Hundreds of thousands of people poured into Washington, DC, to take part in the Women’s March on Washington on Saturday. But the number of participants alone doesn’t give a very good visual of just how huge the event is.
Thankfully, Los Angeles Times reporter Matt Pearce offered a great visual for the occasion with Google Maps:
If you want to see how massive the Women's March is, I'm standing at the back edge of the crowd, and I've marked the speaker's stage. pic.twitter.com/L47WgP2OuP
— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) January 21, 2017
So to get from one end of the march to another, it would take at least 19 minutes of walking — and that’s an estimate during normal traffic, which is certainly not the case today.
And even this might be an underestimate, Pearce added:
No, I take that back — I just turned around and see a huge line of people marching in the distance behind me. Just an incredibly big crowd. https://t.co/CxGiujPlcc
— Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) January 21, 2017
If that’s not enough, here’s another tweet, from the Associated Press, that also speaks to the event’s size:
BREAKING: AP source: Crowd packs entire route of Women's March, preventing organizers from leading formal march toward White House.
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 21, 2017
Event organizers later clarified that they will march, although they cautioned the enormous crowd to be careful.
It’s not just DC, either. There are Women’s Marches with huge turnout all across the country today, from New York City to St. Louis to Los Angeles — including in Chicago, where organizers reportedly had to cancel the march and keep it as just a rally because so many people showed up. It’s safe to say a lot of Americans seem very interested in speaking out against President Donald Trump’s surprising victory and the inflammatory — and frankly sexist — rhetoric he used on the campaign trail for much of 2016.
