Climate March in New York: 'The system is the problem'

The iconic skyline was shrouded in fog as we struggled to exit the subway on Sunday morning in New York. Standing at the head of the stairs a blue shirt called for our cooperation, his plaintive tone infused with the sort of accent that movies lead us to expect from NYPD beat cops.

“I need your help here, folks. They’ve closed all the stations up to here, so everyone is going to be coming out this exit. I need you all to help me out and keep moving.”

We moved, but the crush did not abate once we got away from the subway entrance. In every direction all we could see were people, spilling into side streets, stacked too close for comfort and clothed in the signs and slogans of a climate movement finally coming of age.

“Politically I’m thrilled with this crowd,” remarked a US journalist. “But personally there are just way too many people.”

Schooled in the art of ducking and weaving through crowds of protesters on the streets of Montreal, my colleagues from the French edition of Ricochet led us on a frenetic chase, trying to move up from somewhere in the middle to the front of the sprawling march. We never made it.

One thing was clear to us all: this was a crowd that rivalled the very largest we had seen during the six-month-long Quebec student strike of 2012. A professional crowd estimate released by organizers, based on data from 35 crowd spotters analyzed by a mathematician from Carnegie Mellon University, judged the crowd at roughly 311,000. Some media outlets, including Time and Rolling Stone, thought it topped 400,000. For once, media coverage was near unanimous in estimating turnout.