🚀 go-pugleaf

packer@amarna.gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles Packer) writes:

>The Park Police in Washington continue their tradition of
>inflating their official estimates of crowd size at protest
>demonstrations. They estimated 500,000 for Sunday's abortion
>rights march. (I support the objectives of that protest, by
>the way.) By comparison, the resident population of D.C. is
>625,000.

>I spent about an hour and a half there and I would estimate
>70,000 seated on the Mall. After about 3 PM the crowd didn't
>get any larger, and it was easy to see that people were walking
>away at about the same rate they were marching in. If this throughput
>continued for two hours, that would be another 36,000 to 60,000.
>Taking the higher figure, I come up with 130,000. 

>The NY Times compared this demonstration to the 1989 abortion
>rights march, for which the official figure was 300,000. In '89 I
>asked Capt. Hugh Irwin of the Park Police about this. He's
>the one responsible for the crowd estimates. After telling me
>how they gave the demonstrators "the benefit of the doubt,"
>he conceded that there probably 125,000 people at that march.

I was there, too, and I must disagree.

During the 1989 march, the press did in fact report the official figure at
300,000.  However, the NOW national staff estimated 600,000.  They could not
prove it at the time, but their estimates were based on the coordination of
busses, etc., at the individual state and community levels.  The Metro
(D.C.'s subway system) also provided support to the NOW estimates - they
indicated that ticket sales on the day of the march were over 600,000 more 
than for normal Sunday ridership.  Certainly, NOW was interested in making 
the strongest statement possible, and therefore contested the park police 
figure.

So, in 1992, as you probably know from having participated yourself, there
were a large number of NOW officials (I don't know how many, but would guess
approximately 100) who slipped through the crowds collecting signatures and
addresses of the participants throughout the day. This was done in order to 
get a more accurate count.  NOW wanted to avoid a repeat of the 1989 
underestimation by the police officials and the press.  I believe that this
task was performed in a highly efficient manner in that I do not believe that
there were many people who did not sign in, and I do not believe that there
will be many duplicate signatures.  The officials (at least the one who signed
me in) were very clear as to the purpose of these lists.

At 4:00PM, Patricia Ireland (National NOW president) announced that 750,000 
signatures had been collected and counted thus far.  She emphasized that this 
was a preliminary count, and was being announced at that particular time so 
that the various members of the press could get the data in before the closing 
deadlines for the evening news and morning papers.

By 8:00PM, the official NOW count had reached over 1,000,000.  It will probably 
be a few days before the final figures are sorted and verified.

I spoke with a D.C. officer (I didn't catch his name) during the march itself.
He had been trying to count the number of people passing a given point per
unit time and had estimated that given the number of people on average he
was counting per minute, and the fact that the march had gone on for two
hours at that point (and took over four hours to complete), that over 500,000
people had crossed his path.

At about 5:00PM, the entire mall from the stage at 3rd street to the Washington
Monument at 15th street was packed with people.  An arial view would confirm
this fact.

Finally, to give your estimate of 100,000 more perspective, the Massachusetts
State NOW estimated 40,000 people at the march from Massachusetts alone.  This
number is based on the busses, car-pools, trains, and planes which the 
Massachusetts office helped to coordinate.  It does not include people like
myself who made their own arragements to travel to Washington and be counted.
I also know for a fact that Smith College alone sent over 450 delagates, and
that was not unusual for the many colleges and universities in the Boston
area.  I believe the Massachusetts numbers to be accurate, and find it 
difficult to believe that our state represented 40% of the entire march.  

I would like to add more evidence of a significant crowd from my own experience.
At about 6:00PM, I left the Mall in search of food.  I walked several blocks
away and stopped in a large hotel to dine in the restaurant downstairs (I
don't recall the name of the hotel - I think it was a Raddison).  There were
about thirty people eating there, and easily four out of five were obviously
coming from the march judging from the buttons, posters, tee-shirts, etc.

I arrived at Union Station at 7:30PM.  The station was absolutely packed with
people.  It reminded me of a large shopping mall two days before Christmass.
I would estimate that at least 95% of the people there were also obviously
coming from the march.  Everyone was talking about it, and still wearing
buttons, tee-shrits, etc.

In conclusion, the D.C. Park Police estimates were more likely to be low than
high, in my opinion.  Some news papers only reported these official figures,
others included NOW's estimates as well.  Even at 500,000 people, the march
was the largest that Washington has ever seen, including the civil rights
marches and the marches against the Vietnam War.  You can dismiss the numbers
if you like, but it is my belief and hope that the voting public and the 
polititions won't.

Thank you for participating and being counted yourself, by the way!

-- Ian Douglas Agranat, President	
   Agranat Systems Inc.
   ian@Agranat.COM

   Active member of the Women in the Media Task Force of the Lexington 
   Massachusetts chapter of the National Organization for Women.