[Peace-discuss] Numbers

[Chuck Minne]

These are just approximate, so take them for what it is worth:

 

Someone told me the parade route was 3.2 miles long, that is 16,900 feet long.

I would estimate that the streets were no more than 80 feet wide, gutter to gutter. I never saw them filled gutter to gutter but say that they were, then the total parade area was 16,900 feet times 80 feet, that is equal to 1.352,000 square feet.

 

I don’t know how many square feet a single marcher takes, but I estimate the minimum amount would be a square yard, or 9 square feet. So if the march filled the whole route at one time, and for it to do that the head of the march would have had to meet the tail, since the start and end points were the same (Constitution and 15th,) the total number of marchers would have been 1,352,000 square feet divided by 9 square feet per marcher. This equals 150,200 marchers.

 

I know that the head never met the tail, so the whole route was never full of marchers. I know that when the head got to 14th and Pennsylvania, there were still marchers at 15th and Pennsylvania, so the route was probably at least half full. By the “head” I mean where most banners started and the street was crowded, there were marchers ahead of the “head” but they were extremely scattered.

 

My own estimate of the crowd size goes like this. 

Length of the parade = 2 miles (roughly 70% of the total route)

Width of the parade = 60 feet

Average square feet used per marcher = 16 square feet (roughly a 4’ by 4’ space)

Based on these numbers, the number of marchers was: 2 X 5,280 X 60 / 16 = 39,600

 

 



 

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y215/mincam/05%20Protest/air.jpg

 

>From the aerial photo, the Ellipse is not half full, but some marchers are already on Constitution Avenue, however there appear to be very few, if any marchers as far north as the black dot on 15th Street, this indicates that the march has yet to start. (Marchers started forming very early, being bored with all the speeches, and chanting “march, march;” the master of ceremonies pleading that there was just a few more speakers.) 

 

Here again you can use your own judgment, but I assume that the people on the street would fill the Ellipse to about 70%. The Ellipse is roughly 1,100 feet in “diameter.” assuming that it were a circle. Thus its area is roughly 3.14 X 550 X 550 = 950,000 square feet. At 70% full, that would amount to 665,000 square feet. Again assuming that each person used 16 square feet (which I feel, from being there, is a very conservative number,) the number of people in this photo is 

665,000 / 16 = 41,562

 

We can also consider how many came by bus and how many were local enough to come some other way? This is purely guesswork, but say half came by bus. If you say that the crowd was 200,000, then 100,000 came by bus. A bus holds about 50 people, so there would have to have been 100,000 / 50 = 2,000 extra buses in the DC area. Our bus picked us up at the end of the Red Line Metro station. I think many if not almost all of the buses picked up their passengers at the end of one metro line or another. Our bus left fairly late, so I got a feel for how many buses came to this station, and I would guess that it was not over 75, and probably less than 50. There are probably five, perhaps six, metro stations that the buses would have used for this purpose (that is based on the assumption that few buses were headed east.) Six stations with 50 buses each would make 300 busloads; which is equal to about 15,000 demonstrators.

 

A final method is to compare the crowd in the Ellipse to the crowd of 70,000 or 80,000 or whatever that you have experienced at a sporting event or concert. Does the ellipse crowd seem to be significantly larger? I say no.

 

I am not saying my numbers are right, they are simply educated guesses. But if I had to bet, I would bet that there were less than 100,000 people at that event. I’m glad that the media says more, for I think that is good for the cause, but I do not think it is accurate. Anyway, you are free to change my numbers to whatever you think is accurate.

 


		
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