Used to be, in the olden days you could get a few unemployed to attend your protest by handing out a couple of bucks. In the developing nations you can still do that – and if there’s a G8 summit, you can get demonstrators from other countries just by providing transportation and perhaps a meal. Of course that doesn’t apply in France, where protesting is the national sport (and from what I’ve heard, more popular than sex and soccer) and people do it for free as a weekly family outing.
But there’s a new development:
During yesterday’s podcast Siggy sent this article: Germans put price on protesting.
The ever-enterprising and always well-organized Germans, in a grasp at entrepreneurship, have come up with the concept of professional protesters:
They refuse to rally for neo-Nazis, but as long as the price is right a new type of German mercenary will take to the streets and protest for you.
It’s not just any slouch that qualifies, it’s – to use Siggy’s words – GOOD LOOKING protesters:
Next to a black and white posed picture, Melanie lists her details from her jeans size to her shoe size and tells potential protest organisers that she is willing to be deployed up to 100km around Berlin.
So you can cast your demonstration according to height, age, size, and so on – even by shoe-size. I speculate that the professional protester might even accessorize his/her apparel according to the protest’s theme: love beads and mood rings for peace, kaffiyeh for Palestine, and so on. However, the casting is crucial.
Global warmers will probably prefer protesters with tiny-sized feet, say, men wearing shoes size 7 or smaller, women with size 5 shoes, as symbolic of a reduced carbon footprint. It’d probably end up being a demonstration of very short people, but oh-so-paradigmatic of the love of Gaia as its emission of carbon gasses would then be smaller.
But the high-quality protester doesn’t come cheap:
Six hours of Melanie bearing your banner or shouting your slogan will set you back 145 euros.
That’s about $180 per protester; $30/hr. Now you’re talking. A good protester agent should be able to keep 1/3 of that, saving their clients’ valuable time by taking care of the paperwork and providing a full range of well-qualified attractive protesters custom-cast for the special event, small feet and all, while not having do actually do any of the protesting herself.
And I won’t even ask for your shoe size unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Loved the podcast!
As to getting paid for protesting, it bears repeating the fees for partial nudity (“Breasts not Bombs”) or full nudity (PETA)are higher.
Masked anarchists are less expensive than Molotov throwing anarchists. Destroying a McDonald’s, KFC or other well known franchise costs extra.
Overtly anti American or anti semitic expressions with no cause attached are free.
You pose an interesting question for the business plan, then.
The PPACNJ would be a g-rated fully-clothed protesters’ agency, and protesters would have to abstain from any form of violence or hate speech, as befits suburban NJ.
However, perhaps your former employee might consider starting a competitor!
When I was in Berlin, I met a guy who worked in the building trades. Speaking of the many restrictions imposed on construction crews, he said, “In this country, trees are worth more than people.”
Since I was passing through on the way to Poland for some informal research on my relatives who’d died in the Holocaust, my first thought was, “You don’t say.” (But I held my tongue.)