Peer Review

Is it still a march if so many people show up that they clog the entire planned marching route, making it impossible to actually go anywhere? Now, there are some questions about how many people may have actually showed up to the Los Angeles version of the post-inauguration Women's March last Saturday. Early predictions were something around 100,000, then murmurs in the crowd while on the ground there were that it was possibly twice that, and later still a lot of us were breathlessly passing around the number 750,000 with a combination of genuine shock and not a little bit of that sanctimonious self-congratulation we on the political left are so very famous for.

But I'm not here to talk about the crowd size. That would be petty and small and also miss the entire point. How many people showed up to the Women's March in LA? It was a fuckload. How many is a fuckload, exactly? Or even inexactly? Well, it's subjective, isn't it? If I told someone "I just ate a fuckload of jellybeans," for me that could mean an Easter-for-the-whole-family-size bag on my own. Or if I'm a diabetic, that could be, like, four jellybeans.

Or if I'm talking to 97% of climate scientists, they might tell me "the atmosphere is carrying a fuckload of carbon emissions," or whatever, but a certain percentage of Americans when presented with that information would just gun the engine in their Ford F-250s and leave us all standing there watching their trailer-hitch testicles swing as they drive away, disinterested. And maybe one might disagree with their findings, but it's hard to argue that 97% of scientists does not constitute a fuckload of scientists, even if the absolute number of climate specialists is absolutely dwarfed in real terms by the number of scientists studying finding ways to spare older rich people from the indignity of having to adopt.

So knowing the category is fluid, how many people is a fuckload of people? Well, that depends on the expectations and the venue. I once went to a Blink 182/No Doubt concert (we miss you, 1998) at a place that seated 65,000 people* and it took FOUR FUCKING HOURS to get out of the parking lot afterward. So capacity vs. logistics, that's a fuckload. The exact same number of people at the Rose Bowl to watch a UCLA football game, however, feels roomy and manageable. So that's still a lot of people, but a fuckload? No way.

All those parameters set, I feel comfortable saying there were a fuckload of people at the Women's March in LA. Evidence: all my pictures kind of sucked. They sucked because we got there on time and then were stuck more or less penned in next to a railing in Pershing Square because it wasn't possible to move for like two hours. No options to wander around or pick out the really good signs or alter vantage points, just a series of people's heads and the same hundred or so signs in the same general place, all... waiting.

This is not to say that the event wasn't moving or satisfying. It was all those things and more.** We knew it was going to be something unexpected when we couldn't get the commuter train 6 or 7 stops inland from LA because it was already full when it got to us. Mostly it was cathartic. Both there and in the aftermath, watching His Tremendousness spin out, waving his tiny raccoon paws around, insisting numbers don't mean what they obviously mean. Maybe it's just not clear to him that the characterization of numbers can be subjective, but the actual business of counting done properly is as undeniable as the truth that no Mexicans are going to be paying for any border wall.


---

*There was a lawn area and a devoted contingent of the type of person who likes to go to concerts and get absolutely fucking baked, so I assume many of the attendees were laying down.

**Dry, warm, well serviced by available parking... this is LA after all. Sorry everywhere else where you froze your ovaries off.