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Saturday, September 24, 2005

Huge

Posted by on September 24 at 13:55 PM

Ok, this march is huge. I just disappeared into a Starbucks for an hour to write that last post, and to eat something, and when I reemerged I expected to tag on to the tail end of the march, or to walk the empty march route back to the Washington Memorial. Instead, I found myself still in a sea of people stretching ahead and behind me as far as I could see. The march has now been going on for four hours, and I keep falling further and further back in it as I duck out for various reasons, and there’s still no end.

I’m no expert in crowd estimations, but if there’s not more than 100,000 people here I would be very surprised. I’d actually guess 200,000 or more.

All that was needed was 100,000 people coming out today in order to create a bigger anti-war protest than any held here since the Iraq war began, and perhaps bigger than any in D.C. in a long time. If they’ve hit that number, that’s one more step toward this being viewed as a major turning point.

(Also difficult to count: The number of Starbuckses along the march route, which makes it quite easy for me to march and slog, march and slog, march and slog…)