25,000 San Diegans rallied at the downtown County Administration Building and then marched a few blocks around the waterfront for today’s historic Women’s March, that coincided with hundreds of similar marches around the country.
Based on a scientific estimate of the marchers, this reporter counted a minimum of 22,250 people in the march. This number did not take into account those who remained at the rallying point – at the Waterfront Park, those who came late or left early. (See below for my method.) So rounding up, I come to 25,000. It was about half of last year’s march, which reportedly had 40,000.
I never got close enough to the stage to even see it – there were so many people; and most in attendance were too far from the stage to hear the speakers. Yet, the festive and massive affair had a celebratory atmosphere – the biggest problem were folks who walked into the traffic lane. The signs – the many signs – were so great – they can’t be recounted here.
There were so many people, it took me a long time before I saw someone I knew – and that’s great.
(My method; I stood in one spot at the beginning of the march down Pacific Highway, and first averaged the number of marchers who went by within a minute; then I kept track of the minutes, even when police allowed marchers into a second lane, and stayed to the very end.)
Here’s some photos:
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I am aware that my crowd estimate is under – for once – the estimate of SDPD, which set it at 37,000; the U-T on Sunday even quoted a rally organizer saying it was 100,000 – way over-inflated. The SDPD number would place it near last year’s crowd of 40,000 – and it was not.