I second that. has been following it peripherally all day.
so does the 250k attendance figure put out by the media sound about right?
sure beats the 87k from Glenn Beck.[/quote]
Was there also. Hard to tell because there were huge crowds everywhere, even gathered in groups of several hundred to a couple thousand in locations several blocks away from the event site. But I think that a 250K figure could have been within the realm of possibility, based on my observations. We got there at 1:00 and there were thousands of people walking AWAY from the rally, and this was several blocks away. They may have already been down there, or they may have been discouraged by the their inability to get anywhere remotely close to where the event was taking place. It really was extremely crowded at the event itself. If you got caught in the crowd down there, you weren’t getting out. If there had been any sort of event to engender panic, many deaths would surely have occurred.
Fortunately, nothing of this sort happened. We extricated ourselves from the crush, and took ourselves down past the area where the event was supposed to end, where there were fewer people. It was a beautiful day weather-wise, and people were great. There were no incendiary signs, and better than that, there were no bumper-sticker slogan exchanges. People were discussing topics about which they had actually given some thought, and it was great. My only real complaint about the event was that the audio sucked (I’m looking forward to Jon Stewart’s blackboard analysis of the proof that it was Glenn Beck’s revenge sabotage). But it felt great being there, and I’m very glad that I was fortunate enough to have been able to do so.