My understanding was that the march was to start from Freedom Plaza at 11:30 am. But when I checked the 14th St/E St. Webcame at 10:30am, the swarm of people was already way up Pennsylvania Ave., near the Capitol Building. To me, this was obviously because Freedom Plaza overflowed.
I got to Freedom Plaza about 11:15am. The Plaza was already empty, but Penn Ave. was a mass of humanity. I filed in on the march to the Capitol, thinking I was among the last to arrive. But as I kept looking back every few minutes, there was just a wall of people behind me as far as I could see. I have no idea where all those people behind me came from, nor where all those tens of thousands of people I had seen on the Webcam an hour before had gone to.
A-M-A-Z-I-N-G as all I can say. My a$$ if there were not more than 1 million people there. Easily.
Yeah, we kind of figured they just started marching early because of the size of the crowd at the Plaza had grown too large. We joined in at about the Federal Triangle area around 10:20 and by that time it was obvious the march had been going on for some time. We saw nothing but people in front of us (and behind us) nearly all the way to the Capitol, so they must have started much, much earlier than anticipated.