Will organizers lie about attendance by simply adding 5000 people to the previous year’s estimate as is their custom? We’ll just have to wait and see. Somebody will document the crowd overestimating, but I don’t know if it will be me this year…
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All the deets:
“Due to a scheduling conflict, the Walk for Life will be unable to follow its familiar route from Justin Herman Plaza and along San Francisco’s waterfront to Marina Green. Instead, we will be gathering at Civic Center Plaza at 11:00 am for the Info Fair to be followed by the rally at 12:30 pm. At 1:30 we will start walking down Market Street to Justin Herman Plaza. There will be no additional events at Justin Herman Plaza.
We are excited about this new opportunity and believe that this new venue will give us the chance to grow our numbers. More information to come so please sign up for our email blasts to keep informed of these important changes.
HOTEL UPDATE: We have sold out of the rooms at the San Francisco Marriott Fisherman’s Wharf Hotel. We were able to negotiate a discounted rate at the Kabuki Hotel in Japantown (very close to the Cathedral) for $139/night. For further options, gohere.
FLYERS: Color flyers are now availble for download. If you would like to receive copies of the flyers, please send us an email with your address and how many you would like. Help spread the word!
Confirmed speakers include: Lori Hoye, Dr. Vansen Wong, Rev. Clenard Childress and Jacquie Stalnaker.
Once again this year EWTN will be broadcasting the event live via satellite on TV andImmaculate Heart Radio will be broadcasting the event live on the radio.”
(I don’t think car dealerships and oil change places will like this one bit.)
Anyway, CalRecycle is coming to town tomorrow to pay for free parking for motorists who pledge to increase their oil change intervals. (But don’t anybody tell StreetsBlog SF about the free parking reward – they won’t like that at all. Srsly.)
(I vividly remember the first time I spent $20 on a tank of gas – it was with an Audi 5000 in Honolulu, way back in the 90′s. But I only vaguely recall my first $100 tankful – it was with Mom’s Taxi in Napa someplace a few years back. [GRANDPA SIMPSON MODE=OFF])
So there I was putting $94 worth of 87 octane (NBP – Never Buy Premium*) into Mom’s Taxi (straight outta Toyota City) and here’s what I saw:
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Are we going to even have gas stations in 2050 and beyond? I don’t know, probably.
Maybe someday the liars over at Walk For Life West Coast will explain how a march that was only two-thirds the length of last year’s (48 minutes (or so) long in 2010 and 31 minutes long in 2011*) could have 5000 more people.
It’s a miracle!?
It’s worth noting that nobody had a crowd estimate of less than 22K last year and nobody independent from the movement has a an estimate north of 20k this year. I put it at 16k and KGO 7 ABC TV is saying “about 20,000.” The organizers, under enormous pressure to claim ever growing attendance, claim 40,000+. Oh well.
Anyway, here are a few shots from this afternoon, starting with the counters.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were on hand. I’d say 5000 souls saw this sister and a fellow sister today – they were the focus of the march, particularly on the right side of the river of people going by. Here’s your welcome to San Francisco:
The mise-en-scene:
Tax Church Property and INVESTMENTS! Sure, sounds good to me.
And here’s Frank Chu, in the middle, going on about the Galaxies, as per usual:
And here’s the main body, 16k or so marchers from all over California and beyond:
St. Patrick’s Teens, Sonora, in the hiz-ouse:
Some people from Fowler, CA? Sounds far away:
Yes We Can change:
Yeah BABIES:
“Flower” and “shears”:
A brace from Sacramento:
Save the human babies. Of course! Human babies, that changes everything!
And there you have it.
*We’re talking about at the start here, people. Ferry Plaza was a ghost town by 12:33 PM. If the same number of people showed up as last year, it would have taken until about 12:50 PM for everybody to get going. Obviously, the march will spread out over time and narrow due to the way the course is set up.
[UPDATE: Here are some photos. Oh, and Protest Shooter has some video showing way more than "maybe 100" counter-protesters, which he undercounts for ideological reasons, and showing way less than "40,000" marchers, which he undercounts for, wait for it, ideological reasons. The fact remains that it took last year's crowd 48 minutes to clear out but this year's only 31 minutes.]
How about 16,000 for an estimate of those marching up Embarcadero from the Ferry Building / Justin Herman Plaza area? So, that would be less than half of the officially estimated and very optimistic 35,000 count from last year, or, comparing apples to apples, about two-thirds of last year’s attendance, which was in the 22k, 23k, 24k neighborhood.
Here’s my estimate from last year, complete with my criticism of a ridiculously low number (that some took seriously) from the San Francisco Chronicle. Seems odd that multiple independent sources came in at around the same low-to-middle 20,000s and the organizers were at a pie-in-the sky 35k. Last year’s crowd took 48 minutes to get going, but this year’s took just 31, so you do the math. (And in case there’s any doubt here, crowd counting-wise, like the suitor and his ring in Oh Brother Where Art Thou, I’m bona fide. I got there a couple minutes before noon and I was like Sherman, where are all the white people? How can the organizers claim to not be aware of the smaller crowd this year if it was so obvious to me from the get-go?)
“American Missionary – Great weather in SF west coast walk for life. 40,000+ in attendance.”
Will organizers tell the truth and say that their numbers are down year-over-year or will they simply lie? [UPDATE - KGO 7 ABC TV is saying about 20,000 and as for what the organizers are saying, see below]
As it looked at the start at around 12:02 PM, Saturday, January 22nd, 2011 CE. The much smaller counterprotesting pro-choice march went up Herb Caen Way in parallel – they were gone in 160 seconds or so.
Now, how could it be that a march that took three-quarters of an hour (more or less) to pass by Embarcadero and Broadway in 2010 is smaller than today's, one that took a half-hour (more or less) to pass by Embarcadero and Broadway?
Saying that there were about 40,000 people marching today isn't spin, it's a sin. Appears as if organizer Dolores Meehan is a big fat liar. She might not be aware of the actual numbers precisely, but she's got to know that the size of the crowd is waaaaaay down this year. What would she say next year if the parade only takes 15 minutes to get out of Ferry Plaza? She'd say 45,000, natch.
I mean, is that cool? Exaggerate more and more each year until nobody believes you? Is that how you roll?
And others are doing their best to prove the Rule of Three:
And here's the official press release. Pure horseshit:
"Record-breaking Turnout for Walk for Life West Coast in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Tens of thousands of pro-life activists filled Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco's downtown and then walked 2.5 miles along the waterfront in a record-breaking turnout for the 7th Annual Walk for Life West Coast.
"We are here to break the bondage of the culture of death," Walk for Life co-chair Dolores Meehan told the crowd that stretched as far as the eye could see.
"If we care for the baby, we have to care for the mother and father," said speaker Kathleen Eaton, who funded Birth Choice Clinics in Orange County after her own abortion.
The Walk was held on the 38th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
"Today on January 22nd, I do not honor choice any more, I mourn choice," said former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson, who walked away from her job at a Texas Planned Parenthood clinic on October 6, 2009, after assisting in an ultrasound-guided abortion of a 13-week-old fetus. "You are the new generation of the pro-life movement and I can tell you Planned Parenthood is shaking in their boots."
"Nothing is too big for God to forgive," said Mary Poirer, who told the story of her three abortions.
Rev. Brian Walker, who, with his wife Denise, chose to abort their child four months before their wedding, said he deserted his wife when she needed him. "Many years ago there was not a man in the house, there was a male in the house, but there was not a man in the house," said Walker. "Everybody suffers in the wake of abortion."
"We've lost close to 40 percent of our population to abortion," said Rev. Denise Walker, founder of Everlasting Light Ministries, referring to the high rate of African American abortions. "We must end this slaughter."
A densely packed crowd of least 40,000 walked 20 across in a line that stretched over a mile. The Walk route started at Justin Herman Plaza in downtown San Francisco and concluded at Marina Green in sight of Golden Gate Bridge.
Founded in 2005 by a group of San Francisco Bay Area residents, the Walk for Life West Coast's mission is to change the perceptions of a society that thinks abortion is the answer.
Now I’ll tell you, local pro-choice groups made a conscious effort to ignore the Walk for Life West Coast a few years back, but this here poster shows that that policy has changed a bit.
Here’s the other one. (Technically, these events are in different locations, but just head over to Justin Herman Plaza and you should be able to figure this years locations tout de suite.)
Believe the WFL people will start marching up Embarcadero at the stroke of noon after a one-hour rally starting at 11:00 AM
Photos of past years below and the press release after the jump.
“Narrated by two-time Academy Award winner Jodie Foster, Life begins in a grove of towering redwoods, majestic emblems of Northern California. From there, the audience “shrinks” dramatically as it enters a single redwood leaf and then a redwood cell, learning that despite their unique appearance, redwoods are composed of the same basic molecules as all other organisms on Earth. After this opening statement of shared ancestry, the audience launches on a journey through time, witnessing key events since the Big Bang that set the stage for life.”
People, including a bunch of 8th-graders from Lawton Alternative, were gasping at the opening scene during the sneak peek yesterday. It’s like the superest super IMAX theater you could imagine.
The screen under the big dome is big, big, big:
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See, Jodie Foster has been into this kind of stuff for a while:
All the deets:
LIFE: A COSMIC STORY OPENS ON NOVEMBER 6, 2010 IN MORRISON PLANETARIUM. Narrated by Jodie Foster, the second all-digital show produced by the California Academy of Sciences is a high-speed ride through the history of life
SAN FRANCISCO (October 5, 2010) — How did life on Earth begin? This tantalizing question forms the basis of Morrison Planetarium’s upcoming show, Life: A Cosmic Story, which will premiere on November 6, 2010. Located inside the California Academy of Sciences, the Morrison has transported audiences to the far reaches of the Universe and back since its opening in 2008. Like the inaugural show Fragile Planet, Life takes audiences on an immersive, all-digital journey, featuring visualizations based on the latest scientific data.
“The show’s core concept is that all life on Earth is related, having evolved from a common ancestor,” says Ryan Wyatt, Director of Morrison Planetariumand Science Visualization. “Taking an even longer view, we see that life’s origins begin with dark matter and the first stars—our pedigree is actually 13.7 billion years in the making.”
Narrated by two-time Academy Award winner Jodie Foster, Life begins in a grove of towering redwoods, majestic emblems of Northern California. From there, the audience “shrinks” dramatically as it enters a single redwood leaf and then a redwood cell, learning that despite their unique appearance, redwoods are composed of the same basic molecules as all other organisms on Earth. After this opening statement of shared ancestry, the audience launches on a journey through time, witnessing key events since the Big Bang that set the stage for life. The first stars ignite, galaxies coalesce, and entire worlds take shape. On the early Earth, two scenarios for the dawn of life are presented—one near a turbulent, deep-sea hydrothermal vent, and the other in a primordial “hot puddle” on a volcanic island. From these microscopic beginnings, life transformed the entire Earth as it evolved and diversified: filling the atmosphere with oxygen, turning the continents green, and altering global climate patterns. The 25-minute show ends with a review of geological evidence and the connectedness of all living things on Earth.
Elements of the San Francisco Fire Department and other bay area first responders are getting a little electric vehicle safety training today and tomorrow so they’ll know what they’re doing when Chevy Volts and other Battery Electric Vehicles start appearing on our roads and getting accidents in greater numbers. See?
“Chevrolet and OnStar, in a joint effort with The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), hosted electric vehicle safety training for San Francisco area first responders – the second in a series of training sessions that will take place this fall in cities across the country. First responders participated in a three-hour program to prepare for emergency situations involving electric vehicles such as the Chevrolet Volt, an electric vehicle with extended-range capability available in select markets late this year.”
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 12 — Chevrolet and OnStar, in a joint effort with The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), hosted electric vehicle safety training for San Francisco area first responders – the second in a series of training sessions that will take place this fall in cities across the country. First responders participated in a three-hour program to prepare for emergency situations involving electric vehicles such as the Chevrolet Volt, an electric vehicle with extended-range capability available in select markets late this year.
In addition to San Francisco and last week’s training in Detroit, the tour will make stops in Los Angeles, Austin, New York and Washington, D.C.
“These training sessions provide a valuable opportunity for first responders to prepare for the introduction of this new vehicle technology,” said Chevrolet Safety Director Gay Kent. “The tour allows us to extend our training and education to first responders across the country. Our goal with this program is to help public safety personnel become as comfortable working around electric vehicles as they are with conventional vehicles today.”
Safety trainers delivered presentations covering topics specific to electric vehicles such as power shut-off procedures, lithium ion battery details, locations of high-strength steel and cut points for extrication. In addition, a Volt – recently used during an extrication exercise – was on site for hands-on training for first responders.
