Thanks for covering the (Oct. 18) No Kings protest in Chandler.
Per the story, "Chandler Gilbert Indivisible stated there were at least 4,500 people at the protest, using 'representative sample sections,' while a Chandler Police spokesperson stated their count is between 1,200 and 1,500 protesters on-site between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 a.m."
The Chandler Police count badly underestimated this, somehow.
I have no bone to pick in this attendance count, I am not associated with any of the organizers.
I was there as a participant between 8:30 and 9:30, and walked around during that time because I can't stand in place for long periods of time.
The protest attendees stretched all the way from Chicago Street to at least Chandler Boulevard, on both sides of Arizona Avenue, which is 3/8 of a mile or approximately 2000 feet. That's 4000 feet of streetcurb (both sides of the street).
If the police were right, that means on average about one person every 3 feet.
Towards Chicago Street the participants were that thinly distributed, but along AJ Chandler Park it was a continuous stretch of people packed close enough together that you wouldn't have been able to squish them into a single row, and between Buffalo Street and Chandler Blvd., it was almost as dense as that.
It was not as heavily attended as the Tumbleweed Tree lighting / parade in the past, where there's several rows of continuous people all along the same area.
My estimate for No Kings Oct 18 in Chandler was 4,000 to 6,000 people, just based on a guess of 1 - 1.5 people per foot, on average, along both sides of Arizona Ave from Chicago St. - Chandler Blvd.
I could believe 3,000 possibly as an absolute minimum, but there's no way there were less than 2,000 people.
