Written By : Tabitha Hale

If you stayed at home and watched the news this weekend, you may not have heard about the teeny tiny fringe of angry protesters that showed up in Washing, DC this weekend. Because there was very little coverage. Just look at the minuscule crowds these nutjobs are trying to pass off as legit!

Freedom Plaza at 9:15am on 9/12.

All snark aside, I showed up at Freedom Plaza at 9am on Saturday. The crowds began on the trains, where 4 stops out from the city, they were so full no one could even fit on them. Here was our car:

Metro ride into the city on Saturday morning.

I can not even explain to you what it felt like to see that many people. Throngs of people poured in from all surrounding train stations. There were 450 bus permits issued, and bus loads of people from all over flooded the square. We hung around Freedom Plaza for a while. It was completely inundated with people. When it got to the point that we couldn’t move across the streets anymore, they started marching us out – an hour an a half early.

The march begins.

Arriving at the Mall.

We pushed our way through the crowd and made it to the stage, where Smart Girl Politics was supposed to be introduced onstage at the rally. Teri Christoph, Rebecca Wales and I made it to the stage and waited. What an amazing vantage point!

View from stage left, looking out.

Smart Girls (Teri Christoph, Me, Julia Hodges, and Rebecca Wales next to the stage, looking out at the crowd.

Me. Collapsed on the grass - it was a long day. In the best way possible.

Me, next to Teri, Twittering furiously. The cell service was seriously fubared, and I got "congestion" messages all day long on my Blackberry.

Matt and Rebecca with Jim DeMint after his speech.

Rebecca Wales, Congressman Marsha Blackburn, Me, and Teri Christoph.

During her speech, Blackburn relayed the status of the city: the expressways were shut down. Buses were still coming. Trains were still overloaded. She claimed 1.5 million people were there.

There has been a lot of discrepancy about the number of people that actually attended. Some of the controversy was enhanced by me, and Michelle Malkin. I heard everything from a couple hundred thousand to 2 million on the ground, and I reported what I was told by staffers and officials. FreedomWorks misquoted ABC, which lead to all sorts of drama. The bottom line is this: there was a metric crapload of people there. Here’s a timelapse video of the march, from an aerial perspective:

So however they want to slam me or Michelle Malkin for the numbers, it doesn’t matter. I don’t much care. If they’re going to burn resources on mincing words and hard numbers, then let them. The photos and videos were there. Here’s Jimmie Bise’s take on it.

The most fun moment of the day? Doing line kicks on stage with the other girls while Lloyd Marcus sang “2010″. The view from the stage was breathtaking – and the energy was infectious. I’m the short one behind him at the beginning.

All in all, it was the most incredible event I’ve ever attended.

For some more great photos and a comparison of the aftermath of the Inauguration vs 9/12, go here.

As my new friend Mommentator said, I would do this day over and over again.

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