Sunday, August 18, 2019

Trump Buying an Audience

At Trump's rally at a Shell plant in Pennsylvania on Tuesday strict instructions employees were given by their bosses ahead of the event and were ordered not to protest or do "anything viewed as resistance" during the event.

"No yelling, shouting, protesting, or anything viewed as resistance will be tolerated at the event," read the orders.

Attendance at the rally was not mandatory
but workers who opted not to show up lost  a full day's pay. The choice for thousands of union workers at Royal Dutch Shell's petrochemical plant in Beaver County was clear: Either stand in a giant hall waiting for Trump to speak or take the day off with no pay. Only those who showed up at 7 am, scanned their ID cards, and prepared to stand for hours—through lunch but without lunch—would be paid. "NO SCAN, NO PAY." 

The Pennsylvania event was funded by taxpayers, and thus legally not supposed to be a campaign-style rally.

Critics were quick to denounce the reported orders against any protests as coercive and paying people to attend a rally is more befitting of a dictatorship than a democracy.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/08/17/workers-were-reportedly-ordered-not-protest-or-show-any-resistance-trump-rally

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