We left from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, along with about 500 of our closest friends at about 6:35 AM Saturday. I'm surprised I'm going to say this, but kudos to Greyhound for getting us out pretty much on time. Kudos to the ridiculously long line of people for not going berserk.
Unfortunately traffic from Baltimore to D.C. was awful so we got in about one hour later than planned, about 11:45. From there it was a mad dash to the rally - where the crowd was beyond anything we'd expected.
I'd hoped we might see a nice turnout of 100,000 - I never for a second thought we would fail to outdraw the glennbeckrally - but we were not prepared for the mass we saw. My totally nonscientific estimate, based on the Iraq war protest march I attended in Manhattan which was about a million people, was that the crowd was about 200,000.
Turns out I was wrong, as estimates have it between 215,000 - 250,000. Basically you could not walk from the Capitol to the Museum of Natural History. And there was absolutely no way to get on the lawn by the time we got there.
We ended up standing across the street near the end of the national gallery of art, about half way down the body of the crowd.
Amazing.
Thanks so much to Colbert, Stewart and all the other organizers. If only news media would actually report on it as much as they did the tea partiers. Of course they won't.
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