> On Jan 18, 2024, at 1:38 PM, John Obrien <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Mark.
>
> Your stated faith in the National Park Service to provide truthful numbers
> about the size of anti-government protests -
> seems amazing to me.
"Stated faith"? I wrote "more reliable." And I wrote "National Park Service"
when I should have written "US Park Police" (USPP), which answers to Congress
and not the Executive branch; its numbers are distributed to multiple news
agencies, some of which are known to fact-check their sources, and they have a
published methodology.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RW3PvWAPvQbPr7d_Q-0HquIqcO6DDE2D/view?usp=sharing
provides an overview of counting crowds:
"In the early 1970s, the USPP in Washington developed their own variant of the
Jacobs method. They needed systematic estimates of crowds to know how many
officers to send to rallies and to justify staff size in their annual budget
requests to Congress. From the outset the USPP was sensitive to criticisms of
its estimates, so they developed a method based upon “independently verifiable
facts, measurements, and photographs,” shifting from SWAGs to the “gold
standard.” When a demonstration involves less than 1,000 people, two USPP
officers independently walk through the gathering, count the participants and
give their counts to a commanding officer who resolves any discrepancies
exceeding 10 percent before announcing the official estimate. For larger
rallies, digital photographs are taken by helicopter at different times during
the event so the rally’s peak size yields the estimate. The USPP knows the
square footage of every green space, sidewalk and monument in their
jurisdiction. They are also aware that density ranges from a high of 2.5 square
feet per person at the front and center of a stationary rally to a thinner 7.5
or 10 at the margins. Nonetheless, they consistently use 5 square feet as an
average, because it simplifies calculations and is reliably validated by
headcounts from aerial photos (although this method tends to yield slight
overcounts).
"To estimate the size of marches, two or more officers positioned at different
locations along the route independently count the number of rows of marchers
passing their position. Other officers count the number of marchers in each of
20 rows to arrive at the average row size, which is then multiplied by the
number of passing rows. Prior to the Congressional gagorder, USPP resolved
discrepancies by rounding their estimates up to give the benefit of the doubt
to the event organizers. Newspapers around the country have used variations of
the Jacobs method to deflate exaggerated claims about the size of gatherings.
New York Times reporters used city maps and their own measurements of sidewalk
widths to establish the carrying capacity of Times Square and the ticker tape
parade route from Battery Park to City Hall. They reduced the traditional
guesstimates of millions gathering in those spaces to hundreds of thousands."
So, yeah, I think this is "more reliable" than asking the organizers how large
their demonstration was.
> I must assume you were not involved or have become aware of the Vietnam
> Antiwar Movement
> experiences with the various U. S. government agencies - that were all
> directed and from the White House - from reporting, to preventing.
https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/27434 is about my antiwar experiences. And
I personally was harassed by two FBI agents in 1971 about a month after the
break-in and theft of FBI COINTELPRO files in Media, Pennsylvania, across the
river from the house of activists where I lived. So, no, I was involved in the
Vietnam Antiwar Movement and aware of experiences with US government agencies.
>
> Here are some examples - the U. S. government pressured every U. S. insurance
> company from providing a needed bond to hold a rally at the Washington DC Mall
> in hope that would prevent a mass march. We had to go to England and get the
> Quaker led Lloyd's of London to agree to be the insurer and providing the
> Bond.
> that attempted government sabotage was under the "former Quaker" U. S.
> president Nixon, being fortunately outmaneuvered by the U. S. Antiwar
> Movement by
> Quakers and international solidarity from another nation's antiwar forces.
>
> I remembered the U. S. government ordered bus company and drivers to leave
> their passengers behind on the night of October 21, 1967 under the democrat
> LBJ
> I was among many who filled into the buses that the drivers had refused to
> leave their passengers stranded that night (when many drivers did leave -
> ordered by
> police AND Parks Department police.
>
>
> The massive November 15, 1969 protest in Washington DC (and in San Francisco)
> would be eclipsed in size by the even larger April 24, 1971 protest.
> I was on national staff for the April 24, 1971 and well remember how many
> buses and cars were lined up on the highway for hours unable to proceed south
> to Washington DC,
> BECAUSE of the huge numbers of people trying to join that protest.
>
> Perhaps you might consider the National Parks "Service" is a government run
> agency - that first serves the rulers and whatever federal administration is
> then in power.
I explained above that the counting of the demonstrations in question was done
by the US Park Police under the administration of Congress, not the federal
administration. I wouldn't take their estimates, back when they made estimates,
as authoritative. But we should use multiple, independent sources of
information to get verifiable facts and not mimic Trump in estimating crowd
size.
Mark
> From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Mark Baugher
> <[email protected]>
> Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2024 6:45 AM
> To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [marxmail] PSL ups the crowd-inflation factor
>
>
>
> > On Jan 17, 2024, at 5:23 PM, John Obrien <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Just want to correct your stating that the Vietnam Antiwar Mass Marches
> > never exceeded 300,000 - 400,000.
>
> Hi John, The National Park Service estimates are probably the most reliable:
> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FList_of_rallies_and_protest_marches_in_Washington%2C_D.C&data=05%7C02%7C%7C0de9d0fe668b41e4862908dc18341769%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638411859210817847%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=8nIc9ySIUBsJz43okpuodR%2Fl8UtY3pNudkWNA4PY5Wg%3D&reserved=0.
> I was surprised to see that they estimated the Fall 1969 Moratorium had
> 600k participants. But I thought that April 24, 1971 was the largest
> demonstration because that was the Kool Aid that the SWP was serving that
> year.
>
> In Out Now, Fred Halstead estimated 750k for April 24th 1971 and said it was
> the largest in US history (p. 543), but the April 30, 1971 Militant Newspaper
> estimated that the 1969 National Moratorium mach in D.C. had 800,000.
>
> So, take you pick:
> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsafe.duckduckgo.com%2F%3Fq%3Dapril%2B24%2B1971%2Bdemonstration%2Bpark%2Bservice%2Bcrowd%2Bsize%26kp%3D1%26atb%3Dv408-1%26ia%3Dweb&data=05%7C02%7C%7C0de9d0fe668b41e4862908dc18341769%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638411859210825616%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=nl6Hd2j6JEhZ%2BxO5qTSM45mVshm37CM2pu%2FCWQvvIUw%3D&reserved=0
> shows the range of estimates from newspapers for April 24th, 1971. A
> research
> paper,https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdrive.google.com%2Ffile%2Fd%2F1RW3PvWAPvQbPr7d_Q-0HquIqcO6DDE2D%2Fview%3Fusp%3Dsharing&data=05%7C02%7C%7C0de9d0fe668b41e4862908dc18341769%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638411859210831148%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=RXC6rOxM83GAFAwuv5n7zh1FFMpvHgWd8Nz1WJcgp20%3D&reserved=0,
> gives some background on estimating crowd sizes and has a table with yet
> another set of numbers.
>
> Mark
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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