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 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.

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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
Zac Moilanen; Indiana University Page |2

surrounding areas (including the street, statue area, and everywhere around the water right in front of
the National Mall) and other parts of D.C.

Obama Inauguration as seen from Google-Eye Fig.1a

http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/01/20/pictures-president-obamas-inauguration-as-seen-from-space/

Inauguration Crowd Estimate Schematic Fig.2a

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-19-crowd_N.htm

With the 2009 Inauguration for President Obama, following this schematic we see that the
North, West, and South seating areas are completely full. The standing area behind the reflecting pool
and official mall standing area are not. Theoretically, this entire ticketed area would hold 240,000
people. Judging that the field area is about half of that number, we can make a rough estimate that
probably 170,000 were in this ticketed portion (120,000 coming out of the half that makes up the field
ticketing area, and the other 50,000 in the ticketed standing area). Like I said, I’m estimating here. If you
have an exact count, great, but I’m guessing this is a reasonable number judging by the picture.
Zac Moilanen; Indiana University Page |3

Obama Inauguration as seen by Google-Eye Fig.1b

http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/01/20/pictures-president-obamas-inauguration-as-seen-from-space/

Inauguration Crowd Estimate Schematic Fig.2a

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-19-crowd_N.htm

Here is the mall and monument area. Comparing the Google image to the schematic, having
filled the entire highlighted strip would complete more than three-quarters of the National Mall. It’s
obvious that the highlighted area is not nearly as full as it would need to be to satisfy the theoretical
amount, but you have to take into account the huge crowd around the monument. With this, we can
safely say that there are at least 800,000 people there if you were to fill the monument crowd into the
public access area highlighted above, leaving about one ‘block’ of the field empty. There may be plus or
minus a few thousand, but that seems like a good estimate.
Zac Moilanen; Indiana University Page |4

http://www.cmu.edu/cfa/drama/news/news/archive/obamaevent.htm

So, for the Obama inauguration, almost a million people were in attendance. In fact, according
to our estimated numbers, 970,000 people were there. That is a huge crowd.

However, as you can see from this photo of a previous inauguration, the area in front of the
Capitol is nicely organized with seats, rows and designated walkways. The statue area is empty, and if
you were to assume that all inaugurations are set up like the above photo, nobody is on the marble-
white statue area, the roundabouts, or the streets alongside the reflecting pool. Being an inauguration,
it is very organized, allowing traffic, both vehicular and foot, to pass through.
Zac Moilanen; Indiana University Page |5

In conclusion, in the 2009 Obama Inauguration we see that there are almost a million people in
attendance. That is undeniable. Through crowd-estimate schematics and satellite pictures, a number
like that is not at all hard to believe.

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Comparison #2: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

If you’re up to date on your history, you’ll know that the March on Washington in 1963 was held
at the Lincoln Memorial, and not at the Capitol Building. Although it occurred on the opposite side of the
previous inauguration, it was still a large crowd, numbering more than 200,000 people.

March on Washington, 1963

http://www.spsmw.org/WoodsUp/Justice/Beastarcitizen/Loveofcountry/tabid/825/Default.aspx

Although it’s nowhere close to a Google satellite shot, this picture is still very telling of the
number of people that attended. As you can see, the East side of the memorial is packed, from the steps
to the front of the reflecting pool. Also, the strip of people running down the length of the reflecting
pool does not stop until it hits the monument. Side by side, Figure 2b shows that the area of the March
on Washington is a lot smaller than that of the National Mall. It may look big in the picture, but the

Inauguration Crowd Estimate Schematic Fig.2a Fig.2b

Zac Moilanen; Indiana University Page |6

schematic shows that the small strip of land between the pool and the trees isn’t even half, let alone a
quarter of the width of the highlighted National Mall area. As stated earlier, the pictures make it seem
like a lot more than 200,000 people, but, theoretically, the entire March on Washington could fit in the
first inaugural ticketed area in Figure 2a.

It’s small compared to the 2009 inauguration, but the March on Washington was a huge,
energetic crowd. Still, it is described as “thousands of people,” and not “hundreds of thousands.”

This protest shows that pictures can, in fact, be deceiving. I wouldn’t be surprised that the
majority of those asked about this particular photo would say that a million of people had to have been
there. “Just look at the never-ending sea of bodies.”

In conclusion, the 1963 March is one of the largest, well recorded protests in Washington D.C.
However, it is only 200,000-300,000 depending on your source.

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Comparison #3: The Promise Keepers Rally

Searching through a multitude of photo galleries and documents, it seemed as if other Capitol protests
lacked a good overhead shot of the National Mall and field areas. There is, however, one other event
that should be brought to light. As a warning, I want to be sure and inform you that I cannot claim that
these are in fact real photos. I do believe they are, but it’s proving difficult to find official information on
the Promise Keepers Rally in D.C.

Promise Keepers Rally

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message879501/pg1
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Promise Keepers Rally

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2174736/posts

The previous photo is from an online forum, and the estimated numbers have ranged from one-
million and up to four-million according to an article at the website shown above-PublicEye.org. If this is
in fact a real event, which I’m not saying it is or isn’t, I just cannot find sufficient information on the topic
to make a “for sure” comparison, then according to the previous inaugural schematics than that would
put this rally at well over a million people. Matching the picture with the highlighted areas in Figure 2a,
the standing ticketed area is completely full, as well as every portion of the mall leading up to the road.
This alone, would be around 1,066,000 (120,000 for half of the ticketed area plus the complete 946,000
public access), not including the Washington Monument field, where, by looking at the picture, I was
able to make a rough estimate and create Figure 2c (shown on page eight). In the article and forum

Fig.2a
Zac Moilanen; Indiana University Page |8

Estimated Location of People at PKR Fig.2c

posts, it’s stated that traffic was not stopped by the Promise Keepers Rally, so it is safe to assume that
around the monument, as well as the mall, the marchers did not get off the grassy area. Using the red in
Figure 2c, we can equate that to be about the size of the Capitol Building seated ticketed section,
making the crowd around the monument to be around 120,000. Add this to the above calculated
1,066,000, and we get 1,186,000 people. That would mark the greatest amount of people at the Capitol
Building in this report so far.

In conclusion, if there was any more information on the Promise Keepers Rally, this would make
one heck of a better comparison. Forums, obscure blogs and non-official photographs are hard to grasp,
I understand that. But, if this is fact true and not some PhotoShopped imaged (once again, I’m not
saying that it is), then look at the numbers. Look at the pictures. Look at the facts. This is what over a
million people looks like.

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The 9-12 Project

Once again, whether you agree on what the protest stands for or not, put your preconceptions
aside. I’m not here to debate that. I’m here to, not only learn for myself how many people were in fact
at this protest, but to hopefully shed light on a subject that the media can’t even get right.

th
14 and E ST NW Street Camera in D.C.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=109628
th
Actual Photo Taken From What Looks Like 13 ST
Zac Moilanen; Indiana University Page |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
Zac Moilanen; Indiana University P a g e | 10

Capitol. This means that every three seconds, a new “street” of marchers would pass from
beginning to end.
3) Now, to measure the amount of people there, I used the Google Earth ruler and laid it over
Pennsylvania, showing the distance to be about 4,654 feet. Comparatively, the distance
from the start, not including the street or pool but the beginning of the grass, to the end of
the mall measures out to be about 4,875 feet. Almost the same length.
4) Also, you must take into account the width of the mall, 177.2 ft, and the width of
Pennsylvania, 94.1 ft. This means that the mall is approximately 1.88 (177.2 divided by 94.1
= 1.88) times wider than Pennsylvania. This means that every 3 seconds of video after the
15-second mark on the YouTube time-lapse video, a “National Mall-sized” group of people
have marched through Pennsylvania. This would mean that the 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33 and 36
one “Mall” passes through. However, it’s obvious that the street is not packed this entire
time. Judging on the crowd in the video, as well as being an eye-witness, I know there were
some parts that were more open than others during the march. So let’s remove half of
those streets, making the march span three and a half (3.5) Pennsylvania Avenue’s, which
would then in turn be 1.86 National Malls (3.5 divided by 1.88).
5) Remember Figure 2a; the Mall, making sure to add the seated ticketed area of 120,000
people, can hold around 1,066,000 people (120,000 ticketed plus 946,000 public). Since
1.875 National Malls walked through Pennsylvania, all we do is multiply 1,066,000 by 1.86
and we have our projected 9-12 Project protesters.

1,982,760.

Now, taking into account of sidewalks, parked cars, wheelchairs, old people being distracted by
statues, police—whatever somebody might use as an excuse for this number, let’s subtract a hundred
thousand or two.

With that, we get 1,782,760 estimated protesters marched in the 9-12 Project.

In conclusion, this number surprised me. I knew there were a lot of people, but researching this,
looking at the map and actually crunching the numbers, it makes sense. I’m sure not all of these
marchers stayed at the Capitol, the fields surrounding it, or even the mall. But that’s not what we have
aerial footage of. Because of this time-lapse street cam, it’s easy to see that in the course of around two
hours almost two million people marched up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Building.
Zac Moilanen; Indiana University P a g e | 11

Also, if anybody has a problem with the numbers I used, I used them uniformly throughout my
research. This means that if you think only 100,000 people fit in the standing ticketed section of the
National Mall, then you can apply it to every comparison I made and come out with just a slightly
smaller number.

In addition, I have heard from multiple sources that once at the Capitol, the march did not flow
over into the Mall area, since the 9-12 Project did not have a permit for that area. That is partially true.
The 9-12 Project did not have a permit for the National Mall, however, because of the mass numbers of
people, as an issue of housekeeping, the protesters were sent behind the fountain and to the Mall when
the North, West and South fields were full. I have uploaded a video on YouTube which is taken from 4th
ST and Madison, on towards the reflecting pool.

Walking Through the 9-12 Protesters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIhnP0PeKs

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In closing, I hope this was informative and unbiased. I did march on September 12, and I believe
that this was more than a “Right Wing Nut-Job” thing. As I’ve said throughout my report, I wanted only
facts, photos, numbers, and data below the opening paragraph of what the 9-12 Project supposedly
stood for. Whether you agree with that or not, once again, please look at the numbers of people in the
previous rallies in comparison to this one, and not the kind of people. That is not what I am arguing.

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 area 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.
Zac Moilanen; Indiana University P a g e | 12
Zac Moilanen; Indiana University P a g e | 13

Pennsylvania Avenue Length Fig.3b

National Mall Length Fig.3c
Zac Moilanen; Indiana University P a g e | 14

References
"Look at a picture of 1 million people and stop lyin about the 912 rally." Godlike Productions - Conspiracy

Forum. Web. <http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message879501/pg1>.

Michelle Malkin. Web. <http://michellemalkin.com/>.

"News." Carnegie Mellon University. Web.

<http://www.cmu.edu/cfa/drama/news/news/archive/obamaevent.htm>.

"Park service changes course, plans to offer crowd estimate - USATODAY.com." News, Travel, Weather,

Entertainment, Sports, Technology, U.S. & World - USATODAY.com. Web.

<http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-19-crowd_N.htm>.

"Pictures: President Obama&#8217;s inauguration, as seen from space | VentureBeat." DigitalBeat |

VentureBeat. Web. <http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/01/20/pictures-president-obamas-

inauguration-as-seen-from-space/>.

"President Hussein's 2012 Resignation : A historical Prediction." Latest Articles. Web.

<http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2174736/posts>.

"PublicEye.org - Promise Keepers' march motivated by fundamentalist beliefs." PublicEye.org - The

Website of Political Research Associates. Web.

<http://www.publiceye.org/theocrat/FC_prom.html>.

"Sisters of Providence - WoodsUp - Justice - Patriotism part 1: Love of country." Sisters of Providence of

Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. Web.

Zac Moilanen; Indiana University P a g e | 15

References

<http://www.spsmw.org/WoodsUp/Justice/Beastarcitizen/Loveofcountry/tabid/825/Default.as

px>.

"Tea partiers march on U.S. Capitol." A Free Press for a Free People. Web.

<http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=109628>.

"YouTube - 9/12 Protest Washington DC Time Lapse Footage 0800 - 1130." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

Web. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sjvc6baor8>.