Crowd size controversy - If you even
care!
We care more about
quality than quantity! So should
you!
Like it or
not, it's all about politics and
political correctness thrust upon
the public by Congressional Cowards.
From Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia
It began with The
Million Man March was a mass
gathering held in the United States,
in
Washington, D.C., on October 16,
1995, under the leadership of
Nation of Islam head
Louis Farrakhan.
Due to the name of
the event, the number of attendees
was a primary measure of its success
and estimating the crowd size,
always a contentious issue, reached
new heights in bitterness.[34]
March organizers estimated the crowd
size at between 1.5 and 2 million
people and were shocked when the
United States Park Police
officially estimated the crowd size
at 400,000. Farrakhan threatened to
sue the
National Park Service due to the
controversial low estimate from the
Park Police.
Three days after
the march, Dr.
Farouk El-Baz and a team of ten
research associates and graduate
students at the Center for Remote
Sensing at
Boston University released an
estimate of 870,000 people with a
margin of error of about 25
percent. They arrived at this figure
by enlarging aerial photographs
taken by the Park Service and
counting crowd density.[35]
They later revised that figure to
837,000 ±20% (669,600 to 1,004,400).
This revision was made when the Park
Service provided original
35mm negatives; the first count
was made with scanned printed
photographs.
The Park Service
estimate was never retracted,[34]
and other academics have supported
its lower figure.[36]
After the Million
Man March, the Park Police ceased
making official crowd size
estimates. Roger G. Kennedy, the
Park Service director, said Congress
had provided the "structure and
canons" for counting people, but it
had not demanded that the exercise
actually be done. He contemplated
informing Congress, "Thank you for
telling us how to do it, but we
won't be doing it."[35]
In the 1997 appropriations bill for
the Department of the Interior,
Congress included language that
prohibits the National Park Service
from conducting crowd estimates in
the District of Columbia. The
legislation also states that if
event organizers want crowd
estimates, they should contract with
an outside agency.[37] |
