From the Washington Post, “‘One Nation’ rally draws unions, progressives to Mall to counter tea party“:
Tens of thousands of people gathered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday, part of the “One Nation Working Together” rally – an effort by progressive activists hoping to serve as a counter to the conservative tea party movement and energize the electorate amid fears that the Democrats could lose control of Congress.
[…] __
The four-hour event was the culmination of months of planning by civil rights organizations and labor unions. More than 400 supporting groups signed on for the four-hour rally that kicked off around noon and featured speeches, poetry and musical entertainment. The rally drew participants from the Washington area, but also from New York and Detroit.
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The groups behind the march – including the National Council of La Raza, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union, USAction and the U.S. Student Association – hope to make a political statement in response to conservative commentator Glenn Beck’s rally in August. That gathering partly filled the Mall with tens of thousands of his supporters, and tea party groups across the country have held anti-tax rallies. But fewer people than in August gathered at this march.
[…] __
Many of the groups involved in Saturday’s event stepped outside their usual parameters. Socially conservative African American church groups joined with marchers that supported equality for gays and lesbians. A miners union endorsed the rally along with several environmental groups.
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In putting together the rally, the “One Nation Working Together” groups focused on three issues: jobs, justice and education. They define those in a set of principles that also laid out a list of causes largely supported by liberals, such as ending discrimination in the criminal justice system, protecting Social Security, spending federal money to create jobs and improving public education.
Right now this story is at the top of the “Most Read” box. There’s also a photo gallery. (And 1,170+ comments, which I have no intention of looking at, because I’m not gonna spoil my good mood.)
WereBear
Hey, if people know about it, that’s amazing. I was resigned to very little coverage.
katjam
Reports are that the crowd may have been in the 200,000 range or about twice Beck’s draw. By FOX standards that would be reported as millions in attendance but they will say there were maybe a few hundred if they mention the rally at all.
Brachiator
I liked the photo gallery. Very diverse, relaxed crowd of people.
Mnemosyne
Weird that there’s no crowd estimate in the story. Though I can’t wait to hear the claims from all of the rightbloggers who swore up and down that half of the people at Beck’s rally were hidden under the trees about how this was such a tiny rally.
lol
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but as someone that went to the rally today and swung by the Beck rally, there’s not much comparison – Beck’s crowd was easily larger.
At the Beck rally, it was incredibly difficult to move through the crowd. At the rally today, I easily made it up to the steps leading up to the memorial. There were large portions of grass along the reflecting pool with no people. There wasn’t anywhere that the crowd was remotely dense.
One thing that did offset this was that there was a huge crowd behind the WW2 memorial that didn’t seem to realize they could saunter up all the way to the stage without any problem.
Another thing you’re going to hear about is how the socialists pretty much dominated the literature scene. There were girls all over the place handing out socialist worker newspapers and what they didn’t have covered, various splinter groups did.
As for the rally itself, it was pretty much a cliche of a leftist rally – vague, rambling and unfocused. That Ed Schultz was the highlight really speaks to what a clusterfuck it was.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: There’s just the hedge of a nebulous “tens of thousands” like they don’t want to get into a pissing war with FOX news or something. I’m sure Rush will tell us all it was a nothing on Monday and that will become the CW from there.
lol
I’d estimate somewhere between 55K-65K.
For additional comparison purposes, I went to the immigration rally, which was much larger than Beck’s and One Nation combined. For the immigration rally, we started running into people a mile away from the mall that were going to it. Walking up to the mall for this one: no one.
arguingwithsignposts
@katjam:
Yeah, I’m going with “a few thousand” for the Fox estimate.
Interesting that the gallery photos look like they were taken before everyone showed up. I’d be interested in seeing a photo from during the actual rally.
MikeB
True count: Easily 10 million…
Linda Featheringill
The pictures are nice. My kind of people. All of them.
[happy face, :-)]
Would be nice if all that brother-and-sister-hood lasted for a while. And some of it might.
debbie
It says a lot that groups were able to set their differences aside and unite for a bigger purpose. Of course, when the other side is busy demonizing “social justice,” it becomes that much easier to set aside individual causes.
Jewish Steel
The photo set I saw @ DKos; no misspellings on the hand-lettered signs.
So that’s something, right?
lol
@Jewish Steel:
I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of dumbass signs.
But you’re only going to hear about the trees that were pulped to produce the vast raft of socialist worker newspapers that were being passed out *everywhere*. I saw hardly any other groups doing the same.
PurpleGirl
I had wanted to go to the rally but I couldn’t afford to join any of the bus groups from Brooklyn.
I know what you mean about not wanting to read the comments. I have on occasion begun to read comments to Yahoo News articles and quickly decided I’d rather kill most of the people who have left messages. Once or twice I’ve even responded to a particular message and called the writer a moron or something along those lines. I don’t read comments at Yahoo very often.
JPL
This is from MSNBC.com trying to be fair and balanced about today event.
arguingwithsignposts
@JPL:
I could have done without the repeating refs. to MSNBC host Ed Schultz.
Jewish Steel
@JPL:
From the same article:
The same anger? This anger has a particular provenance? How do they know? Is it the same color? Did they sniff it? “Yep, same anger.”
Geniuses.
@arguing: Yeah, fuck that overwrought grand-standing puke Ed Schultz.
arguingwithsignposts
@Jewish Steel:
Very good catch. I have a hard time believing the progressives gathered on the mall would have agreed with the “same anger” framing.
As Delong asks: why can’t we have a better press corpse?
Jewish Steel
@arguingwithsignposts:
Word. As @Brachiator: observed upthread it looked like a pretty chill crowd anyway. No sign of that brows-furrowed stupid people anger.
arguingwithsignposts
@Jewish Steel:
Wonder if anyone counted the scooter population? Bet they weren’t demanding government keep their hands off their medicare, either.
AxelFoley
@katjam:
Just got back from spending the day in DC, went to the rally and spent the day with my family enjoying our nation’s capital.
I can say that those crowd estimates are probably right. There were THOUSANDS of people at the rally. Easily more than Beck’s gathering. Everyone fired up and ready to vote.
Sharl
__
Won’t even go there – don’t have to. I have no doubt that’s largely the combined keyboard fury of frightened little Beck-bunny teatards.
Keep typing, tards, keep typing.
Anya
Why didn’t TPM cover this rally with the same intensity they covered Appropriate MLK’s Legacy rally? Sometimes we are our own worst enemy.
Our so called progressive sites put more focus on the antics of the teabaggers and the crazies on the other side than highlighting our sides stand on things and activities. I am yet to see anything about Chris Coons or what he stands for at TPM but I know everything there is to know about Sarah Palin’s every tweet.
Cricket
I was at the rally today. I agree with lol’s 55-65k estimate. I have to admit that I probably wouldn’t have attended if I didn’t live in DC, just because of Ed Schultz’s involvement. I cringed when Schultz spoke and compared this rally to the 1963 march on Washington. Yeeuuurrgh.
I dislike that Schultz made a point of framing this as reacting to the Tea Party. Make it about supporting the progressive agenda, and it’s a win. Make it about “beating” the Tea Party and it makes everything reactive, not pro-active.
Sorry to be a party-pooper. It was really cool to see so many people out to support all sorts of causes. There were some, like the pro-nuclear power group, who wouldn’t be considered traditionally progressive. It was an extremely diverse crowd. That’s inspiring all by itself.
Anya
@Cricket: I hate it when people say that MSNBC is liberal. Ed Schultz’s antics annoy. He is such an ass. I don’t even know why was he one of the speakers? He did not add anything to the rally.
gbear
NYT had it up top a couple hours ago too. If you want to keep your good mood, don’t read it. In an effort to appear ‘fair’, they went to Glen Beck for some of their quotes. I’m not going to bother with the link.
gbear
@Anya:
TPM goes home for the weekend. They very rarely post anything after friday afternoon.
arguingwithsignposts
@gbear: @Anya:
Plus, the lack of misspelled signs, hitler moustaches on posters of Obama and screaming people in scooters just doesn’t make for good screaming 72 pixel headlines.
gbear
@arguingwithsignposts: Yes, the signs and attire were much less entertaining, much more earthbound.
Wonkette put up a pretty snotty posting about it. Equal opportunity snark, I guess.
pickledjazz
I swear I will scream out loud with the lack and limitation in language and dialogue with the MSM. Geez, every damn article is about people are angry. Angry this,angry that,my foot!
People are more than angry but with the MSM. and the crap that is thrust on them on a daily basis and the lack of integrity by all these disingenious pundits,anchors and analysts ,oh, and of course the fair and balanced crap that is not really skewed to be fair and balanced.
You are absoultely on point that I am angry. Angry with the stupidity that is now passing for news and views….and blogs too.
Moses2317
Has anyone seen any sort of an official source for the number of people who attended the rally today? I appreciate the estimates of 55-65k, which is less than Glenn Beck got but far more than the tea party 9/11 rallies this year, but I am hoping for a source I can cite to.
Winning Progressive
parsimon
@gbear:
Y’know, I never read Wonkette unless someone links to it, and I don’t get why people do read it. Am I missing something? Is there some merit to the site?
I don’t intend this as a heavily defensive stance; I just don’t get it.
Malron
And the author is basing this on what?
EDIT: I had another post questioning the idea that black churches are “socially conservative” but that got swallowed up in the BJ void…
Kyle
The Fox Multiplier Rule of rally reporting —
Right-wing tool-fest: Multiply actual attendance by 10, broadcast incessantly.
One Nation Working Together: Divide actual attendance by 10, if we bother to report it at all.
arguingwithsignposts
@parsimon:
It’s a DC Gawker that’s had a couple of good writers (not counting Anna Marie Cox) and got famous because of some loose DC intern.
Linda Featheringill
Whatever the actual count is, one thing is clear.
There are a lot of us.
arguingwithsignposts
For probably the first time evah, I actually went over to Fox News dot com to see what they had about the rally. The top story is a “Travel alert” scare piece.
Buried halfway down the page are these headlines:
@Kyle wins the pony!
arguingwithsignposts
@Linda Featheringill:
But do we surround them. Remember that bullshit? Geez, Beck just moves from shitty idea to shitty idea and nobody ever follows up.
Pancake
There may have been as many as 60,000 at the rally, but no more according to the AP and the NYT, among others.
arguingwithsignposts
@Pancake:
funny how you wingnut assholes will whinge about crowd estimates when NYT and AP and others give your wingnut rallies low numbers, but now want to quote them as authoritative crowd estimators.
Fuck off, troll.
valdivia
@gbear:
sorry but no. For the Tea Party rally and Beckfest they had people on the ground doing tweets and coverage. For this? Nothing. I hate that so-called progressive sites just scream that the Dems are doing nothing and then when they do they give it zero coverage.
parsimon
@arguingwithsignposts:
Okay, thanks. Would, now, that I could figure out how to blockquote someone without it coming out boldface.
Cacti
I have to ask…
What’s the point of having Ed “I’m not voting” Schultz as a featured speaker?
Suffern ACE
@Cacti: And that would be the point. Beck’s rally was publicized for months and pretty heavily and did not get many more than this is a little bit of a solace. That the keynote angry pundit is a leader of the vote suppression movement and still people decided to come is moreso.
Cricket
@Anya
I think Schultz is trying to style himself as the left’s version of Beck. His statement about being able to get 300,000 people to attend was a bizarre “my dick is bigger than yours” moment. It detracted from all of the real organizers of the rally, who were trying to make a statement about focusing our national effort on job creation rather than war.
Mnemosyne
@Malron:
Black churches tend to be anti-gay, but people don’t want to be impolite, so they use the code word “socially conservative.” That’s what it means, though — black churches tend to be pretty strongly anti-gay, though they’re generally not “conservative” in any other area.
Uloborus
@Pancake:
It’s true. The attendance here is clearly vastly less than immigration reform, anti-war, gay rights, and other liberal rallies across America that have been dwarfing Tea Party crowds but go mysteriously unreported. It’s just nice to be noticed by the media at all for once.
PaulW
things to note about the ONWT rally:
1) I had read that in at least one city (Boston), buses that were planned for the trips to DC never materialized.
2) From my own personal experiences dealing with the ONWT organizers, this was mismanaged like a mofo. They tried to get local persons and groups to organize (and pay for!) their own buses, but there got to be problems with people committing and then dropping out. People I tried to email at the regional level and who were supposed to be in charge of Transportation never emailed back. For something that had been planned for months (since around June) this was poorly organized (and merely re-enforced in my opinion that Democrats and leftists can’t organize for sh-t anymore) and poorly advertised (I know the corporate media is anti-union and sh-t, but it wasn’t until two days into last month that ANY media coverage showed up at all: if it were me in charge, I’d have been pumping out posters and PR memos from July onward!).
3) From the photos I’ve seen, the crowds appear similar to Beck’s rally. Although Beck’s gonna make noises about “failed turnouts” and how this was a broken attempt by the librul socialists to try and prove they could rally more people than SUPERGOD’S FAVORITE SON BECK could. Which begs the question from me: knowing when the AFL-CIO and NAACP wanted to start this One Nation campaign (June 2010), I gotta ask when did Beck start planning on his IT’S ALL ABOUT ME Rally?
DaBomb
Estimates were at 175,000- 200,000. Joe Madison, one of the moderators of the event announced during the event that he was given the numbers and they were higher than Glenn Beck’s whiteopolooza, held in August.
So higher than 50-60k. There was a an aerial view of the crowd, it was pretty massive, they bussed 40-50k out of New York state alone.
lol
Comparing what I saw on the ground to the Beck rally aerial photos, it wasn’t even close. There were wide open areas that were filled on the Beck photos.
Frankly, this is a loser for anyone arguing this was a larger crowd.
Jock
@Mnemosyne: I was under the trees and the Beck Rally, and it was crowded. Knowing the amount of rain we had the few days before I know that under the trees for the One Nation Rally had to be all mud. I am still looking for the satellite picture from one nation. The only one I have seen is on the Huff and Puff Post. And there is very few in attendance. But it is not so important how many were there it more important who was there. Socialist, Communist, and Progressives is not a crowd I would like to associate with.