Adam Swart, CEO of the publicity firm Crowds on Demand, says his company has seen a 400 percent increase in requests for paid protesters this year compared to the same period last year.
Appearing on Fox News, Swart was asked how much the hired demonstrators are paid. He declined to give exact figures for specific events. Still, he said payment generally ranges from “the low hundreds, the low one hundreds, into a few hundred,” depending on the location, duration, and conditions such as cold weather or early mornings.
According to its website, Crowds on Demand says it is “best known for organizing passionate demonstrations, rallies, flash-mobs, corporate PR events, and light-hearted events such as paparazzi, brand ambassadors, and PR stunts.” Swart stressed that his company only deploys individuals to “peaceful and law-abiding” protests and focuses on “persuasion.”
He did not specify whether the payments are hourly or flat rates, but said events in politically unfriendly territory can bring higher pay.
“It’s hard to give you a specific figure… If you’re organizing a conservative demonstration in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that would be a higher pay rate — or a left-wing demonstration in rural Mississippi, that would be a higher rate, because finding and identifying those people is harder and that might be a more tense environment in those particular locations, as you would imagine,” Swart said.
When asked if the individuals being paid to protest believe in the causes they are a part of or simply do so to receive a paycheck, Swart claimed they share the causes they are paid to represent.
“They genuinely share these beliefs, and I’ll put it this way, right? I’m asking your listeners, your viewers right now, if you got paid a couple hundred dollars, probably mostly your viewers lean conservative, would you guys go to a BLM protest for a couple hundred dollars?” he asked. “I bet most of your viewers are shouting into their TV screens, ‘No, I would not do that’, right?”
He continued, “So whether it’s conservative, we provide — there’s a lot of misinformation that we only work for the left. We work for the left and the right, but always on the side of common sense and generally on the side of the underdog. So we, a lot of conservatives, use our service because, a lot of times, there’s a case where hippies with a trust fund are out there protesting, but conservatives are more likely to have jobs and families, so actually they require a little bit more of an incentive to turn out to a demonstration.”
Swart concluded by saying there is no such thing as a “truly organic” protest. “Everybody has a reason for being somewhere, whether they’re flexing on Instagram, flexing for politics, staffer, or being compensated. So I don’t think there is such a thing as truly organic,” he said.
