The media is WAY underplaying the women’s march in DC. there are OVER A MILLION PEOPLE. Not “around half a million.” OVER A MILLION.
It’s amazing. Chanting “Black lives matter” and “my body my choice” and “lgbtq and e; we just want equality.” Over a million people shoulder to shoulder with signs and anger channeled into action. THAT’S what the march was.
I talked to a police officer in DC today who said that there were about 1.6 million people. A guy who’s lived in DC for twenty years said that this was bigger than any Independence Day celebration he’s seen, which usually reach about a million.
Don’t let the news tell you that there are only 500k people (which would be impressive in itself). There are at least twice that.
I was at the Women’s March in DC today and didn’t have cell service all day, so I couldn’t get any news updates while I was marching. I thought it was weird when i got back to my campus and saw news sources reporting “about 250k, maybe pushing 500k” turning out.
This event was beyond monumental. We were lined up, completely packed in the roadways, from the end of the National Mall (the rally itself was staged somewhere around the Smithsonian American Indian Museum, with viewing screens and speakers set up intermittently down the Mall, because that’s about as far as they expected us to go) all the way to the Washington Monument and beyond. About two miles, maybe, of residents, students, and tourists, all turning up with their handmade signs for this event.
The Women’s March planning committee had estimated that there would be 250k to 500k people; that’s where they’re getting these numbers. In fact, the crowd so surpassed this estimate that the march itself had to be delayed as alternate routes and new logistics were worked out, because they literally had no clue where to put all of us. We were only supposed to march on Constitution Ave after the rally, but they ended up having to close new roadways for us to march on just because we couldn’t fit.
In reality, the media’s willfully understated approach to the march is probably to make Trump feel better about his less than impressive inauguration turnout. DC Metro (the main public transit source in DC) has been very forthcoming with their numbers for this weekend, and seem to be loving the fact that the numbers for the day of Trump’s inauguration are outnumbered by both of Obama’s inaugurations and the Women’s March – by a significant margin. Additionally, private charter buses coming into DC for the inauguration are absolutely, embarrassingly dismal compared to those coming for the Women’s March. Meanwhile, Trump administration is getting to work pumping out false propaganda, claiming Trump’s inauguration was record-breaking in attendance. His turn-out was so depressing that when he was setting up his shiny new presidential Twitter, he literally used a picture from Obama’s inauguration for the header; and here’s the kicker: he cropped out the watermark so he wouldn’t have to pay the licensing fee for it.
TL;DR: The inauguration’s turn-out was small enough Trump could hold it in his tiny hands, meanwhile Women’s March was yuuuuge, and now he’s throwing his first official presidential tantrum. Sad!