When Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz showed up at a high-pitched school auditorium in his district for a township hall meeting in former 2017 , he was confront by an tempestuous crowd of 1,000 people — plus even more who were protesting outside the building . According to aDeseret News account , hearing members demanded to know how Chaffetz was going to expend his position as head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to defy President Donald Trump accountable , booing and intone " Do your job ! " at Chaffetz .
later on , Chaffetzclaimedthat he ’d been localize up . The rough receipt he got at the outcome was " more of a pay off effort to yobo and intimidate " than an denotation of how his constituent felt , he said , though he did n’t provide any evidence or identify who that he believed had hired the protesters .
Chaffetz ’s office did n’t respond to a call from HowStuffWorks , but some of the attendees jestingly responded to his allegation bysending him bill for their time . One of the meeter , Shauna Ehninger , a resident of Sandy , Utah , explained in an e-mail that she was " just an unpaid ordinary citizen who cares what ’s going on in the world . " Ehninger said that while hoi polloi had shared entropy about the township meeting on social medium , that ’s the only sign of coordination that she noticed , and that everyone she and her husband spoke to while standing in note was , like them , a component of the territorial dominion .
But Chaffetz is just one of legion politician who ’ve complained late that they ’ve been targeted by lease opposition . Rep. Louie Gohmert , R - Texas , also has chargedthat " some " protester at Congressional township halls are being paid . The most noted complainer is President Donald Trump . Afterthousands of protestersin New York , Washington and other metropolis butt in April to demand that Trump release his tax regaining , hetweetedthat " someone should reckon into who paid " for the rallies . Trump also has denounced the"professional anarchists , hoodlum and paid protesters"who’ve opposed him . Trump ’s press secretarial assistant , Sean Spicer , alsohas complainedthat " resist has become a profession , " and that Trump is being aim by " a very paid " movement .
It’s Not Probable …
As medium fact - checkers such asPolitiFacthave noted , these accusations about paid protesters have n’t been supported by grounds . But that has n’t halt some people from conceive that they ’re true . In January , after women ’s marching attractedhundreds of thousands of participantsin cities across the globe a Public Policy Polling sight found that 38 percentage of Trump voters state theybelieved that the protesters had been paidby George Soros , a billionaire liberal activist . ( A spokesperson for Soros ' Open Society Foundationstold The Hill , a political newspaper , that Soros has n’t funded any anti - Trump protestation . )
Costas Panagopoulos , a professor of political science at Fordham University and managing director of the school ’s Center for Electoral Politics and Democracy , says that he has n’t reckon any reading that the waves of protester today are being paid to demonstrate against Trump and GOP Congress members , and consider that the out-and-out size of the turnout make it unbelievable . " I think that in many cases , the price would be so usurious that it would be prohibitory , " he say .
Indeed , Washington Post political reporter Philip Bump calculatedthat at $ 25 per protester , it would have cost $ 57.4 million to subsidize all the dissent rally against Trump between his election in November 2016 and early February . And as Bump noted , coordinate payment to millions of participants would have been difficult to keep undercover .
But Is It Possible?
That ’s not to say that paid protest has never existed . It ’s a longstanding tradition in nation such as Indonesia , where protesters typically get cash and a jam-packed lunch , according to thisthis articlein The Diplomat . And in Pakistan , studentstold BBC Newsin 2014 that they were pay to attend anti - government protests , and then prevented from leaving .
But in the U.S. , most of the reported instances seem to be far smaller . TheWashington Post describe in 2007,for model , that a join was hiring nonmember — many of them recruited from homeless shelters — at $ 8 per hour to picket construction sites . And an Eastern Orthodox Judaic organization hired Mexican laborers to don Jewish supplicant garments and hold up signs protesting homosexuality at the 2015 Gay Pride Parade in New York City , according to theNew York Times .
In fact , when paid activism scales up , it ’s often at the behest of business interests , not democratic 1 . UCLA supporter prof of sociology Edward T. Walker has studied grassroots protagonism networks organized by bodied lobbying house , which in recent twelvemonth have maturate into a billion - clam manufacture . In this 2015 New York Timesarticle , Walker detailed how ride - provider Uber used its mobile app to get customers to resist against advise restriction in New York City , and even offered spare ride to a exchange at City Hall .
But as political skill prof Panagopoulos notes , social medium and mobile apps now make it easy for large numbers of corresponding - minded ordinary citizens to orchestrate and enter in protests , without anyone having to dangle a few dollar in front of them . " These day , it ’s easy to get the word out , " he say .
One example of such instant , unpaid activism is the anti - TrumpIndivisible movement , which set about with a Google Doc on grassroots organizing make in December 2016 by a twain of former Congressional staffers . Since then , according to spokesperson Helen Kalla , Indivisible has morph into a web of nearly 6,000 severally organize groups in every Congressional district in the U.S. — none of which receive any financial support from the parent organization .
Unsubstantiated accusations of yield dissident , Kalla says via e-mail , are " just another attempt by the Trump Administration and its allies in Congress to discredit the legitimate worry of century of thousands of factor who desire to make their voice heard . "
Panagopoulos sees a similar motive in the billing . " It ’s a way of minimizing the impact and in fussy the visual wallop that that these large gatherings have , particularly when they ’re expressing anger and dissatisfaction , " he says .
