So, we drove to Philly to catch an early train and arrived in DC around 9 a.m. We had very modest predictions and expectations of the crowd totals. But when we got off the train and joined the massive amounts of people walking to the starting points we knew we needed disposable cameras. John and I agreed that the most productive thing we could do was share what we viewed and encountered in DC with our friends and families.
I invite you to take a look at the photos below capturing the spirit of peaceful protest. Read the signs people made, see the faces of the protesters and the magnitude of the crowd that attended. The format to view the pictures from the link is decent and you can select individual pics, point and click in the middle of them to enlarge, to read the poster signs better.
I purposely waited to post these pictures and comments until after The March was last month’s news. Media coverage immediately and within days reported “tens of thousands” attended, only an anti-Obama message was cast and that the attendees were bused in, organized, provided printed signs and were fringe radicals. An idea of what truly occurred is noted below in text and pictures.
What we saw:
- A family was the largest group on the train (a dad, mom & her sister with three boys)
- Kids and parents made poster signs in the Snack Car
- On the walk to the starting point, people proudly shouted out their state of origin
- Almost all homemade signs and all were clever, thought-provoking and honest
- Sign content: 10% anti-Obama, (calling him a Socialist, Communist, Marxist, etc.), 25% anti-Congress, 25% defending our Constitution, the remaining was anti-big government, taxes, corruption and spending. We saw no distasteful (unless you find calling the President a Socialist, Communist, Marxist, etc. distasteful) or racial messages.
- Some folks dressed as Founding Fathers
- A few buses and maybe a dozen groups with Tea Party group tee-shirts.
- A sea of Gadsden Flags (Don’t Tread on Me) and obviously many American Flags
- No network or cable cameras or personnel, only Internet Media and indie interviews and one lone helicopter about two hours into the rally
- At least 350,000 people as far as I could see (the largest concert I attended was 105,000 that I used as my gauge) I heard a report a few weeks later that the DC Police aerial photo results estimated the crowd at 1.2 million
- Lotsa port o’ potties (I counted a wall of 100), few cops, no litter (unfortunately we were out of film but the thousands of signs were respectfully stuffed and left at the large drum cans on the way out of the Mall)
Power to the People
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