Joshua wrote earlier:

… while we’ve made progress toward achieving our goals, we’re clearly still lacking when it comes to the “usual” means of achieving them. Turnout at the rally was disappointing: between 150 and 200 people, depending on who was speaking. [snip]

Contrast this to coverage of Darfur today. Sunday is likely to bring thousands of people to the mall for protest atrocities in Darfur. George Clooney and Elie Wiesel will speak. Fox News covered the story in detail and read a Web site URL on its evening news broadcast. Five members of Congress were arrested at the Sudanese Embassy. That’s impressive, and while Darfur is certainly a very worthy cause, the situation in North Korea is no less worthy of the public’s outrage.

He was right on the money. As the pictures show, the North Korea Freedom Day rally was a puny one as far as a Capitol rally goes.

Even a very small and relatively unheralded Human Rights Conference headlined by Congressman Wolf in Loudoun County on Saturday was attended by about 200 people. And that was a nice Saturday afternoon — in an exurban town in Loudoun County!

Compare that, as Joshua wrote, to the Darfur rally where an estimated crowd of between 10,000 to 15,000 people showed up:

By Washington standards, where protests often draw more than 100,000 people, yesterday’s rally — estimated by organizers at between 10,000 and 15,000 — was not huge. Yet the Rally to Stop Genocide appeared to be distinctive for being one of the more diverse rallies the capital has seen in years. Most demonstrations attract fairly homogenous crowds, who often share political, religious and ethnic makeup, as was the case when Latinos dominated immigration protests last month.

But yesterday’s rally brought together people from dozens of backgrounds and affiliations, many of whom strongly disagree politically and ideologically on many issues. Judging from T-shirts and banners identifying the various groups, Jews appeared to be among the largest contingent of demonstrators.

Indeed, the Darfur rally provides an interesting contrast to the North Korea Freedom Day rally.

Clearly, the ability of North Korea Freedom activists to mobilize a large crowd is severely limited, to say the least, while the Darfur issue brings in politicians, celebrities, church groups and many others. The latter fires the imagination of the public, if you will.

Yet, there are real successes for the North Korea Freedom activists. The political backing for the cause is substantial if generally confined to the Right (with some exceptions like Congressman Lantos). One might even go as far to say that, whereas Darfur gets a huge crowd, it likely will not get much political/policy action; in contrast, North Korea Freedom activism is much more likely to bear fruit in the political and policy arena despite the inability to generate attention-getting crowds.

The difference is likely two-folds. First, North Korea, as a potential or current nuclear state, is a more urgent national security concern. There is a genuine threat of proliferation with the attendant specter of catastrophe. The issues also engages important regional players like China and Russia and allies like Japan and South Korea.

Second, if the activist base for the cause is somewhat limited, it is highly focused and politically influential. A number of politically prominent evangelicals is devoted to the issue. Some of the administration’s important conservative allies are also engaged by both the national security implications of a North Korea bomb AND the pervasive, grotesque suffering of the North Korean people.

In my view, the the overall picture, then, is a mixed one. The cause remains a politically engaging and influential topic, with some prospect of success, but it remains far from becoming a serious cause célèbre, the likes of which fires the imagination of the American public at large.
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