women's march

Far more impressive than the Cheeto's inauguration was the number of women (and men) who marched against him the day after the inauguration.

Not only did people march in 500 cities across America, but they also marched in cities around the world. The Cheeto must not have been pleased.

If Americans can maintain this level of involvement, we will be alright. I'm hopeful, but skeptical.

The Women's Marches may have been the largest demonstration in US history

from Vox

Crowd estimates from Women’s Marches on Saturday are still trickling in, but political scientists say they think we may have just witnessed the largest day of demonstrations in American history.

According to data collected by Erica Chenoweth at the University of Denver and Jeremy Pressman at the University of Connecticut, marches held in more than 500 US cities were attended by at least 3.3 million people.

“Even using a conservative estimate, it was the single largest day for a demonstration in the US,” Chenoweth, an expert on political protests and civil resistance, told us.

Every state in America hosted a Women’s March, as you can see in the map above. The events ranged from tiny gatherings in small town squares to throngs of more than 500,000 people clogging streets in cities like Washington, DC, and Los Angeles. (If you see that crowd attendance information is missing from your city, please contact the researchers here.)

Pressman said he started to track crowd numbers from organizers, local media outlets, and citizens who emailed or tweeted with links and reports early Saturday morning.

The turnout at events outside the US was significant, too. Chenoweth and Pressman have recorded over 100 international Women’s Marches with an estimated attendance of more than 260,000.

Chenoweth cautioned me that while 3.7 million Americans protesting on Saturday may be the largest turnout in US history in absolute terms, she wasn’t sure if it was the largest protest proportionally speaking. For instance, she said, it’s possible that protests in cities around the US against the Iraq War in 2003 may have drawn as many people or more relative to the population at that time.

As she and Pressman continue to collect data, she hopes that civic organizers will be more involved with gathering crowd data in real time to help researchers who study social movements.

“For people who organize these kinds of activity, there is something that can be learned in terms of techniques of using [satellite images or aerial photos] to estimate crowd density,” said Chenoweth. “It might be a good time to think about how we democratize that knowledge.”

Original is here (with video). See pictures of some of the best signs here and here and here.