If you stayed at home and watched the news this weekend, you may not have heard about the teeny tiny fringe of angry protesters that showed up in Washing, DC this weekend. Because there was very little coverage. Just look at the minuscule crowds these nutjobs are trying to pass off as legit!
Freedom Plaza at 9:15am on 9/12.
All snark aside, I showed up at Freedom Plaza at 9am on Saturday. The crowds began on the trains, where 4 stops out from the city, they were so full no one could even fit on them. Here was our car:
Metro ride into the city on Saturday morning.
I can not even explain to you what it felt like to see that many people. Throngs of people poured in from all surrounding train stations. There were 450 bus permits issued, and bus loads of people from all over flooded the square. We hung around Freedom Plaza for a while. It was completely inundated with people. When it got to the point that we couldn’t move across the streets anymore, they started marching us out – an hour an a half early.
The march begins.
Arriving at the Mall.
We pushed our way through the crowd and made it to the stage, where Smart Girl Politics was supposed to be introduced onstage at the rally. Teri Christoph, Rebecca Wales and I made it to the stage and waited. What an amazing vantage point!
View from stage left, looking out.
Smart Girls (Teri Christoph, Me, Julia Hodges, and Rebecca Wales next to the stage, looking out at the crowd.
Me. Collapsed on the grass - it was a long day. In the best way possible.
Me, next to Teri, Twittering furiously. The cell service was seriously fubared, and I got "congestion" messages all day long on my Blackberry.
Matt and Rebecca with Jim DeMint after his speech.
Rebecca Wales, Congressman Marsha Blackburn, Me, and Teri Christoph.
During her speech, Blackburn relayed the status of the city: the expressways were shut down. Buses were still coming. Trains were still overloaded. She claimed 1.5 million people were there.
There has been a lot of discrepancy about the number of people that actually attended. Some of the controversy was enhanced by me, and Michelle Malkin. I heard everything from a couple hundred thousand to 2 million on the ground, and I reported what I was told by staffers and officials. FreedomWorks misquoted ABC, which lead to all sorts of drama. The bottom line is this: there was a metric crapload of people there. Here’s a timelapse video of the march, from an aerial perspective:
So however they want to slam me or Michelle Malkin for the numbers, it doesn’t matter. I don’t much care. If they’re going to burn resources on mincing words and hard numbers, then let them. The photos and videos were there. Here’s Jimmie Bise’s take on it.
The most fun moment of the day? Doing line kicks on stage with the other girls while Lloyd Marcus sang “2010″. The view from the stage was breathtaking – and the energy was infectious. I’m the short one behind him at the beginning.
All in all, it was the most incredible event I’ve ever attended.
For some more great photos and a comparison of the aftermath of the Inauguration vs 9/12, go here.
As my new friend Mommentator said, I would do this day over and over again.
Has anyone come up with a halfway accurate crowd count yet? This weekend I had heard everything from 10,000 to 2 million.
Thanks for posting the photos. I was there, too. It was very inspiring. Lots of families, kids, etc, lots of humor (not mean-spirited as MSM tries to portray). Best poster I saw was this one. “Do I look like an ATM?” Photo of it here. http://bit.ly/qz321
Scott, if there were less than 200K, minimum, I’d be shocked. It was probably more like 450K. I’ve been to football games of 100K people, and this dwarfed those . . . fwiw.
Congratulations for getting to go!I wish I could have been there. As it was, I was with ten thousand patriots in the pouring rain in Ft. Worth. The media wants to make believe that if they don’t report about us we will go away. Frankly, given the disdain that many patriots hold for our media lately, I think THEY will disappear before we go away. And this cannot be the end. We must organize, we must vote, we must talk and get out of our comfort zones to take back America from people who do not have the best interests of American citizens or their freedoms.
I would. And it was all the better for sharing it with you and other amazing men and women who are all working daily to send messages that “they work for us.”
Only thing missing in this post was you dancing onstage in front of all the people. I’d bet it’s somewhere on this video though, along with a good view of the many, many people:
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/09/12/HP/A/23055/FreedomWorks+Rally+in+DC.aspx
It looks like everyone had a blast. The pics so far are great. I’ve been to several Tea Party protests and Townhall meetings with my Congressman. I thought those crowds were huge but this was really something.
I understand your point about worrying bout the numbers too much but, hard counts help when you are combatting a media and blogosphere who are insisting this event was only in the tens of thousands and mostly on the fringe.
Sometimes numbers matter.
Sorry I missed you! It was a great feeling being part of this teeny tiny group. We were all excited. It’s interesting how there are all different attendee numbers. Have you ever encountered an event where there is such a great discrepancy in the numbers? I haven’t. This is not by accident. Let’s keep out message strong and keep up the effort to wake America up. Come visit me. http://bagsthatspeak.com I hope to have my pics up asap.
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