Any pretense that Occupy DC protesters are just a bunch of ordinary fed-up Americans should be put to rest this week. Washington Examiner reporter Aubrey Whelan reported this week that the “grassroots” movement has decamped to tony new digs at 16th and L streets, NW, where the $4,000-per-month rent is being paid by none other than the Service Employees International Union.
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This collaboration puts a new light on the protestors, who have trashed the newly refurbished McPherson Square, blocked rush hour traffic, assaulted police officers and an elderly woman attending an Americans for Prosperity dinner, and cost District taxpayers at least $1.6 million dollars for additional police protection and other city services. It makes Occupy’s leaders’ previous attempts to distance themselves from the SEIU come off as somewhat disingenuous. On the other side, the fiction that Occupy DC and its counterparts in other cities are completely independent entities has allowed their union backers to distance themselves from protestors’ illegal and embarrassing activities even as they subsidize them.
After contributing millions of dollars and thousands of volunteers to get Barack Obama elected in 2008, then-SEIU President Andy Stern became one of the most frequent visitors to the White House. Occupy DC leaders claim their free rent comes with no strings attached, but interestingly, their lease runs right up until Election Day. In the meantime, they will be busy organizing Astroturf protests against K Street lobbyists from their offices, which are paid for by a union that spent more than $1.5 million lobbying Congress last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In December, members of Our DC, another union front group, joined Occupiers in chanting “K Street. Tear it down,” during a joint rally at which 62 people were arrested. The two groups also joined forces to shut down portions of the Key Bridge during their National Day of Action for the 99%. As the Daily Caller reported in March, the legal address of Our DC — which staged a sit-in protest at the office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — is the same Gaithersburg, Md. address as SEIU’s Local 500. Kendall Fells, Our DC’s executive director, is an SEIU employee who took home a union salary of $102,400 in 2010.
Occupy DC’s carefully scripted public image as a spontaneous mass movement akin to the Tea Party was always a bit hard to swallow. This new move should put the idea to rest for good.
