The 9/12 Project Tea Party March on Washington with slideshow

It was more than tens of thousands yesterday in Washington D.C. for the 9/12 Project Tea Party march and rally.

Joe from Milwaukee Wisconsin, Sarah from Grand Rapids Michigan, John from Austin Texas, Jan and Michael from Syracuse New York State, the McCafferty family from Palm Beach Florida and hundreds of thousands of people from all over America had one thing in common on Saturday 9/12; they came to their nation’s capital to peacefully protest the direction the nation is taking.

People gathered in Freedom Plaza near the White House to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol grounds. The march had been originally been scheduled to start around 11 am but got under way hours early due to the sheer number of people flooding out of buses and metro stations all over D.C.

The mood, despite the protest topics of out of control government spending; health care ‘reform’, loss of freedom and liberty, lower taxes, smaller government and the First, Second and Tenth Amendments was upbeat and cheerful. Complete strangers struck up conversations sparked by remarking on each other’s homemade signs and t-shirts or a simple ‘where are you from?’ Those people who were crammed into the Metro (if they could get on complete a train after purchasing their Metro Day Pass complete with a photo celebrating the inauguration of Barack Obama back in January) were simply forced to get to know the people less than inches from them. They all had one thing in common; a message to deliver in person to the government to ‘Listen’, to tell Congress they ‘will not be ignored’ and that they ‘have had enough’.

Crowd estimates vary as they always do. The media are generally reporting there were tens of thousands, mostly from AP wire reports. This is inaccurate as there were hundreds of thousands in central D.C. as those who attended can attest. Interestingly, officials including the Park Police have declined to give an estimate.