DC912 Freepers! Did you march from the Plaza or go straight to the Capital?

vanity ^ | 9/12/2009 | speelurker

[speelurker]

Please take the linked poll. The answers will be used to help with the attendance analysis going on in this thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2338391/posts?page=1

[icwhatudo]

MSNBC claims estimates of "tens of thousands" is wrong, that crowd was HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS

[EmilyGeiger]

We marched! Somehow we got in the mix of some Texans, tried to catch up with our Alabama folks, but it was hard to get through. When we passed the building that has the freedom of speech on the side and saw some people standing on top we started yelling “Read the bill” and you lie. :) Fun times.

[tophat9000]

I'm shocked...MSNBC gave a fair report.. and thats not sarcasm...

[stratman1969]

Marched. I got there around 10:30 and started marching. Couldn’t find any familiar faces. The Metro from Virginia was packed in like sardines. I got on at West Falls Church, and the cars were already filled up. Someone told me there were no more parking spaces at the Vienna station, and that was 9:45 when I arrived at the station.

[vharlow]

When my friend and I got to Vienna metro, the parking lot was packed with people and their signs! It was so uplifting...let me tell you! The train was a six car and the driver kept saying we were an 8 car crowd in a six car train, and we were standing all the way from Vienna. It stopped and picked up more people along the way...sardines, yes, that was the best way to describe it. When we got out at Federal Triangle, there was no way to turn left to Freedom Plaza....the crowd was already moving down Pennsylvania Ave, and we just sort of inched along until we were in the thick of it!

Great day! One to always remember. I get depressed out here in liberal land, and yesterday reconfirmed my faith in the American people! Loved every minute of it!

[Wife of D28Man]

Our family represents three Freepers who didn’t even try to march with you guys. We came down on a bus from Wayne PA, and had a great time meeting new people and talking about FreeRepublic.

9/12 will turn out to be as great a milestone in American history as 9/11. It’s just going to take a while for history to overwhelm propaganda.

[stratman1969]

Sounds like the train I got on at Falls Church. Were packed in. People were having the doors close on them.

[vharlow]

It probably was! There was no way people should have been added all the way from Vienna! Methinks they misunderestimated the crowd for this affair! :-)

[Albion Wilde]

I actually drove in through the North East quadrant of DC, which had been majority-white working-class neighborhoods until the onset of the civil rights legislation in 1948, then solidly black from around 1955 until just a couple of years ago, when there has been a small movement to re-integrate and gentrify. I parked on a residential street (Saturdays and Sundays are free) not far from the Heritage Foundation, just past the huge Dirksen and Russell Senate office buildings, and hiked about 7 blocks over to the Capitol Building. You could hear the roars of the crowd from blocks away -- awesome!

Unlike the Bush-era anti-war demonstrations enabled by Pelosi, Soros et al, including the one in 2007 when Pelosi allowed the Park Police to stand down when anarchists spray-painted the marble steps of the Capitol, for this rally the Park Police had surrounded the Capitol lawns with anchor fencing to protect the building from rightwing religious knuckledragging bitter gun-clingers.

So when I approached from the North East, I initially got caught up in a fenced-in rabbit trap on the Capitol lawn where you couldn't get out without turing back and stepping over the same packed-in people you picked your way down through in the first place. It took me over an hour to get back out and start looking for Cindy-True-Supporter, Tom the Redhunter and other DC Chapter Freepers down past the Capitol lawn and reflecting pool. I never actually found any of them except BufordP, who was standing in the middle of First Street with a huge Urkel sign, and ConcreteBob, who was walking along near 3rd and Pennsylvania NW, looking for Jim Robinson and his party.

I walked down the Mall as far as 7th St, where there was a group of African-American sorority and fraternity members having a rally called the Black Family Reunion; but their event was not political and they were not reacting to the presence of the Tea Party people, with the exception of one individual sitting on a park bench razzing patriot-themed passersby. Most people know better than to start trouble in a group heavily loaded with veterans; even so, he was ignored.

There were not many persons of color in the Tea Party group, consistent with their voting pattern, but there were quite a few nevertheless, including many east Asians.

The Tea Party folks walked along the Mall in knots and streams as far as 15th Street at the Washington Monument, but were concentrated along Pennsylvania Avenue, which runs diagonally from the White House at 15th at F Sts NW down to the Mall at 3rd St NW; and they were densely packed listening to the speakers in the four blocks between 3rd and the Capitol west to east, solidly occupying a north-south axis of 1,500 feet between Constitution Ave above the Capitol grounds and Independence Ave below.

Here is the MapQuest interactive map. Ignore the 395 Freeway appearing to cut off the Capitol from the Mall -- it is actually underground.

I ran into freeper Matchett-PI from Florida, who had stopped to rest on the same curb as I had, and eventually met up with freepers EDINVA and AmericanVictory in front of the Capitol, and spent some time with them. As the crowd started to disperse at 4:00, I spotted lots of people who were studying maps of Washington's confusing street pattern (it was designed in the pre-airplane, pre-GPS era purposely to foil any advancing army or ground troops or cavalry), and spent some time helping them to return to their hotels and buses. It is possible to be at 9th and "G" Streets in any one of the four quadrants of DC, meaning that if you are in the wrong quadrant, you could be 18 to 32 long blocks from where you should be! I hooked up with a couple who had made that error in trying to return to their hotel and drove them back across town.

It was such a joy to see this huge turnout from so many states of the Union, and especially to see the hilariously biting sarcasm on the signs people wore or carried. Looked like the Sleeping Giant is waking up.

[maica]

Before I clicked on your ping, I was just looking at a google map of the Capitol, trying to see an estimate of the area that was packed with people yesterday. The failure of any overhead photos, except for traffic cams or roof photos of the Pennsylvania ave march is really cruel.

There were helicopters in the sky during the afternoon. I am sure that photos were taken!!!

[Albion Wilde]

I was so sorry to miss seeing you and your family members. I never did get around to your side of the reflecting pool, and as it is, both my feet are blistered and bandaged today, since I walked about 1/2 the scene on the Mall, and never even got over to the Pennsylvania Avenue crowd. Glad to know you got home ok!

[maica]

From a post by Buford P on another thread:

Using this graphic, 200,000 would seem to be an appropriate number for yesterday. My sisters and I were on the far side of the Reflecting Pool. The sound quality was very poor for some of the speakers, but the mood was solidly upbeat.

What a contrast to the ANSWER/anti-WTO/IMF anarchist protests.

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Great report - glad you did meet up with some Freepera and thanks for helping the lost!

[TPartyType]

When I walked down the mall at about 2 p.m., heading back to my car, I'd estimate people were VERY crowded onto the west lawn, thinning out significantly from the pool at Grant memorial back to about the second red dot on the mall (using the very helpful "Inauguration 2009 crowd estimator." There were a few thousand milling around the sidewalks along Pennsylvania Ave. back toward Freedom Plaza.

All things considered, I think 250-400K is plausible. FreedomWorks was hoping for 70K!!! Yeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaw!!!!

[TPartyType]

I was talking to some folks at 9:30 who said the Metro Stations all around the city were backed up with people trying to get to the march (which wasn't supposed to start until 11:30). But the DC Police got overwhelmed and had us start early because Freedom Plaza was too full by 9 a.m.!

I was a volunteer stationed at the very edge of the West Lawn, and it took 2 hours for the last marchers to file into the West Lawn. But people who'd been stuck at various metro stations were still coming at noon! UNBELIEVABLY EXCITING!

[dstarr]

I was there from North Carolina with another Freeper. (I never found any other Freepers.) She and I came in on a bus from Westminster, MD. Their group had 300 on 6 buses. The bus parked in the parking deck at Union Station along with heaven knows how many others. We marched a round about route but ended up merging into the mainstream of marchers on Pennsylvania. I think many of the other groups such as ours were parking and then coming in via side streets. It was as if we were streams feeding into a river. That in itself was an awesome feeling.

The stream of marchers continued by where we were sitting in a fringe area for easily a couple of hours. We couldn’t hear most of the speeches but would get up and walk around into the crowd. We loved the creativity that was on display. Lot’s of talent.

I can safely say that I have never been a part of anything so massive.

[SlightOfTongue]

We came in from Berks County (Reading, PA area). Trying to find a FReeper in that crowd was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. But it didn't matter. It was a blast being there with like minded conservatives and angry liberal types who don't like what's going on in this country.

I wish I could post a picture of the porta-potty that had the ACORN Field Office on the front. There were a of these hilariously accurate signs. I tried going over the FR HTML instructions to post pics here at FR but never was successful, and no one ever replied back to me on how to do this. And believe me, I asked - plenty of times. And, yes, I did try the Auto-Detect HTML option and got no positive results. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Don't know, and don't have the time to spend worrying about it.

Guess I'll try with my Photo Bucket account to see if it will work that way.

FR forever! Regards. SOT http://s707.photobucket.com/albums/ww73/tithonia1/?action=view&current=9-12-09DC026.flv

[SlightOfTongue]

Guess my PhotoBucket link didn't work. :>(

I give up. No help for the HTML-challenged, I guess.

[concentric circles]

< img width="number of pixels"height="number of pixels"src="url for photo">
< p>Caption

Beloved Field Office

< img width="300"height="400"src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5zLaikgpKYI/Sq4oOIzDaMI/AAAAAAAABOw/mutDrY6t0u0/s400/untitled3.bmp" >

< p >Beloved Field Office