Snorri1234 wrote:What you are basically saying is that more people showed up to watch Glenn Beck and a bunch of other guys than showed up for MLK's famous speech. That is just flat out ridiculous.
Seriously, 100k is already an enormous amount of people for a simple rally by a guy from tv.
Snorri, that was 47 years ago! Of course you will get more people today than you did then, for anything!
I Have a Dream" is the famous name given to the ten minute public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., in which he called for racial equality and an end to discrimination. King's delivery of the speech on August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 200,000 civil rights supporters,
We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial was a public celebration of the then forthcoming inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States at the Lincoln Memorial and the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on January 18, 2009. By some estimates the attendance was over 400,000.
By the way, when my group sang a musical rendition of the Gettysburg Address at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, I think the crowd was like 50-75.
Here is an article from the Christian Science Monitor.
That’s led to controversy in the past. In October 1995, the National Park Service estimated that about 400,000 people attended the “Million Man March” organized by the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan. Organizers were so angry they sent lawyers to meet with the Park Service.
Shortly thereafter, the Boston University Center for Remote Sensing estimated that the crowd had been 837,000, plus or minus 20 percent. What was the difference? The Park Service counted via pictures taken from videotape. The Center for Remote Sensing used original photo negatives.
Photos of the Beck event clearly show a big crowd. The weather was great – whatever the exact figure, there were a lot of people there. The area along the Reflecting Pool stretching out from the Lincoln Memorial was packed. Groups were gathered under trees far on either side. Large conglomerations of folks gathered all the way to the Washington Monument.
The crowd was big enough to disrupt Washington's subway system, with service from at least 12 stops disrupted due to long lines for entry.
Given that context, let’s wade into the numbers.
Rally organizers, in applying for their permit, said they expected a crowd of up to 300,000. And on Sunday, after the rally, Beck himself said on Fox News that the event drew 300,000 people on the low end, and perhaps as many as 650,000 people on the high end.
