9-12 DC Gathering

[FNA209]

Saturday's "Tea Party" rally in Washington, D.C. far exceeded almost all expectations. Local police agencies estimated around 1.2 million people attended the rally, but several news outlets, including ABC and Fox News, said the crowd was nearly double that, with an estimated 2 million people in attendance.

Several different groups combined to organize the rally, including Glenn beck and his 9/12 project and former Congressman Dick Army and the FreedomWorks Foundation, but most of those in attendance came on their own and said they had never taken part in any type of protest before Saturday.

Impressive turn-out.

Rally-goers said they are not strictly anti-Obama, or anti-Democrat, but instead are fed up with big government, corruption, high taxes, and runaway spending. They said they have had enough of politicians who don't listen to their concerns and are more afraid of special interests than they are of the voters. Many in the crowd said they were Democrats or independents. The protestors were clearly from across the political spectrum, young and old, black and white, male and female. It will be hard to dismiss them as being only angry Republicans.

And no reports of violence. Imagine that.

If you add in the amount of people who went to other tea-parties across the nation, this may have been 3 million or more citizens who took time to come together to voice their concerns.

I wonder what Pelosi and crew are going to call them this time?

[FNA209]

Further reports:

When this group left the mall, they cleaned up after themselves. Unlike the incredible amounts of trash that Obama's inauguration crowd left. A US Parks employee said the area was very clean. And the libs are supposed to be the self-declared spokesmen for the Earth.

More people were in DC on 9-12 than were in attendance at Obama's inauguration. The people who went to Obama's bash were lured by his pied piper imitation. The people who went on 9-12 aren't blindly following some charismatic, but decidedly hollow, man, they were there because they came to the decision that something is wrong and it needs to be fixed.

This was the largest political rally in US history.... so far. The next one may be bigger.

No violence at all. Gee when was the last liberal gathering that didn't have any violence as part of festivities. Not even one finger was bitten off.

A small step forward for Americans. I wonder what the ruling class will do now.

[SteveOKC]

FNA...

You know as well as everyone else on this board and out there, they will be ignored. It does not matter if it was 1,000 or 100,000,000 people. Obama, Pelosi, and Reid do not care. Obama has already said, I won the election, and rightly so, he did win the election.

It does not matter, it really does not. Only thing that matters is the elections. Those are so far off that Obama could get every thing he has on the table passed then would not have to care if all of the Dems got booted out.

It is great they are rallying, but the Democrats in Washington, mockingly DO NOT CARE. Simple as that. Nothing will change, Health Care Reform will carry on, Cap and Trade will carry on, Illegal immigration reform will eventually be on the table.

If Democrats felt like they were not heard under Bush, this is a whole lot worse. At least Bush spoke with Cindy Sheehan and respected her view, Obama neither understands or respects these current people who are rallying. The truth is evident in his speeches.

[1042 Trooper]

I will be there next year. Will you????

I propose an O.Com contingent picnic or som such thing. Anyon else up for it?

This really mad me proud. I want to be a part of it next time.

[jthorpe]

I was there, and posted my pics on my own site. I'm not going to post them here again but if you want to see them, go here:

http://www.dieseltruckresource.com/dev/sept-12-2009-washington-dc-protest-pics-t252177.html

[FNA209]

FNA...

You know as well as everyone else on this board and out there, they will be ignored. It does not matter if it was 1,000 or 100,000,000 people. Obama, Pelosi, and Reid do not care. Obama has already said, I won the election, and rightly so, he did win the election.

It does not matter, it really does not. Only thing that matters is the elections. Those are so far off that Obama could get every thing he has on the table passed then would not have to care if all of the Dems got booted out.

It is great they are rallying, but the Democrats in Washington, mockingly DO NOT CARE. Simple as that. Nothing will change, Health Care Reform will carry on, Cap and Trade will carry on, Illegal immigration reform will eventually be on the table.

If Democrats felt like they were not heard under Bush, this is a whole lot worse. At least Bush spoke with Cindy Sheehan and respected her view, Obama neither understands or respects these current people who are rallying. The truth is evident in his speeches.

If that is the case, there will be a bloodbath in the 2010 (and probably in the 2012) elections. I think people are ****ed. They will vote their anger.

[SteveOKC]

If that is the case, there will be a bloodbath in the 2010 (and probably in the 2012) elections. I think people are ****ed. They will vote their anger.

Let's truly hope it is only in the elections. After what David Axlerod just got through saying that these protester's "Are wrong." that this stays civil.

What happens though if it does not...that is what is worrisome. Who knows how many people were actually rallying these past few days but if it ever turns violent then we have a real problem on our hands.

I do agree that Health Care Reform needs to take place, I just do not agree with it's current form. I would be happy with a Dem/Repub mix without the Public Option or a so called triger for the Public Option or a Co-Op which in effect is a Public Option.

A little side note: My wife's Step-dad owns his own small business, he was paying $1,500 a month for health insurance, they refused to pay for absolutely everything and I mean everything. This went on through 3 different insurers, so now he is one of the uninsured and so his is wife and 2 or her 3 kids as well as about 6 of his employees. He by no means wants anything free, he is willing to pay as long as stuff is covered. He is a Democrat but also disagrees with the public option. Health Care Reform needs to take place but correctly.

[Dep D]

I went to ours on the West steps of the Capital in Denver. Nice turn out, but not even close to DC's. Anyway, 9news did a small piece on TV, but the Denver Post only had a story of the DC protest, and did not mention the Denver protest at all.

I would have liked some national news outlet to tick off how many cities, and total amount of people attended (estimated).

It would be interesting to see the disparity between the numbers.

I agree the Dems don't care what the numbers of protesters, or how many cities they rallied in.... until 2010.

[JasperST]

Apart from FOX I've seen no mention of it. I guess the state run media decided against the coverage.

[DAL]

I don't know where you got those huge numbers from. Fox News said "tens of thousands of protesters marched to the U.S. Capitol," http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009...ment-spending/, as did NPR. That is a long way from a million (= 100 x 10,000), and I see no reason to believe that Fox would understate the turnout.

I did find coverage elsewhere as well, including CBS (estimate: 70,000), and the Los Angeles Times ("tens of thousands"). The local demonstration in Los Angeles, called "912 West," received no coverage at all, and their website says nothing about the attendance.

[jthorpe]

DAL, I was there and I can tell you this. I was in a sea of people that stretched from the Capitol building to the White House. 70k aint even close, I can tell you that. Whatever the number, it was the biggest group of people I've ever seen gathered in one place. we marched down PA avenue and it was full from one end to the other from where we were. When we finally got to the capitol, they were still coming two hours after we arrived. DC PD was turning away buses after a while because of the turnout...

Like it or not, a LOT of people are ****ed.

[BigPat]

It looks like a few folks have intentionally overstated the numbers...

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/sep/14/tea-party-photo-shows-large-crowd-different-event/

Tea party" photo shows huge crowd — at different event

By Catharine Richert
Published on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 11:34 a.m.

Related rulings:
Pants on Fire!
Photo of "tea party" protests shows crowd sprawling from Capitol to Washington Monument

Bloggers, Saturday, September 12th, 2009.

Ruling: Pants on Fire! | Details
Bookmark this story:
Buzz up!
ShareThis

Bloggers said this photo showed a gargantuan crowd at Saturday's "tea party" protest. But this photo was taken years earlier, at a different event.

Over the weekend, conservatives enthusiastically passed around a photo they said showed a huge crowd protesting President Barack Obama's policies during the "tea party" demonstration on Sept. 12, 2009.

With headlines that said the rally organized by the conservative group FreedomWorks drew as many as 2 million people, the photo showed a sea of protesters that stretched more than a mile from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. Conservative blog postings and Facebook updates said the media was unfairly reporting much smaller numbers.

The meme went viral on Twitter, and pictures of huge crowds were posted widely on conservative blogs.

"I have no doubt that Washington Democrats are well aware of how many people turned out, even as their media outlets try to downplay the event," said Power Line, a conservative blog that linked to the photograph from Say Anything , another conservative Web site.

"'Media' estimates range from 60,000 to 500,000 to around 2 million (yes, 2,000,000)," wrote John G. Winder for the conservative blog Cypress Times. "Those estimates, the language employed, and the visuals chosen for use in reporting the rally and representing the people gathered, vary greatly based solely on bias."

In the mainstream media, crowd estimates varied.

The New York Times reported that "thousands" of protesters "filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall," while Fox News wrote that "tens of thousands" marched on Washington.

And from CNN: "The march leading to the Capitol stretched for blocks on the final day of the Tea Party Express' cross-country bus tour, which began August 28 in Sacramento, Calif. En route, the group hosted rallies in about 30 cities. An official crowd estimate was not available, but reporters at the scene described the massive crowd as reaching the tens of thousands."

We spoke with Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, who said that the local government no longer provides official crowd estimates because they can become politicized. That said, on the morning of Sept. 12, Piringer unofficially told one reporter that he thought between 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up.

"It was in no way an official estimate," he said.

We asked Piringer whether there were enough protesters to fill the National Mall, as depicted in the photograph.

"It was an impressive crowd," he said. But after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol the crowd "only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street," he said.

Yet the photo showed the crowd sprawling far beyond that to the Washington Monument, which is bordered by 15th and and 17th Streets.

There's another big problem with the photograph: it doesn't include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn't show the "tea party" crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.

Also worth noting are the cranes in front of the Natural History Museum (the second building from the lower left of the National Mall). According to Randall Kremer, the museum's director of public affairs, "The last time cranes were in front was in the 1990s when the IMAX theater was being built."

That makes the picture at least a decade old. (We'll update this item if we find out when exactly it was taken.)

The conservative bloggers who originally posted the picture have backed down.

Say Anything updated its original post to say that the picture was "of the wrong rally." An accurate photo "clearly shows that [the rally] didn’t take place on the mall nearly as extensively as the image I mistakenly posted does."

Power Line took the picture down all together. We decided to still rate it on the Truth-O-Meter because so many people saw the photo on Facebook or other sites over the weekend and probably were unaware it was not from the Saturday protest.

It may be a real photograph, but it does not depict the much smaller crowd that showed up for the protest. We rate it Pants on Fire!

[mjhoyt27]

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/...fferent-event/


Tea party" photo shows huge crowd — at different event

By Catharine Richert
Published on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 11:34 a.m.

Related rulings:
Pants on Fire!
Photo of "tea party" protests shows crowd sprawling from Capitol to Washington Monument

Bloggers, Saturday, September 12th, 2009.

Ruling: Pants on Fire! | Details
Bookmark this story:
Buzz up!
ShareThis

Bloggers said this photo showed a gargantuan crowd at Saturday's "tea party" protest. But this photo was taken years earlier, at a different event.

Over the weekend, conservatives enthusiastically passed around a photo they said showed a huge crowd protesting President Barack Obama's policies during the "tea party" demonstration on Sept. 12, 2009.

With headlines that said the rally organized by the conservative group FreedomWorks drew as many as 2 million people, the photo showed a sea of protesters that stretched more than a mile from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. Conservative blog postings and Facebook updates said the media was unfairly reporting much smaller numbers.

The meme went viral on Twitter, and pictures of huge crowds were posted widely on conservative blogs.

"I have no doubt that Washington Democrats are well aware of how many people turned out, even as their media outlets try to downplay the event," said Power Line, a conservative blog that linked to the photograph from Say Anything , another conservative Web site.

"'Media' estimates range from 60,000 to 500,000 to around 2 million (yes, 2,000,000)," wrote John G. Winder for the conservative blog Cypress Times. "Those estimates, the language employed, and the visuals chosen for use in reporting the rally and representing the people gathered, vary greatly based solely on bias."

In the mainstream media, crowd estimates varied.

The New York Times reported that "thousands" of protesters "filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall," while Fox News wrote that "tens of thousands" marched on Washington.

And from CNN: "The march leading to the Capitol stretched for blocks on the final day of the Tea Party Express' cross-country bus tour, which began August 28 in Sacramento, Calif. En route, the group hosted rallies in about 30 cities. An official crowd estimate was not available, but reporters at the scene described the massive crowd as reaching the tens of thousands."

We spoke with Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, who said that the local government no longer provides official crowd estimates because they can become politicized. That said, on the morning of Sept. 12, Piringer unofficially told one reporter that he thought between 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up.

"It was in no way an official estimate," he said.

We asked Piringer whether there were enough protesters to fill the National Mall, as depicted in the photograph.

"It was an impressive crowd," he said. But after marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol the crowd "only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street," he said.

Yet the photo showed the crowd sprawling far beyond that to the Washington Monument, which is bordered by 15th and and 17th Streets.

There's another big problem with the photograph: it doesn't include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. that opened on Sept. 14, 2004. (Looking at the photograph, the building should be in the upper right hand corner of the National Mall, next to the Air and Space Museum.) That means the picture was taken before the museum opened exactly five years ago. So clearly the photo doesn't show the "tea party" crowd from the Sept. 12 protest.

Also worth noting are the cranes in front of the Natural History Museum (the second building from the lower left of the National Mall). According to Randall Kremer, the museum's director of public affairs, "The last time cranes were in front was in the 1990s when the IMAX theater was being built."

That makes the picture at least a decade old. (We'll update this item if we find out when exactly it was taken.)

The conservative bloggers who originally posted the picture have backed down.

Say Anything updated its original post to say that the picture was "of the wrong rally." An accurate photo "clearly shows that [the rally] didn’t take place on the mall nearly as extensively as the image I mistakenly posted does."

Power Line took the picture down all together. We decided to still rate it on the Truth-O-Meter because so many people saw the photo on Facebook or other sites over the weekend and probably were unaware it was not from the Saturday protest.

It may be a real photograph, but it does not depict the much smaller crowd that showed up for the protest. We rate it Pants on Fire!

ABC estimate was 70K, not sure why op would say ABC reported 1.2million


I would like to know where was all the outrage of town halls, protests, etc when the deficit was being run up during the last administration? No one I ask can give me a clear answer on that.

[SkepticAlways]

I would like to know where was all the outrage of town halls, protests, etc when the deficit was being run up during the last administration? No one I ask can give me a clear answer on that.

C'mon, you're being coy.

[FNA209]

The response of Obama's crew is:

Presidential dog-washer David Axelrod said yesterday that the people who showed up in Washington yesterday "don't represent mainstream American views."

Are they that stupid?

Meanwhile, the total crowd number is still being argued. Several media sources are saying over a million. Several are saying anywheres from 250,000 to 500,000. The DC Police said (informally) the estimate was over a million although they said they stopped doing formal counts several years back.