Map of the Mall with Approximation of People

This map gives an estimation of the amount of people who fit in each area of the mall. The dots are the number of people that attended each inaguration. The biggest was Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 with 1.2 million. Click here for the actual interactive map.


On 9-12 people went almost all the way back to the Washington Monument. In the map above that count was 1.2 million. So maybe my est. of 850,000+ is an underestimation?

Here are some more pictures where you can kind of tell how far back people go...

Sophia Elena reporting from Washington D.C. at the March on Washington on September 13, 2009

Organizing for America got a small group gathered at Upper Senate Park, and marched around the fountain.

Video includes Time Lapse footage of protesters marching around the fountain and footage from the wall of the landscaping illustrate the gathering of people who attended the event.

Senate Votes to Revoke Federal Funds from ACORN!

This is such a huge victory for us! Washington is listeneing. Heard the news on, On the Record with Greta and you can find some more details here at Big Government.com

Tonight the Senate voted to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN. With a vote of 83-7 they have been denied housing and community grants.

There have been 3 videos released by two young investigative conservatives, James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, exposing the corrupution in ACORN offices in Baltimore, Brooklyn and Washington, D.C. After the second video ACORN was dropped bythe Census' and now after the third, it has bee denied HUD grants for programs.

ACORN is also being proscuted in several cities, including my hometown of Miami, of voter fraud.

Breaking Down the March on DC Count

Pajama Media breaks down the multiple reports:

“How big is it?” is certainly one of the world’s most dreaded questions.

In fact, after the Million Man March in 1995, Congress restricted the National Park Service from even making estimates — a restriction that was maintained for 14 years and then quietly rescinded this January for the Obama inauguration.

I’m talking about crowds, of course. I can’t take you people anywhere.

There have been a lot of estimates, from the “official” one of 60 to 70 thousand, up to the rumored 2 million. Let’s see if we can make a plausible estimate with some rigor and some idea of possible error.

Yesterday, I made a back of the envelope calculation that Stephen Green picked up at Vodkapundit, simply to see if the high estimates were at all plausible. A number I picked up by Google searching told me that a pretty good crowd is about 18 people in 10 square meters — that’s about half as crowded as a crowded elevator (approximately one person per six square feet).

Wikipedia told me that the National Mall covers about 125 hectares, or about 1.25 million square meters, and simple multiplication then tells us that if the whole mall was that crowded, that would be as many as 2.3 million people. Which is one hell of a crowd. Call that an upper bound — anyone who says it was more than 2.3 million is almost certainly wrong.

Just for comparison, we’ve got the Obama inauguration, which was originally estimated at 2 million and then revised down to about 850,000. Popular Science got GeoEye to take a satellite photo.

Now, via Green, we have a number reported by Barbara Espinosa from the “people meter” on Pennsylvania Ave — a total of 1.5 million people passed by during the march. Now, that’s some kind of direct count, but we don’t know what kind — if anyone has any information on this “people meter” I’d love to see it — so let’s save that as an estimate and see what else we get.
The National Park Service actually has a methodology for crowd estimation; they just were forbidden by Congress from using it after the Million Man March came out to be less than half a million. That restriction mysteriously disappeared for the Obama inauguration, and USA Today published a useful article on it.

Turns out the Park Service thinks a crowd is about one person per five square feet, or a little more dense than I used, but they clearly use a different area for the Mall than I got from Wikipedia — they say a full Mall is about 1.5 million. So all we need is an overhead photo, and we should be able to compare easily, right?

The only problem is that I can’t find one. No one paid to have GeoEye take one (next time, dammit) and no one has published one that I can find.

Darn.

So let’s take another approach. We’ve got Barbara Espinosa’s 1.5 million count. Is that plausible?
Here we have other comparable data, in the various pictures from Pennsylvania Avenue. There is a time lapse from the traffic camera at 14th Street, roughly where E would cross 14th NW if only E actually crossed 14th. It’s overlooking the Freedom Park, and looking down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. The White House is basically behind us from this point of view.

What that shows us is Pennsylvania Avenue full of people walking past for at least three hours. (This matches some other independent accounts, like this at the New York Times.) So more back of the envelope: it’s 1.1 miles from Freedom Park to the Capitol, and Pennsylvania is six lanes plus a middle turn lane and some sidewalks — call it 100 feet wide. That’s about 600,000 square feet, so if it were a crowd standing still, that is at least 100,000 people. We’ve got a picture of that, so that’s got to be a lower bound. We’ve also got a variety of pictures of at least the part of the Mall from 3rd to Capitol Circle and it’s pretty full — the Park Service method tells us that’s around 250,000 right there.

But the people on Pennsylvania aren’t standing still: they’re walking, marching, at something between 2 and 4 miles per hour because that’s how fast people march. Let’s choose 3 mph: that would mean a line of people marching past a single point for three hours would be about 9 miles long. In that time, there would be enough people to fill that chunk of Pennsylvania about 8 times. That’s conservative, as what I’ve heard from people actually marching is that it was pretty packed; it wouldn’t be hard to believe the 1.5 million number either.

That’s 800,000 people.

The Park Service method, filling just the Capitol end of the Mall, is 250,000, but we have many reports of much overflow, and we also can figure that they wouldn’t have marched past for three full hours if there were only that many.

The legacy media estimate of 60-70 thousand is ludicrous: we have pictures of twice that. Still, it’s been reported, so we’ll keep it.

That’s a pretty wide range. To summarize:

Rumored number: 2 million
“People meter” count: 1.5 million
8“Pennsylvania Avenues” full of people: 800 thousand
Grant Memorial area by Park Service method: 250 thousand
Legacy media reports: 70 thousand

Average all of those and we get 900,000 plus (924,000). Throw out the outliers, we get 850,000. And remember that the 1.5 million was a real count; it’s inherently a more believable number. Our estimate should be “pulled” upward by that.

Conclusion: probably well more than 850,000 in the crowd.

Which is a lot of people.

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That was about the estimate that I gave the first day...Looking at the Million Man March. I think this is probably the closest to correct number out there. It definitely felt that big!

Why Some Blacks are Having Buyer's Remorse

Courtesy of One News Now:

Some blacks now have doubts about Obama
by Star Parker

Americans of all political persuasions agree that the nation has problems. Big problems. And here's where we all part company. The political left, who now control our government, thinks we need more government -- a lot more. Those on the right see our problems as the result of excess government and want to move things in the opposite direction. The fact that Democrats, with their man in the White House and control of both houses of Congress, are having difficulty getting their big government programs passed says something about the strength of the grassroots push back now taking place. Stirring is even occurring among blacks.

According to the Pew Research Center, the president's approval rating nationwide is now 10 points lower than last April. Included in this is a three-point drop in his approval among blacks. You might say, Star, a drop in approval ratings among blacks from 95 percent to 92 percent is trivial. But I say not so. If we assume this reflects the 16 million blacks who voted for Obama last November, a three-point shift means there are about a half million blacks who now have buyer's remorse. This is meaningful. You take real risks going against the establishment in black America. Psychological risks, professional risks, and sometimes risks to personal safety. Peeling off a black who voted for Obama means moving heaven and earth.

Even a star like Bill Cosby incurred the wrath of the black establishment when he started talking about black families and personal responsibility. As result, he backed off and toned down his message. Recall during the campaign, candidate Obama ruffled Jesse Jackson's feathers when he spoke about personal responsibility among black males. An inadvertently "on" microphone picked up Jackson saying that he wanted to castrate Obama (not exactly in that language).

The black conservative is not that rare freak of nature that so many think. According to a Pew Research Center report, almost a third of blacks consider themselves conservative. However, these folks have always been inclined to be quiet because of the social pressures and intimidation. But this is changing. Despite slurs, intimidation, and widely reported physical attacks from union thugs, a few brave black souls have showed up at tea party protest rallies.

I'm getting more and more calls from black conservatives around the country running for local office. I see black conservative websites popping up, and there's even black rappers rapping a conservative message. Who, after all, could know more about the lie about government and the pretense of political answers to life's problems than blacks? It's black families that have been devastated by welfare state programs and black kids now trapped in hopeless public schools. And it's overwhelmingly black unborn children who never see the light of day. How can blacks who have their eyes open not have noticed that it was Obama who killed the D.C. school voucher program and sent black children back to one of the worst public school systems in the country?

The Cato Institute reports that, after adjusting for inflation, funds spent on public schools have doubled since 1970, with no improvement in education performance and a decrease in graduation rates. This is government at work. The Israelites wandered for 40 years after they left Egypt, giving time for the slave generation to disappear and for a new generation to bear the responsibilities of freedom. Next year marks 40 years since the decade of the '60s, which gave us the civil rights movement. I see a new generation of freedom-loving, church-going black Americans coming on the scene. Many voted for Obama out of racial pride. But their values and aspirations for freedom are causing a change of heart.

State Attorney, Jessamy, has Questionable Motives

Undeniably ACORN and Obama have a relationship that is woven closely together. So if you support Obama you would want to keep anything that makes him look bad under wraps right?

Well, the State Attorney in Baltimore, Patricia Jessamy, who is considering prosecuting the ACORN filmmakers, was on the Obama Campaigns Steering Committee during the election. She contributed $1,000 to his campaign. Do you think she has alternative motives?

Here is the statement released by the State Attorney's Office:

September 11, 2009 – We have received inquiries from citizens and the media asking whether the Baltimore City State’s Attorneys Office would initiate a criminal investigation for acts allegedly committed at ACORN offices located in Baltimore. The only information received in reference to this alleged criminal behavior was a YouTube video. Upon review by this office, the video appears to be incomplete. In addition, the audio portion could possibly have been obtained in violation of Maryland Law, Annotated Code of Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article §10-402, which requires two party consent. If it is determined that the audio portion now being heard on YouTube was illegally obtained, it is also illegal under Maryland Law to willfully use or willfully disclose the content of said audio. The penalty for the unlawful interception, disclosure or use of it is a felony punishable up to 5 years.

Patricia Jessamy needs to recuse herself because of her ties to Obama and Obama's ties to ACORN!

Joe Wilson is the Reason Illegals won't Get Health Care

MSNBC, White House on Health Care and Illegal Immigration

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Obama Admits Rep. Wilson Was Right

by Bryan Fischer, AFA Director of Issue Analysis

The White House has now conceded that Rep. Joe Wilson was exactly right when he accused President Obama of lying when Mr. Obama denied that illegal aliens would be covered under the government takeover of health care.

Wilson knew that every attempt to deny coverage to “undocumented immigrants” had been voted down by Democrats, and that there was no verification method or enforcement mechanism in place to keep them from getting taxpayer-subsidized health insurance.

Last night, the White House caved, releasing a statement saying that the administration is now backing a proposal that says, “Verification will be required when purchasing health insurance on the exchange,” and specifically mentions the SAVE program (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) that states currently use to make sure illegals don’t consume taxpayer-funded benefits that are reserved for legal residents.

The bottom line here is that if Rep. Wilson hadn’t “called out” the president, this concession never would have occurred. It turns out that everybody who supports sound immigration policy but who condemned the Congressman – including House Republicans that forced Wilson to apologize publicly - now owes him an apology. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.