"A million or more rock Washington" - World Net Daily estimate is propaganda not journalism.

I was there.  It was a great event. We should all be excited.  But, there is absolutely NO WAY there were over million people at the Tea Party in DC.  Not even close. 

I put the crowd at 120,000 give or take 30,000.   (The ABC news number of 70,000 is definitely low-balled but is at least in the right order of magnitude.  The WND million number is just absurd.  Propaganda not journalism.

See this graphic analysis:
http://jbs.org/jbs-community/photos/photo?albumid=221#photoid=1240

I drove 50 miles up I-95 from Fredericksberg from 8:30 to 9:30am.  I was on the Blue Line Metro to Federal Triangle station from 10:45 to 11:15am.  I marched down PA avenue from 11:30 to noon.  I was there until the microphone at the front steps of the Capitol was turned off at 4:57pm. 

The traffic on the highway coming and going, the excitement, the density of the crowd filing into the the area in front of the Capitol were all reminiscent of attending a University of Michigan football game - stadium capacity 106,201. 

The event was a great encouragement and well worth attending as a Birch member.  Our bands of merry Birchers and friends were there representing one of the few organizations with professionally done literature and DVD's to hand out to many interested parties in the crowd.

Still the presence of war mongering GOP faithful was large.  It is not surprising that the pro-war cheerleaders at World Net Daily would headline their report on the rally with a bogus attendance number ten times larger than reality. 

The Neocons are trying to hijack the Tea Party movement.  They want play it as grassroots support for a patriotic continuation and escalation of wars being conducted around the world by an otherwise bankrupt empire.

I will be writing up a full report with pictures by end of day tomorrow.

Hey Jim,

Big kudos for organizing our members at this event.  Looks like you had a great time and hopefully our JBS message will resonate with the attendees.

For Freedom,

Sam Antonio

I've uploaded pictures from our Birching at the 912 DC Rally.  A great time was had by all...120,000 or so.

Note to Mickey:  If Ed does an analysis on this map he will reduce his estimate.

I defy anyone to produce pictures showing any appreciable amount of rally participants past 3rd Street after about 12:30/1:00pm.  People kept moving forward to get as close to the Capitol as they could.  At the peak of the crowd, the vast majority of people were able to get in front of 3rd Street.  There is no way you can put 300,000 in front of 3rd St. and still have room for the picnicing that was going on.

It was a great event.  Those fighting for reducing the size and swath of our federal government should be encouraged.  120,000 people from around the country, most with real jobs and their own arrangements to get there is a huge turnout.   Maybe there was even 150,000, or someone will produce data that makes me agree to 200,000.  But, if one does the math, as I know Ed can, there is no way to get to 300,000 at this event, let alone the ridiculous number of over one million, a fantasy number which automatically calls into question the credibility of any source like WND or Infowars that would even bother to mention it.  When the excitement and emotions settle down, I expect these news outfits will do the right thing and revise their numbers downwards to something in the 100,000 to 200,000 range.  A great turnout in its own right.

Sidebar: This picture taken at 4:23pm towards 3rd St and the Capitol shows that there was no way 300,000 people could have cleared out of this area in 30 to 60 minutes.

Correction:  In my first post, I did have a typo on the official ending time of the event.  It was 3:57pm not 4:57pm.