Posted by Tina
The Mark Hemmingway account of the national “Tea Party” march on DC this morning tells of a huge success!!! I copped the picture from his post at the NRO blog “the corner”…there are a several more great shots…just follow the link:
NRO at the 912 March [Mark Hemingway]
As a journalist who wears his cynicism like a badge of honor, to say that today’s tea party protest wildly exceeded my expectations would be an understatement. I’ve yet to see a reliable estimate of the crowd size and the cops seemed bound and determined to keep any photographers away from any high vantage points, but I’d be shocked if it wasn’t well into six figures. I’ve heard crowd-size estimates ranging from 350,000 to 1.5 million — the latter seems overly optimistic, but even the former figure would still be incredibly impressive. The march wasn’t supposed to begin until eleven, but this was the scene at Freedom Plaza when we arrived at ten: (see photo) ** So many people showed up they couldn’t contain everybody in the plaza, so they just started the march early to make room. As for the composition of the crowd, well I personally spoke to people from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Idaho, Alaska, Delaware, Tennessee, Nevada, California, Montana, as well as Virginia and Maryland, natch. (And I’m probably forgetting a few.) What also bears noting is that a lot of people came by bus — and of the people that came to the march by bus, alomst all came on privately chartered buses organized by someone they knew. I asked one guy, who came up from South Carolina with 160 people on three buses, who put his trip together. He laughed and said, “My neighbor.” Can we drive a stake through the astroturf claim now?
the big silent majority isn’t so silent anymore…we’re on the move…and we are growing!