You might not realize it, but there's this rally going on in Washington

The Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear is/was set to occur in the National Mall, between 3rd and 7th streets. That's about 1/3 of the Mall. They expected 60,000 people.

There's, uh, a bit more than that. We got there at the start time of noon, at which point the crowd was already well past 9th St. As crowds go, it was pretty well-behaved, and there was a surprising lack of elbowing and pushing. Still, it didn't take long for all of our "this is too many people" buttons, and we joined the throng of people headed OUT of the Mall. There's some pretty impressive pictures from the video feed that show the crowd. What those pictures don't show is all the crowds OUTSIDE of the Mall. An entire block around the north side of the Mall (and I presume the south side as well, but we didn't go south) is ALSO packed with people bearing signs and clearly there for the rally. It's pretty much impossible to see or hear anything. We heard some of the rally because one guy had a radio and was listening to the broadcast of it. There was a drum circle further back, presumably on the theory that if you can't hear the main party, you may was well have your own.

We ended up watching the last hour of the rally from the hotel room, with aching feet and twitching just a little-- all three of us have crowd issues. While I'm glad that we came (this is my first political rally ever), I suspect that I won't be repeating the experience. And I'm terribly, terribly heartened by the fact that a rally whose main claim is "We need more sanity" can draw this kind of crowds.

You might not realize it, but there's this rally going on in Washington

The Rally To Restore Sanity and/or Fear is/was set to occur in the National Mall, between 3rd and 7th streets. That's about 1/3 of the Mall. They expected 60,000 people.

There's, uh, a bit more than that. We got there at the start time of noon, at which point the crowd was already well past 9th St. As crowds go, it was pretty well-behaved, and there was a surprising lack of elbowing and pushing. Still, it didn't take long for all of our "this is too many people" buttons, and we joined the throng of people headed OUT of the Mall. There's some pretty impressive pictures from the video feed that show the crowd. What those pictures don't show is all the crowds OUTSIDE of the Mall. An entire block around the north side of the Mall (and I presume the south side as well, but we didn't go south) is ALSO packed with people bearing signs and clearly there for the rally. It's pretty much impossible to see or hear anything. We heard some of the rally because one guy had a radio and was listening to the broadcast of it. There was a drum circle further back, presumably on the theory that if you can't hear the main party, you may was well have your own.

We ended up watching the last hour of the rally from the hotel room, with aching feet and twitching just a little-- all three of us have crowd issues. While I'm glad that we came (this is my first political rally ever), I suspect that I won't be repeating the experience. And I'm terribly, terribly heartened by the fact that a rally whose main claim is "We need more sanity" can draw this kind of crowds.