We arrived about the time the "One Nation" rally was to begin. We came down 23rd Street from the Foggy Bottom metro stop to find ANSWER at the entrance distributing flyers.
The next two pictures were taken from the walkway at the base of the steps to the Memorial. Above us, the Memorial and the speakers' stand; below us the crowd and behind them, the reflecting pool. At Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally, the speakers' stand was below the walkway and we were able to go up to the Memorial itself to get photos looking down into the crowd. Not so today - the Memorial Steps were for the speakers and - I suppose - guests.
There was security posted at either side of the steps; one had to leave any signs behind to go up to the lower steps, and there was further separation between those folks and the speakers' platform.
The next three photos are crowd and sign shots taken alongside the reflecting pool as we walked from the Lincoln Memorial toward the WWII Memorial at the other end of the pool.
The crowd appeared to be heavily union. We saw large numbers of union T-shirts: SEIU, CWA, Teamsters, AFL-CIO, NEA, and numerous others. At a guess, 1 in three wore union T-shirts. The racial mix was something on the order of 60% minority; age distribution was older (Vietnam-era hippies were abundant) or younger (mostly college-age activist). There were few families and fewer children.
At least 90% of the signs were preprinted. I didn't get a picture, but one notable one said "End Racist Employment."
Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but haven't the unemployed been mostly white males? [Hey, I'm one.]
No left-leaning rally can ever be without puppets. Here is today's puppet.
Listening to the speakers - both from the podium and in the crowd, there was no common theme to the rally. It was just an agglomeration of the usual Leftist pressure groups, each doing it's own thing. Unions appeared to be mostly concerned about (protecting their) jobs; the civil rights crowd was busy crying 'racism’, and there was a smallish number of immigration protestors calling for open borders. The surprising thing about the immigration protestors was that the largest contingent was Asian “drummers” - the next photo.
The next photo was taken from the Washington Monument looking back toward the Lincoln Memorial. The crowd can be seen lining the reflecting pool on both sides; crowd depth was 50-60 feet on each side; more densely packed near the podium, much less so farther back.
To estimate crowd size, I used Google Earth to get some measurements. The reflecting pool is 2300’ long, and the ralliers took up 50-100 feet on either side. Assuming 1 person for every 10 square feet, which is probably a bit high for average density, there could be no more than 46,000 people around the reflecting pool. The area between the WWII Memorial and the Washington Monument measures roughly 350 feet by 500 feet and - as seen in the photo - the crowd density was much less, say 1 person per 100 square feet. Add another 2,000 to the crowd, maximum.
So figure a high side estimate of 50,000 attendees, which strikes me as about right, since I felt the Restore Honor rally was 6-8 times larger. [Additional bits of evidence -- there were no waiting lines at the port-a-potties; and Metro was not crowed either inbound to Foggy Bottom or outbound from L’Enfant Plaza.]
JWF was wrong on one count; there was plenty of trash left behind, as evidenced by this photo.
