Genuine Protest: Us and Them

A special thanks to Austin James for sending this story my way.

In a Wall Street Journal report that has made quite a splash online, we see the true colors of many protest movements underway across America every day. The story profiles several “activists” from Washington, D.C. to California, who have discovered that picketing can be a prudent moneymaking strategy in these tough economic times. That is, if you can find an organization that pays.

Yeah, you read me right. Paid protestors.

If this looks familiar to you, don’t worry. It is. This time last year, during the last throes of opposition to Obamacare, the now-disgraced nonprofit group ACORN paid protestors at rallies in support of the controversial bill. Many have speculated that other leftist stalwarts such as SEIU and Organizing for America paid demonstrators as well.

Now, several questions immediately arise from this trend. First, is our current recession as terrible as we are told? This WSJ piece tells us that paid demonstrators are generally out-of-work tradesmen, recent college graduates, or senior citizens looking to make an extra buck. Now, we cannot fault people for taking an easy job that will help pay the bills. After all, I did the same thing throughout high school and over the summers in college. However, what should make us think twice about the steepness of this economic “crisis” is the fact that demonstrations cannot attract people (especially in the case of union protests) who come out because they simply care about the cause.

Apparently times are not yet tough enough for the “Want your job back, union member? Come out and picket” strategy. Instead, unions and organizations are plugging their events with something more like, “Want to make minimum wage for a day? Come out and protest a cause you don’t care about. Put on our tee shirt, hold our sign, and yell the words written on this index card.” Here’s your 25 dollars.

Second, we should question the dedication of unions to their issues as they hire scabs to protest for a union cause. I think the title of this WSJ article says it all: “To Protest Hiring of Nonunion Help, Union Hires Nonunion Pickets.” Sure, your union has sufficiently deep pockets to pay some recent college grad to spend the day yelling about a construction company hiring nonunion workers. The question is, do you really want to compromise the integrity of your organization by stooping to such a hypocritical low? Just because scab protestors are an option does not mean that they should be used.

Third, in cases involving paid protestors (union or otherwise), we should greet with wholehearted skepticism any claims of “grassroots concern” or assertions that “the people are unhappy.” The pro-Obamacare protests are a perfect example. If the people were truly dissatisfied with the healthcare status quo, they would get out to the picket line for free, scream their lungs out all day, and go home with their only compensation being the satisfaction of having been active for a cause about which they deeply cared. Then, they would wake up and do it all over again.

This is the difference between the cause of liberty and those fighting to preserve politics-as-usual. The big government crowd knows that there is no such thing as mass support for statist initiatives. Never in a million years will people freely give of their time and energy to demonstrate in favor of a government plan to further erode their individual liberty. Large protests for government expansion do not simply materialize. (Not in America, anyway.) They are created by wealthy donors, large corporations, unions, and politicians who consider paid demonstrators an “investment” from which they will reap returns in taxes, government subsidies, and surrendered freedoms.

Compare this strategy with Americans protesting for the cause of liberty. Why are Tea Party events scheduled on weekends? People pay their bills by working a job during the week, and they protest on their days off. They receive no compensation, aside from a general feeling of camaraderie and the satisfaction of having supported a worthy cause. Often, average Tea Party members are putting money into their organizations, not receiving payment from them. History has shown, and is now showing once again, that liberty, in and of itself, is a cause worth fighting for. It requires no supplemental incentives; it begs no top-down orchestration. Freedom is both the goal and the fuel for the pursuit of that goal.

The United States was founded on timeless ideals such as independence, individuality, liberty, and God-given rights. The comparison between paid protests for state initiatives and grassroots protests for increased liberty has proven to us once again that those ideals remain at the forefront of Americans’ minds. Sadly, paid protests show us that Americans, in their inescapable fallibility, can also be convinced to sell out their ideals, along with their dignity, for $8.50 an hour and a free tee shirt. Let us hope and pray that the appeal of freedom will triumph.