Zac Moilanen; Indiana University Page | 1 The Real Number of Protesters at the 9/12 Washington D.C. March Because there is so much skepticism following the march on 12 September 2009, I decided to draw it out for you guys. Arriving to Washington, D.C. from the Indianapolis-D.C. flight on Friday, marching from 13 th and Pennsylvania at 9:00 in the morning, until finally leaving the Capitol Building at 2:30 in the afternoon, I’m appalled at 1) the lack of coverage for this protest and 2) the amount of (taking Obama’s own words) “misinformation” being thrown out there about the march. Apparently, video, hundreds of pictures and eye-witness reports are not enough for the general public. You take your CNN report of 10,000 people and denounce any other number as conservative and Republican slander. There is your first mistake. Before I get to numbers, this was not a Republican or conservative-only thing. Yes, Freedomworks and Glenn Beck did play a huge part, I, nor anyone else, is going to argue that because it’s true. I want to stick to facts here and make this as unbiased as possible. In the crowd there were independents, moderates, conservatives, democrats, former democrats, and even people who didn’t affiliate with a party. As the 9-12 Project mission statement reads: The 9-12 Project is designed to bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001. The day after America was attacked we were not obsessed with Red States, Blue States or political parties. We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the values and principles of the greatest nation ever created. You can take that at face value. I’m not here to convince you who marched or not. As a witness myself, I saw posters and slogans depicting both Bush and Obama as the Joker, denouncing Congress, Pelosi, Liberals, big government, high taxes, the war in Afghanistan, gun control, abortion… the list goes on and on. From Florida to Alaska, all walks of life were here. But, once again, believe what you will. I’m here to show you hard evidence about the amount of people, not the kind of people. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Comparison #1: Obama’s Inauguration For comparison, I will use an inauguration and a protest at D.C. so that you can get a feel of how many people can actually fit into the North, West and South fields of the Capitol building, the
Because there is so much skepticism following the march on 12 September 2009, I created a 15-page unbiased research paper showing aerial footage, schematics, pictures and data comparing the Obama Inauguration, the March on Washington, the Promise Keepers Rally, and the 9-12 Project in terms of the amount of people who attended.
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As of 17 September 2009, 8:32 AM, I have updated this report. In this revised edition, I have settled the following discrepancies: In Comparison #1, the inauguration photo taken from the podium was misrepresented as picturing the Obama Inauguration. Updated previous Google Map graphics with new Google Earth ones. The length of Pennsylvania Avenue and the National Mall were incorrect due to misreading a measurement. Both of them have been fixed with help of Google Earth. The estimated numbers based on these lengths have been updated to coincide with the correct lengths. A link showing protesters at the National Mall are behind the fountain has been posted so that skeptics can see that although the 9-12 Project did not have a permit for the area, people had to fill in there due to housekeeping issues.
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Z a c M o i l a n e n ; I n d i a n a U n i v e r s i t y P a g e | 1
The Real Number of Protesters at the 9/12
Washington D.C. March
Because there is so much skepticism following the march on 12 September 2009, I decided to
draw it out for you guys. Arriving to Washington, D.C. from the Indianapolis-D.C. flight on Friday,
marching from 13th and Pennsylvania at 9:00 in the morning, until finally leaving the Capitol Building at
2:30 in the afternoon, I’m appalled at 1) the lack of coverage for this protest and 2) the amount of
(taking Obama’s own words) “misinformation” being thrown out there about the march. Apparently,
video, hundreds of pictures and eye-witness reports are not enough for the general public. You take
your CNN report of 10,000 people and denounce any other number as conservative and Republican
slander. There is your first mistake.
Before I get to numbers, this was not a Republican or conservative-only thing. Yes,
Freedomworks and Glenn Beck did play a huge part, I, nor anyone else, is going to argue that because
it’s true. I want to stick to facts here and make this as unbiased as possible.
In the crowd there were independents, moderates, conservatives, democrats, former democrats,
and even people who didn’t affiliate with a party. As the 9-12 Project mission statement reads:
The 9-12 Project is designed to bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001. The day after America was attacked we were not obsessed with Red States, Blue States or political parties. We were united as Americans, standing together to protect the values and principles of the greatest nation ever created. You can take that at face value. I’m not here to convince you who marched or not. As a witness
myself, I saw posters and slogans depicting both Bush and Obama as the Joker, denouncing Congress,
Pelosi, Liberals, big government, high taxes, the war in Afghanistan, gun control, abortion… the list goes
on and on. From Florida to Alaska, all walks of life were here. But, once again, believe what you will. I’m
here to show you hard evidence about the amount of people, not the kind of people.
Z a c M o i l a n e n ; I n d i a n a U n i v e r s i t y P a g e | 9
By now I’m sure everyone has seen the street camera above 14th Street. I’ll let the author do (9/12 Protest Washington DC Time Lapse Footage 0800 – 1130 by N37BU6; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sjvc6baor8)
the talking in order to explain how long each second of the video actually translates to real time.
The shortest time span between frames here is 60 seconds despite the source being updated every 2
seconds. All frames were captured manually by me as .PNG files, extended to 1/3 second long and
stitched together at 30FPS… So... framerate = 30 to satisfy YouTube's algorithms, visible framerate = 1/3
of that as 10FPS is taken up displaying the same image. Total running time approx 40 sec, total time
represented = 3.5 hours.
Figure 3a-c (located on pages 12 and 13) will be your visual aid for this next part. Bear with me
in having to go between page nine, ten and eleven in order to see the graphic. I feel as if it needs to be
as big as possible so everyone can understand and see clearly what exactly is going on. (Map courtesy of
Google Earth).
1) The yellow tack is about where the street camera is: 1401 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. According
to the video and the time designated to it by the author, the first 13 seconds are a time-
lapse of people gathering. Also, according to the protest, meeting to start the march would
be at Freedom Plaza. You can see that the plaza extends past the camera picture. I will only
be using what we see in the calculations so that nothing can be seen as bias or “assumed”
data later on. At 14 seconds you can start to see people moving from the plaza. The author
states that the gathering was sped up, so that section of the video is faster than the rest.
And although the march was scheduled to start at 11:00 AM, the crowd got so large that we
had to start early, around 10:00 AM. We can assume this is when the time lapse march
starts.
2) To calculate the number of people on Pennsylvania Ave. at one time, we must wait until the
time lapse shows that the beginning group of the march has reached the Capitol. Still, as
mentioned by both skeptics and marchers alike, the validity of this video is of course going
to be in question as we are assuming that someone did in fact take screenshots of the time
lapse for the entire march. Once again, take that at face value. If you believe it, you believe
it. If you don’t, you don’t. I’m assuming it’s pretty accurate. On that note, it should be
known that at the 16-second mark, the crowd is one-third of the way down the street; 17-
seconds they are two-thirds; 18-seconds it appears they have reached the Capitol. According
to the video, it took three seconds on the sped up camera for the protesters to fill up the
entire length of Pennsylvania Ave. from the intersection at 13th ST, down eight blocks to the