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  • 2013-09-09 (xsd:date)
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  • 2 Million Bikers to DC (en)
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  • In February 2013, the American Muslim Political Action Committee (AMPAC) announced they would be staging an event called the Million Muslim March, which they hoped would gather one million people in Washington, D.C., on 11 September 2013, the twelfth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to press the U.S. government into revealing the truth about those attacks: After negative public reaction, AMPAC changed the name of their event to the Million American March Against Fear (MAMAF), which they describe as offering the following events: In August 2013, motorcyclists began organizing a 2 Million Bikers to DC counter-event, which they hoped would bring even larger numbers of bikers on a Washington ride-through to pay tribute and offer respect to those that lost their lives on that day 12 years ago, and to salute our troops engaged in the War on Terror: Example: [Collected via Facebook, September 2013] However, the National Park Service (NPS) has jurisdiction over the issue, and the NPS has declined to issue the group a no stop permit that would facilitate their ride through Washington by granting them a police escort and a waiver for red lights, stop signs and other traffic signals. The NPS cited traffic issues and manpower requirements in denying the request: The permits in question were under the purview of the NPS and the Metropolitan Police Department, not President Obama himself. The lack of a permit did not prevent bikers from riding through Washington on the 9/11 anniversary; the riders just weren't exempt from traffic laws and therefore couldn't navigate through the city nearly as quickly as they could have if they had been issued a no-stop permit. The two cases were dissimilar in that AMPAC requested a permit for a smaller gathering in a fixed location and submitted their request several months in advance; the 2 Million Bikers group requested a no-stop permit for a much larger group involving miles of roadways, street closures, and police escorts, and they didn't submit their request for a no-stop permit until a few weeks before the event, as documented by this 30 August 2013 Facebook post: Many Internet postings later claimed that Washington police had estimated the 2 Million Bikers event turnout at between 800,000 and 1.2 million participants, but we have found no documentation (other than repetition of rumor) confirming that local police made any such estimate, and when we queried the Washington Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) about the issue, the Director of the MPD's Office of Communications confirmed that the Metropolitan Police Department does not provide crowd estimates. (en)
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