I don't know how many people marched in Milwaukee on Thursday for fair treatment of immigrants.

No one has tried to put a number on it. Crowd estimates have gone out of fashion.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is content to say that "thousands" marched, and made a point of saying it wasn't as many as last year. (How do we know that?)

Meanwhile, the New York Times was pointing to Milwaukee as one of the places where crowds didn't decrease, and made it sound like the biggest march in the country took place here.

One thing is certain: TENS of thousands of people marched in Milwaukee. I can't say whether it was 20,000 or 30,000 or more, but it was undoubtedly the biggest march Milwaukee will see in 2008 -- and the biggest since last year's march organized by the same people.

Consider this: The march started at 5th and Washington about 11:45 and wound its way across the 6th Street viaduct and down Wisconsin Avenue to Veterans Park. That's a good two and one-half miles, maybe a little more.

When the first marchers got to the park, many marchers were still lined up and waiting to leave the starting point. Marchers were strung out all along the 2.5-mile route, and kept coming into Veterans Park until about 2 p.m., more than two hours after the march began.