>Let me go over this again. Since the police have abdicated doing crowd
>estimates, the sectarians organizing these stupid protests know that it
>is much easier to establish the mass delusion that 100,000 or more
>people attended. I've dealt with this police chief on a basis that I
>really don't want to repeat. The guy is a scumbag and he has every
>reason to ditto the estimates coming out of the mouths of the organizers.
Bizarre sour grapes. I personally don't care whether there were 50,000 or 500,000 at the demo. It seems to me that Chuck0 is being at least as sectarian about his low estimates as the sectarians are about their high ones. The numbers are meaningless.
The other thing I don't get about the conversation on this thread is that there doesn't seem to be any acknowledgement that the action isn't over. Today there is a conference and lobbying and nonviolence training workshops scheduled. Tomorrow there is a day of congressional lobbying and a mass civil disobedience action.
It seems to me that to be effective the rally only had to be large enough to boost the morale of the people who are continuing on. Obviously a rag-tag assembly of 4 or 5,000 would have been a downer. But when you've been in the middle of a crowd of even 50,000 to 75,000 it feels huge. So what is the POINT of obsessing on the crowd size?
The Sandwichman