How to Purchase a Protest Movement
DEMO, a new art installation highlighting the practice of astroturfing, features fake protesters organized by a real consulting firm.
Americans can, at the tap of a button, order almost any consumer good or meal delivered to their door, stream virtually any movie or television show in any language, or enter a virtual world that connects them with countless others.
It should go without saying that those with significant financial resources can just as easily purchase hundreds of protesters to storm the streets for a specific cause.
For the right price, highly specialized consultants sell the service of delivering fake grassroots protests – a phenomenon often termed “astroturfing.” These hired guns offer everything a political movement might want. You can pay for a customized message chanted at the rally, decide on the demographics of each demonstrator, and direct the crowd's ire at a specific political enemy.
The images at these sponsored rallies generate intended news headlines and social media images. If successful, they tend to convince ordinary people to join the cause.
I’ve written extensively about these consultants, and when possible, I expose them. Take this investigation about the fur industry handing out checks to young students to protest against proposed regulations in California. The paid protesters stormed the capitol, decrying any limits on the fur trade without disclosing that they were paid to be there with signs handed to them by lobbyists. Many testified before legislators that limits on fur were racist.
Such highly covert services run in the background of election campaigns, protest movements, and legislative squabbles. Despite the secrecy surrounding these efforts, the operatives in this niche industry maintain a privileged perch.
This dynamic occurs on both the left and right. Minyon Moore, the chair of the DNC’s recent Chicago convention, is a partner at Dewey Square Group, a consulting firm that generates fake letters and protests on behalf of its corporate clients. Michael Whatley, the new chairman of the RNC, previously led the firm HBW Resources, a firm I’ve written about many times regarding its role in astroturfing fake groups on behalf of the oil industry.
Juan Obando, an artist from Bogota, Colombia and Yoshua Okón, an artist from Mexico City, stumbled on the topic and couldn’t look away. Obando noticed that many of his students signed up for part-time work as paid protesters. He researched the dynamic—which is how we came into contact—and was astonished at the ease and sophistication of this cottage industry of political consulting.
Obando and Okón embarked on a project to spotlight the absurdity and power of astroturfing. Through an arts grant, the pair contracted Crowds on Demand, a firm specializing in astroturfing, to pay for a rally in Arizona.
They instructed the crowd to show up and essentially pantomime a typical American protest—except without a cause. The protesters were asked to wave signs and yell silently, mimicking the motions of a traditional demonstration. Their placards featured blank lime green boards, symbolizing the green screen post-production effect that allows computer-generated images to appear on screen.
Okón and Obando recently invited me to speak at the opening of their exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson. Before the event, I spoke with them to better understand their vision for the project. The interview is edited for length and clarity:
FANG: How does this work exactly? Who signs up to participate in these things?
OBANDO: You get asked at first, when you when you're commissioning the service, yeah, what demographics do you want in your protest, what race, what gender and age and they really can tailor it. And we said, you know what? Give me a general population, a sample of the general population of Arizona, whatever you can get. We were not interested in any specific group. But damn, it was so interesting because many of them were like beginner actors, just like very amateur actors with business cards, asking, ‘Hey, call me for your next production.’ A lot of indigenous people from around here, Latin American immigrants from Central America, lots of veterans, and also lots of homeless people. So it was like a crazy mix. And when they started arriving, a few recognized each other from other paid protests from the previous year.
FANG: Can you talk about the inspiration for this work and how it came about?
OBANDO: I was in Boston working in an art school, and I started seeing these posters and they were so blatant, like, summer activist jobs, protest jobs. I thought this was for a performance art project. But then I started digging and realized these were real gigs. Later, I went down to the United Nations in New York for the first appearance of President Iván Duque, who was seen as illegitimate, from elections that were very shady. I found out that his government had paid a firm to hire protesters in support of him. The company Crowds on Demand even featured him as a client on their website as a case study. The images of the protest were quite amusing because these people were clearly not Colombian because they dressed up in strange garb, with like drums and trumpets, in ways no Colombian would appear. I researched more and got to your work. Later, I saw some of my students really getting paid in Boston, and started showing up at all kinds of things, given banners and t-shirts, even at events supposedly held by Black Lives Matter. They brought a U-Haul truck and all these kids were just waiting and told what to say.
OKON: In Mexico, there is a very common practice called "los acarreados," where people get lunches or a little bit of money to go to political protesters and, you know, everybody knows about it. It's illegal but well-known. I was talking to Juan and I started reading your stories and the issue of astroturfing came on my radar. We realized it not only exists, but it's so much more sophisticated. These fake protests rely on organic social media and there are often news reporters who end up talking to actors. They don't disclose the fact that they are not real activists. Juan and I became aware and were incredibly surprised. Maybe that's where we were. We couldn't really believe that this is a service that can be advertised on actual websites in an open way. We just started talking and laughing about this. It's very ironic. You know, in a system that's supposed to be democratic, you have all kinds of manipulations of how reality is being perceived. So we started talking about the possibility of making an artwork. So the idea came, four years ago, I think. We hired one of the companies we could find, Crowds on Demand, an L.A.-based company. We hired their services but we organized a protest that, in a way, calls attention to itself, or in other words, calls attention to the practice of astroturfing itself. So it's a void protest in which protesters have no cause. It's kind of an empty protest. All the signs are digi-green, which is the green that is used for digital effects.