Need for Truth About Protest Numbers

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday April 01, 2003 12:46 by Dominic Carroll - Clonakilty Against the War clonakiltyagainstthewar at eircom dot net

Leave the Lies to the Pentagon

Accuracy regarding protest numbers essential to retain credibility and to inform those organising future protests.

On an earlier posting (http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=39182), a comment was submitted which cast doubt on the number of those attending the Mothers' Day Peace Vigil in Clonakilty last Sunday. I reported 60 people. The comment querying the figure was as follows:

"True Figure ?
by Bob The Builder Mon, Mar 31 2003, 3:58pm
Isn't it interesting that exactly 60 turned up..."

I include a photo of the vigil and, though the quality is not good, I think you can count precisly 60 people – not 59, not 61, not 45,000, not 1.5 million – 60.

Elsewhere on Indymedia, a debate on numbers attending the Dublin demos is being conducted. Whatever about the media's lies and ineptitude, we can only retain credibility regarding numbers by telling the truth (no matter how painful it might sometimes be).

Nevertheless, it is severely dissapointing when the media under-report protest numbers. But it's up to us to instigate a system for counting. At Shannon, I suggest people form up in rows of 10 at the start of the march specifically for counting. This won't always work as people often join a march whilst in progress. At Shannon, however, that won't be the case.

Fundamentally, the issue is about credibility and accuracy. And those of us involved in organising demos are interested in knowing the true figure for those participating – not how many we would like to have been there.