Obviously each side of the issue tries to give numbers that would convince readers that there is high/low interest. Ten's of thousands sounds better than hundreds of thousands. The PRDleaders make great efforts to appear that they are IN THE TRENCHES, but all the while they are staying in plush hotels, and just come down to the squatter camps for photo opps. Sunday afternoon they had a human chain that ran a long distance, photos give the appearance that the chain was long but numbers of people short.
Photos of human chains, as opposed to massive crowds? I'm liking the sound of this :-) When you've got a diminishing crowd, you can try to hide that fact by asking folks to form a human chain that goes as far as the eye can see. It seems desperately silly.