Just 4 months ago on September 12, 2009, I stood with 100,000+ people on the lawn of the Capitol in Washington DC.

That day, the biggest rallying cry, shouted at the top of our lungs was simple:

"Do you hear us now!!!"

The Tea Party Movement is about being sick and tired of the politicians in Washington ignoring the will of the people and trying to slam through their agenda--not for our benefit, but most-often for their own.

Well, thanks to Massachusetts tonight, the whole country is shouting together:

"DO YOU HEAR US NOW!!!!"



(Next on the block: Barbara Boxer!!!)

Surprisingly, MSNBC had a very good news segment about the rally. It's well done, and I have no problems with its accuracy. I found it on the "And Still I Persist" blog:

Not by name, but still. The night before the rally, there was a gathering of women for a cocktail hour sort of thing, and a reporter from The New Republic (or as I explained to the people I was with, the other NR) came by. I don't know if she gave us her last name, but her first name was distinctive enough to remember: Lydia.

Well, today, I found the article she wrote about our cocktail "Meet and Tweet" (Scroll down to the section that starts "I have never" in bold lettering):

I have never felt more welcome as a reporter than I did at a “Meet and Tweet,” advertised as a gathering of tea partying women on the eve of the march, at the Doubletree Hotel.

I was one of them.

Though she doesn't quote me by name, I am quoted here:

The discussion drifted from outrage to outrage, lingering on health care. No one actually doesn’t have insurance, the women agreed. Obama’s numbers of the uninsured keep wavering; maybe he just stopped factoring in the illegals. Besides, everyone can just go to the emergency room, or one of those clinics that Wal-Mart runs.

“This administration does not understand the free market,” someone pronounced.

“The only people with private insurance will be unions!” said another [Me!].

My point was that all the other insurance plans would be driven out of business, but the unions, with the help of the politicians and bureaucrats, would fiercely hold on the their gold-plated ones.

I actually ran into Lydia in Freedom Square shortly before the Rally turned into the premature march. She looked a little like a deer caught in the headlights. I was just shocked to run into anyone I recognized in the swell of people.

There's a point that needs to be made about the 9/12 rally which I don't think any one else has made.

A lot of coverage is accusing the marchers of being a bunch of racists. In answer to that accusation, I would point out that across from the Smithsonian Castle, just east of the Washington Monument, there was a festival going on:

The "National Black Family Reunion"

So, did the so-called racist tea partiers harass the attendees of the reunion?

Were there insults flying as people passed by the reunion?

Were there people surrounding the reunion with stars and bars? (and I did see a woman with the stars and bars flag over by the capitol.)

Was anyone roughing up the people at the reunion?

Anyone shouting the n-word?

Are there any reports of tea partiers giving anyone at the neighboring event the slightest bit of a hard time?

Here, after all, was the perfect opportunity. Here was a supposedly-racist march taking place right next to a black festival.

Yet the two groups seem to have gotten along completely peacefully.

Hmmmmm....go figure.

GatewayPundit posted a graphic from Obama's inaugural. The image showed how many people could be estimated to fill the various parts of the mall. I've annotated it from my observations:


(The picture is upside down, and north is on the bottom of the image, south on the top.)

I was in the orange circle nearest to the Capitol on the left side of the picture. I have marked where I started out with a yellow and red dot. I eventually moved up to the roadway that you can see between my dot and the steps--from there, I could directly see the stage and the people talking.

From that grassy area, I couldn't see very well, but I could see enough to know that we were not only packing Pennsylvania Avenue and the Mall, but Independence Maryland Avenue as well.

I've put a thin black line around the area that I am certain we were filling. I had no view down the mall, but from other images I'd say at least 1/3 to 1/2 the way to the Washington Memorial. (There was a "National Black Family Reunificataion" festival going on on the west end of the mall. Rumor had it, we were spread all the way down that way, but picture I've seen show the crowd thinning out to nothing by the time the tents for the black festival begin.)

From my line, you can make your own estimates--though, keep in mind that where I was people were quite comfortably spread out. We had an area to sit down, put our signs down, and still leave plenty of room for people to walk around us. But we were not in the center part of the mall, nor were we down any of the streets, which looked quite crowded and people weren't sitting.

After making a circle and coming back to the other ladies, we decided to move down to the other end of the plaza. By the time we got there, the march had prematurely begun. Rumor was that there were too many people in the square and waved us down Penn Ave.





Here's me along the parade route:



And to give you a feel for what it was like, here's a quick video:

I wanted to wade into the crowd, so I made a circle of the plaza. These are some of the pictures I took:

Last night I went to a "Meet and Tweet" of women at a nearby hotel. There were probably about 20-25 of us there.

Some of us agreed to meet at the Willard hotel (yay! now I can say I was a lobbiest!) for breakfast. Afterwards, we crossed the street to a hill overlooking the plaza which was the meeting location for the march.

This are the very nice ladies I've been hanging around with yesterday and today:



And this was our view from the hill (including some La Rouchers on the corner:



The plaza filled up fast--so fast that they had to start the march an hour a half early because we were over capacity.

Here's a video from the hill:

This takes the geekiest sign contest:



And this is the runner up:

Here's Steven Green again:

Marching by (Extrapolated) Numbers

Charlie Martin — a computer scientist with extensive intelligence experience — emails from his secret bunker near Boulder, CO:

I did a back-of-envelope based on the photos and reports. A pretty dense crowd is about 1.8 people per square meter, and the National Mall alone is about 125 hectares, 1.25 million square meters. So that would be 2.3 million people.

Given the report from Steve of an actual literal count of 450K early on, I think the 2 million number is *very* plausible.

Knowing Charlie like I do, I’m inclined to trust his guestimates more than most people’s “facts.”

Which in this case… whoa.

Here's Steven Green (Vodka Pundit):

Marching by the Numbers

Just got off the phone with Barbara Espinosa, who sent in tons of great pics from DC earlier today. Hopefully, we’ll have some video later, too. As a volunteer, she had “full access” to all parts of the protest. Here are some of the things she saw today, by the numbers.

• 70 outdoor port-a-potties.


• 90 minute wait to use one.


• The People Meter on Penn Ave had read 450,000 by noon, and 1.5 million two hours later. (That last number still looks awfully high to me.)


• 1 DC police officer, who told her, “I’ve been here 20 years and this is the largest crowd I’ve ever seen.”

I love this video. It's a 3.5 hour time lapse of the crowd moving down Pennsylvania avenue. I was in the near intersection around 9:30. The crowd continued to pass through that intersection for another 2 hours!!

No one seems to have any idea how many people are going to be at the march tomorrow. There are some weird estimates...the weirdest from Pelosi, who is being accused of some major high-balling.

One of her aids came in with a warning to Dems of 2 million--which would be 200,000 more than Obama had for his historic inauguration (granted, that was in freezing January.) People are saying that she put that out so that anything less would be treated by the press as a disappointment.

In other words: she's scared this is going to be massive. If it was only going to be in the 10's of thousands, she wouldn't be worried. If it was even around 100,000 that wouldn't necessarily really get to her. But if we are really talking about several or many hundreds of thousands, she could be hitting the panic button.

I wonder what their researchers are coming up with?

There is a march website that is asking people to sign up online, so they can determine the kind of facilities and police they need on hand. Their numbers were somewhere around 30,000...but I would be surprised if 1 out of 10 actually bothered to formally sign up.

----

A lot of people have been showing up today. Every time I pass through the lobby of my hotel, another group of Tea Partiers is arriving. Every time I walk down the street, I see Partiers.

I'm still hoping this will be really, really big.

I made 9 signs today. People seemed to really like them, and lots took pictures with them. I kept 2 and left the rest for others. Here they are:

I was supposed to go to a Doctors rally yesterday, but I couldn't make it in time. GatewayPundit has coverage.

This is the first crowd estimate I've seen:

Organizers of the "Tea Party in D.C." march are expecting as many as 200,000 to converge on Washington, D.C., for the event.

I'd love to get twice that, but 200K would be pretty good.

Blogtrail: Instapundit

Update: Found another, much smaller estimate, in the Wash Times:

The Tea Party Express - a caravan of buses, speakers and entertainers who have been holding protest rallies in cities and towns across the country - is heading to Washington, where on Saturday, up to 50,000 demonstrators are expected to march on the Capitol in a full-scale political offensive to persuade lawmakers to reject the health care overhaul bills that are pending in the House and Senate.

I just got back from a 3-hour walk, and I'm exhausted! I walked from 1/2 mile north of the White House, to the White House, to the Capitol, to the Washington Monument, back to the White House, then back to the hotel. Yikes. Here are some pics:



I was trying to get this cool sky:



I finally held it steady enough to get this one:

I made to my hotel...without taking a cab!

Cab = $75
Bus + Metro + 3 blocks of walking = $13.50

I'm very proud of myself. Can I retrace my steps? I think so.

I was supposed to go to a "Doctors Rally Against Obamacare", but I got to my hotel at 5:30, and that's the time the thing started...2 miles away. Can't make it.

I passed a couple restaurants on my way over here, and I think there's a Whole Foods down the street.

Tomorrow there is a sign making party in the morning, which I think I'll go to. I spent the first hour on the plane coming up with ideas:

My favorite slogan that I came up with, because it uses leftist lunacy, is:

"Bush spent like a drunkard...What's Obama's excuse?"