It was an impressive turn-out, somewhere in the ballpark of 60k.
Hi Navy Doc. You're right: there were almost no black people at the Beck rally. It was, with a small handful of exceptions, an entirely white crowd.
The National Black Family Reunion occupied the Mall from 8th Street to about 13th Street, with a buffer zone between the two rallies that ran from about 4th Street to 7th Street. There were some tour busses parked along Jefferson and Adams, but not much by way of crowds there. I'm still unsure how the claim that 500K+ fit on the Capitol Grounds is being taken seriously by anybody. If you can find pictures of the 4th of July in DC, you'll see what a crowd of about 600K looks like. It disables Metro, causes traffic jams, generally shuts down the city. I drove into the city early in the day, and easily found parking on Independence. No traffic at all getting into DC.
I know that numbers and facts shouldn't be used here, but i can't resist: to fit 500K on the Capitol grounds, each person would have to take up 0.35 sq ft. That's impossi
By Peter J. Smith
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 13, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Hundreds of thousands of Americans descended upon the U.S. Capitol for the 9/12 Washington D.C. Taxpayers March, to march against President Barack Obama's nationalization of the US health-care industry by means of health-care reform and other domestic policies.
Most mainstream media sources in the US, however, seriously underreported those numbers to the public.
The New York Times first stated that only "thousands" came to march on Washington, later revising that number to "tens of thousands," but gave priority coverage (and an actual number) to a much smaller pro-government health care rally with President Obama that was attended by some 15,000 people.
The Washington Post and Associated Press also reported that "tens of thousands" descended on Washington. As with the Times, those reporters did not give any authoritative counts from officials or even an estimate.
Of the media television networks,
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