Curious as to how many people actually attended yesterday’s “tea party” rally on Milwaukee’s lakefront, I’ve done a little reading from multiple sources, to see if there’s a consensus. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel says several thousand people attended, while conservative blogger Glenn Frankovis, relating third-hand information from the Sheriff’s Department through Mark Block, put attendance at 15,000.
However, the Brew City Brawler has some photos of the rally, and he finds it hard to believe 15,000 people were in attendance. Here’s a photo of the rally, courtesy of the Brawler:
The Brawler estimates the crowd he saw at somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000, and while he didn’t stay for the entire rally, it’s kind of hard to believe the crowd got as large as some conservatives are estimating.
There is an aerial photo of the whole crowd posted at http://deekaman.blogspot.com/2009/09/milwaukee-tea-party_1440.html (click on the photo to enlarge it).
I would also estimate not over 1,000 people. There is only a small area in front of the stage where they are densely packed. The photo you posted was clearly taken toward the back of the crowd, so that is a little misleading.
However, without knowing the size of the space they are occupying, I can’t say for sure. The aerial photo is too distant to actually count heads.
Where were all these protestors when Medicare Part D was created? That’s what I want to know. I don’t think they are racists, for the most part. I think they support those they consider their kind of people, and I believe that most of them consider Condoleeza Rice and Clarence Thomas to be their kind of people (“Real Americans”). I think they are more opposed to Barack Obama’s multi-cultural upbringing than his race.
Many progressives consider that to be racism, but I think that many of the tea-partiers would have very different attitudes if President Obama’s father had been an African-American Baptist, for instance. So I would call it xenophobia rather than racism. There certainly are racists among them, but how many of us Wisconsinites do not have at least one uneducated racist relative? Would we want our entire families judged by the embarrassing comments of great-uncle Joe?
I don’t agree with the Tea Partiers’ arguments or core beliefs, but I think it is counter-productive to dismiss them as racist rants. We need to stop talking past each other and start talking with each other.
Curious how all you guys can take a remote photo and are smarter than the people who were there. The crowd was estimated at 10,000. I was there and I’ll believe that number. When the show was on all that empty space in your photo was full of people,
I just dont understand you people STARTING with MSNBC… why dont you just ask us what we think why all the NONSENSICAL speculation. Typical progressive crap “maybe we can intellectualize this thing into something we understand”. Dont deal with reality, some of your fellow citizens diagree with YOUR POLITICS.
uhhh….okay.
OJ: The picture is of the “front” of the crowd (i.e.,from the south)
I buy the Journal Sentinel’s estimate of several thousand.
You get your source from the Journal Sentinel? I was there, it was about 10,000. Please don’t report what you hear. Hearing is not fact.
Hearing isn’t fact, but neither is guessing at a number.
Zach…I was there and I undertook an actual count*…it was 4,182 + 20 cops – one loudmouthed jerk removed by said cops, which equals 4,201 total peeps present. I didn’t see the “Brawler” there, but looking at his photo…he appeared to have been hiding in the bushes up in Juneau Park…so he’s not included in my count.
*No actual count performed.
Crowd counting is an inexact science. I still think Jill is much farther off than my estimate of 10k.
All that said, does it matter? Maybe we’d be better off engaging each other in civil debate on why we are protesting and where Blue and Red have common ground (there’s much more of that than you might think).