A number on crowd numbers: The 'No Kings' version
How many do you see at Saturday's anti-Trump 'No Kings' rally in Lafayette-West Lafayette? Eyeballing things the morning after.
The question I heard most about the “No Kings” march Saturday – whether at the Tippecanoe County Courthouse crosswalks, on the move on the John T. Myers Pedestrian Bridge, later at that night’s Mosey Down Main Street, from supporters, from detractors, didn’t matter – was: How many people do you think are here?
It’s a dangerous question and fraught field for anyone who wades into calculations of any event that doesn’t issue tickets or have a seating chart with a known capacity listed at a venue’s entrance.
On Saturday, my response to everyone: Not sure. But I’m going with “hundreds” until someone with a reliable clicker count shows their math.
And that’s what ran – “hundreds” – in the BiL account a few hours after Saturday morning’s march. For the sheer number, I published a timelapse video that caught the march, from start to stragglers, on the Myers Pedestrian Bridge. (See the full account below.)
The feedback was nearly instant with concerns that it deflated actual numbers, despite my conservative use of “hundreds” knowing it could mean 13 hundred or 15 hundred, or whatever. Why, they asked, hadn’t I gone with the 3,000-person estimate the Journal & Courier had put into its reporting, based estimates shared by organizers?
(For comparison of the shaky science of crowd estimates, Indiana State Police put the crowds for a similar “No Kings” rally at the Indiana Statehouse in Indianapolis at near 3,000, according to an account in the Indiana Capital Chronicle. The Indianapolis Star reported 4,158 for the same event, based on an organizer’s clicker count.)
Organizers in Greater Lafayette on Saturday weren’t exactly sure, either, each time I talked with them. Knowing that numbers tied to support for a cause become an important layer of the story, they were shrugging a bit, asking the same questions that people waiting at the crosswalks at the courthouse were asking: How many people do you think are here?
So, I’ll put this out there …
Bob Young, a friend of BiL who runs the Aerial Lafayette page on Facebook, took this drone photo of the “No Kings” march as it reached the crossing over the freight tracks next to Riehle Plaza in downtown Lafayette. (For reference, I’m in the lower left corner, standing on a bench and still getting footage of the last of the marchers for the timelapse.)
I ran the photo through a few free AI crowd counters and couldn’t get anything consistent. So, anyone out there with a reliable way to check?
Either way, eyeballing things from the sky, that’s how many people were on the march.
This is an account published Saturday, June 15.
SCENES FROM ‘NO KINGS,’ THE GREATER LAFAYETTE VERSION
Carrying a sign appropriated from artwork in online callouts for the “No Kings” rallies – hundreds scheduled across the country to protest what organizers called autocratic moves since the start of the second presidency of Donald Trump – Sarah Reeves crossed the John T. Myers Pedestrian Bridge, saying she felt she was getting something off her chest Saturday morning.
The demonstration calling out Trump administration actions since January wasn’t the first in Lafayette or West Lafayette. But Saturday’s was a first, this year or any other, for Reeves, who described herself as a single mom from Lafayette “keeping to myself, just trying to hang in there.”
“I’ve met people here who said the same thing, that they’ve never been to one of these things,” Reeves said. “I’ve been getting my fill getting pissed off by what I see on social media. Today is just different. It’s like I’m glad I found out, face to face, you know, that there really are a lot of us out there, mad like I am.”
Here’s a timelapse at the start of Saturday’s march.
She was among hundreds of people who filled the Margerum Fountain plaza before marching to the Tippecanoe County Courthouse and then back to West Lafayette for what organizers laid out as a community fair of music, information booths, speeches and food trucks.
Lisa Dullum, a Tippecanoe County Council member and part of Greater Lafayette Indivisible, said local groups that had been involved in other demonstrations in recent months – including MAD Voters and the Women’s March – started meeting three weeks ago, after a national day of protest was set to coincide with a military parade Saturday in Washington, D.C., that coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday.
“The upshot is we’re showing that in Lafayette we’re not happy with what’s going on at the federal level – that we don’t have kings in the U.S.A.,” Dullum said. “It’s Lafayette. It’s 2,000 protests across the country. … If you look at other countries that have had an autocratic breakthrough, what stops that is the people. We have the ultimate power in this country. And if we’re out saying that, sooner or later, they’re going to start listening to us.”
William Thomas, a retired Lafayette resident carrying sign denouncing deportations under the administration, said he predicted momentum would pick up from Saturday’s event.
“I was hoping to see this kind of crowd out,” Thomas said, comparing it to smaller rallies at the Tippecanoe County Courthouse this spring. “We all need to wise up about what we see happening, before it’s too late.”
The march took nearly an hour to make it across the pedestrian bridge, around the courthouse and back to Tapawingo Park. That accounted for organizers stopping the foot traffic so marchers went into crosswalks when they had the light. Organizers did not report problems or incidents with any sort of counter-protest.
Signs taking on Trump were everywhere.
There were a few deep cuts, too.
Among those, Hunter Butler carried “A Farewell to Kings,” a 1977 album by Rush.
“I woke up thinking about those lyrics: ‘And the men who hold high places/Must be the ones who start/To mold a new reality,’” Butler said, quoting from the album cut, “Closer to the Heart.” “And I was like, that fits today.”
At Tapawingo Park, Denise Wilson led the Blue Moon Rising choir and the crowd through a rendition of a song called “Ain’t No Kings in the U.S.A.”
Amanda Eldridge, an organizer with MAD Voters, told people that “progress is not easy,” rattling off other times of protest in the country.
“These movements and the one we’re living in would not be happening if we didn’t have the hope and belief as a nation, as a people, that we can do better, be better,” Eldridge said.
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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.
I like the idea of a "find Dave" analog to "find Waldo." You gave us the answer on this first entry.
Thousands, hundreds, dozens... just glad I'm not alone.