Margie and I were there. We just had a feeling it would be big and wanted to be a part of History. We were. Not even arguably, this was the largest protest ever staged in Washington DC - ever! We stayed in Alexandria and scoped out the Metro and the DC area on 9-11. Alexandria is quite a ways out and we planned to use the Van Dorn street station to get down to the Federal Triangle station. We were to gather at Freedom Plaza. Based on what we saw in the way of 9-12 t-shirts on 9-11, we knew Freedom Plaza would be too small.
It was.
The Van Dorn Street Metro station is the next to the last station on the Blue line. We arrived at 8AM which was several hours early. Most of the seats were taken from the single previous stop, and then we filled the train as the occupants cheered. This was the scene all the way - at every stop we cheered the people getting on. The train was absolutely packed with predominantly clean-cut and well-dressed protesters by the time we reached down town. Many people were having to wait for the next train at each station. Jumping ahead of myself a bit, this was the situation for the next four hours. "We the People" totally overloaded the Metro system from 7AM when it opened until noon. Even after 12:00, they were still coming but only by the tens of thousands that late in the morning.
The rally point, Freedom Plaza, had overflowed up and down all side streets so much that by 9:00 the protest "popped the cork" on Pennsylvania Avenue and started moving toward the Capitol on it's own. There was no stopping us. Thank God we were a gathering of peaceful citizens because the authorities in DC were caught completely off guard. What I am saying here is that a less patriotic gathering could have literally destroyed the city - a sobering thought.
Margie and I had moved to what we thought was the front of the march just before it started moving. We were densely packed all the way down to the Capitol. Upon arrival, we found the area already full and overflowing to both sides of the Capitol lawn and even out into the Mall. And again, we were near the front of the march!
I kept looking back up Pennsylvania for the next couple of hours and they were still coming down curb to curb and densely packed. No one was prepared for so many people and there were precious few facilities. Simply for physical reasons, we knew we could not stay longer and so we started back up Pennsylvania Ave about 10:45 and arrived back up at Freedom Plaza at noon. The police were trying to move the crowds still coming off the trains out of the street and into the sidewalks.
Estimate? There will be a lot of controversy with the New York Times leading the way. They estimated the crowd at 500 people. From the ground and at the time Margie and I reached the Capitol, I estimated a half-million but this was before I knew how many were coming in behind us. Without going into details, I know a bit about crowd size and crowd control. There were at least one million people there, and we only saw one single solitary counter protester - this is a conservative estimate - pardon the pun.
The general theme was "Can you hear us now?" If partisan means "Democrat" or "Republican", this was a non-partisan protest. It was an anti-Democrat and an anti-Republican demonstration. It was a "hey Washington, you are not listening" protest. It was a "stop spending what you don't have" protest. It was a "no pork" protest. It was a "read the bill" protest. I can go on an on. Much of the energy was spent on Democrats but only because they are in power.
This was truly a "tea party" directed against the "system" and we drove over 3000 miles to be a part of it.
Margie and Jim Lawrence
Republished with permission of Jim Lawrence
Mr. Lawrence is an engineer with Mustang Engineering in Houston, Texas
