A LOT of Protesters | mjh's blog

How many is ‘a lot’?
By Tom Regan

When I turned on the TV this morning to catch the

news, I confess I was a bit stunned when I heard the “official count” of Sunday’s march in New York.

The local CBS station was

quoting police officials and the Associated Press, who said that around 110,000 people were a part of the process that streamed past

Madison Square Gardens for four and one-half hours.

What! I’m sorry, but that figure is way, way, way too small. I’ve seen several

large marches in Washington, where the official count was 250,000 or more and this march was every bit the equal of those earlier

demonstrations.

So I asked a few of the people covering the convention here in New York their thoughts on the size of the rowd. To a

person, they scoffed at the lower figure. Monitor photographer Andy Nelson, who was in the thick of the crowd, said it was easily

200,000. One police officer outside the hall said he has heard as many as 400,000.

Organizers put the total at half a million. Well,

I’m not sure of that figure either. But I will tell you one thing — it was A LOT of people.

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams