Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Paid Actors Pose as Tea Party Protesters
Manipulating Americans to organize or protest against their own interests is the sine qua non of big corporate front groups. These groups are alternately known as astroturf organizations because the grass in “grassroots” is fake turf.
Just how fake that turf is came into crisp perspective on April 2 when Christine Stapleton, an investigative reporter at the Palm Beach Post, revealed that a protest rally called by the Tea Party of Miami and Florida Citizens Against Waste used paid actors from the Broward Acting Group as faux protesters. (Watch a video here.)
Real Citizens Show Up to Protest the State’s Failure to Purchase Land for Everglades Restoration in March 2015; Paid Actors Hold a Counter Protest on April 2
The fake protest was in response to more than 100 real citizens turning out the prior month to demand that the South Florida Water Management District, a state agency, exercise its option before it expires to purchase 48,600 acres of corporate land owned by U.S. Sugar, a huge sugar cane grower in South Florida. According to studies and experts, the land purchase is vital to preventing marine life die-offs in the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie River basins and along the Indian River Lagoon.
Laura Reynolds, Executive Director of the Tropical Audubon Society, explained what’s at stake: “The purchase can solve the problems of getting sufficient water for the Everglades and greatly reducing the damaging pulses of polluted fresh water to the northern estuaries while delivering much needed clean water to the southern estuaries.”
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