Black Friday Protests at Walmart Staffed by Professional Activists _ Washington Free Beacon

8/13/2019 Black Friday Protests at Walmart Staffed by Professional Activists _ Washington Free Beacon

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Black Friday Protests at Walmart Staffed by Professional ActivistsReport: Few of the protesters actually work at Walmart

BY: Bill McMorris

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December 6, 2013 5:05 pm

The Black Friday protests at a

Walmart in Washington state

featured more paid union

activists than actual employees,

according to a new report.

The Freedom Foundation, aWashington free market think

tank, found that the majority of

protesters in the Evergreen state were “paid union activists” and that few

Walmart employees participated in the protests.

“OUR Wal-Mart, a subsidiary of the United Food and Commercial Workers

Union (UFCW), mounted a series of Black Friday protests targeting

Wal-Mart locations around the country, including the Wal-Mart in the

Factoria Mall south of Bellevue,” the report says. “The Bellevue protest

drew around 100 people, according to press reports. Bellevue police

arrested 15 demonstrators for ‘failure to disperse’—a misdemeanor crime.”

The Freedom Foundation revealed that only three of the 15 arrestees were

actual employees. The rest were union activists with ties to the UFCW,

public employee unions, and other far left organizations.

Ryan Williams, spokesman for labor watchdog Worker Center Watch, told

the Washington Free Beacon that organizers generally arrange arrests

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AP



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ahead of time in order to gin up more media attention.

“They don’t have the support of real workers, so they rely on the support of

paid actors and stand-ins with union affiliations,” he said. “They’re protests

held by professional protesters, oftentimes paid and given media training,

to cause a scene for publicity.”

Even attendees admitted that activists outnumbered employees at the

protests. Shana Stonehouse, a self-proclaimed ex-Walmart employee, told

interviewers that she was one of only three protesters with actual ties to

Walmart..

““There was thousands of people and none of them besides myself and two

other people actually worked for Walmart,” she told KIRO radio. “They were just people supporting us standing up against Walmart,”

This is not the first time Washington unions have relied on paid activists to

create the impression of popular support at a protest. Working Washington,

a SEIU-funded workers’ center, staged several protests at fast food

establishments over the summer and this week that featured professional

agitators rather than restaurant employees.

This entry was posted in Issues and tagged Minimum Wage, SEIU, Unions. Bookmark the

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Bill McMorris is a staff writer for the Washington Free Beacon.His email address is [email protected].

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Black Friday Protests at Walmart Staffed by Professional Activists _ Washington Free Beacon