So, we DINKS live in Washington DC. Since the city is the nations capital, people are constantly coming here to protest. Every month or so, some big group shows up to do a political event. Last week it was the anti-abortion people, this week the anti-war people are in town.
Well, there has to be a way to make money off of this. An idea that I saw on the news was this: Paid Protesting. This basically means, getting paid to hit the streets and protest. This idea has surfaced periodically in the press (click here and here). Most of the time, paid protesters are derided and criticised. However, there are many worthy causes that don’t get a lot of coverage in the newspaper or are otherwise not generally well known. Examples of these might be local environmental or social issues. When these groups want to have a rally or direct action event to raise awareness, they might need some extra bodies to show up.
That’s where the paid protesting idea comes in. The idea here would be to start a service which guarantees a certain number of people to attend a political event. The business model would be to charge per head for people to show up at political protests, then pay your employees slightly less to show up at the event. For example, you might contract with a client to provide 10 protests at an event. You’d charge the client $100 per person (10*100=1000), then pay your protester/employees $75 per person (10*75=750). Your net would be $25 per person, or $250 (25*10).
Of course, you’d have to set up a website, get non-disclosure agreements, and network to get your business exposed, but I like the idea.
Best,
James
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