I'm going to go out on a limb here and claim that the crowd number vastly out paces what the DC Fire Department estimates as 70,000 and undercuts the 'generous' number offered by the Daily Mail at 2,000,000. I've settled on a number between 500,000 and 750,000 people, and here's how I got there.
Courtesy of
Michelle Malkin, here is a crowd estimator that
USA Today published before the Inauguration of PeeBo.
The estimator determines crowd sizes for the National Mall area which stretches between the Capitol building and the Washington Monument. The numbers are based upon a density of one person per 2.5 square feet. The trick here is that from the pictures of the event, including
this video still, the tea party crowd did not inhabit the mall, but instead Pennsylvania Avenue, just to the north. You can see in the picture below, the placement of the camera (yellow and red dot), the area where the crowd gathered, and the direction the camera was pointing (yellow line).
We also know that the protesters inhabited the steps of the capitol building and the area surrounding the Capitol Reflecting Pool and the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial. According to the US Parks Service, with people filling the steps of the Capitol and the area surrounding the Reflecting Pool is equal to approximately 190,000 people.
Now, from the Capitol Building down Pennsylvania Avenue to where the camera was placed is almost exactly one mile. In the picture we can clearly see that people filled the street including sidewalks and bled over into cross streets. The average width (based upon three very unscientific measurements using google maps) of Pennsylvania Avenue, including sidewalk ares, is 210 feet. Therefore, the space which makes up the area the protesters were inhabiting along Pennsylvania Avenue is equal to 1,108,800 square feet, approximately. Using the Parks estimate of 1 person per 2.5 square feet leaves us with approximately 440,000 people along Pennsylvania Avenue when this picture was taken, which doesn't account for the widening of Pennsylvania Avenue into the square which people are visibly inhabiting in the foreground of the second picture.
Note that the picture above is taken from the corner of 14th Street and E Street, looking East toward the Capitol Building. It is also safe to say that people bled off the picture to the West (bottom of the picture) toward the White House. Taking the two numbers together, 190,000 and 440,000 we get a total somewhere in the neighborhood of 630,000 people. This number would not include any people gathering on the National Mall, which I have not seen pictures of, but can't assume that there weren't at least some people there. Also the pictures happen to be single moments in time, and do not reflect the coming and going of individuals throughout the day.
There have been a
few people out in the blogosphere who claim that the crowd size was nowhere near the size of the 'pro-immigration' (read: pro-criminal alien) rally in Los Angeles. Really?! Take a look at this picture from MSDNC and compare it with the still frame from above.
Nowhere near?!
One thing remains certian, however. Using 'Progressive'
math, the crowd size in Washington DC on September 12th, was easily 2 Million people.
-UPDATE-Almost as soon as I hit publish post, I stumbled across these pictures posted over at
Protein Wisdom
This first camera shot is taken somewhere between the steps of the Capitol Building and the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial (note the statue of the man on the horse in the foreground) and is pointed West, toward the Washington Monument in the background.
This second picture is taken from almost the exact same location, however, further east, closer to the Capitol steps. Note that you can still make out the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial directly in front of the Washington Monument, although it's futher away.
This final picture appears to have been taken near the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and 4th Street. The camera is pointed east toward the Capitol Building.
It pains me to say this, but after seeing these new pictures, you can take all that crappy math I did before and toss it out the window. Someone is going to have to convince me that there were less than 1 million people there. Amazing!
As a side note, there were also
several tea
party events
across the United States for those who were not able to make it to Washington. How many thousands gathered in those locations as well? The left can deflate the numbers all they want, the reality is that there is a large portion of the populace which is not happy with PeeBo or this Congress.
-BREAKING-Photo of the official from DC Fire who released the 70,000 crowd figure.
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