{"id":180604,"date":"2017-03-02T19:51:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T00:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/03\/02\/modern-pinkertons-paid-for-by-your-tax-dollars\/"},"modified":"2017-03-02T19:51:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T00:51:00","slug":"modern-pinkertons-paid-for-by-your-tax-dollars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/03\/02\/modern-pinkertons-paid-for-by-your-tax-dollars\/","title":{"rendered":"Modern Pinkertons, Paid for by Your Tax Dollars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that the Memphis Police department decided to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/2017\/mar\/01\/mcdonalds-fight-for-15-memphis-police-lawsuit\">offer their services to McDonald&#8217;s franchises as private anti-union thugs<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Police claimed they had \u201cauthorization from the president of McDonald\u2019s\u201d to arrest protesting fast food workers, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed on Wednesday against the city of Memphis, Tennessee.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The suit alleges that local police engaged in a \u201cwidespread and illegal campaign of surveillance and intimidation\u201d against a local chapter of the Fight for $15 fast-food worker organization as it campaigned for an increase in the minimum wage and union rights for fast food workers.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Officers followed organizers home after meetings, ordered workers not to sign petitions and blacklisted organizers from city hall, according to the suit. They claimed to have been authorized by McDonald\u2019s, the world\u2019s largest fast food chain, and in one incident a McDonald\u2019s franchisee joined police in tailing protesters.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The suit alleges that a campaign of harassment began after Memphis workers participated in a nationwide day of protest on 4 September 2014. Since then, police officers have repeatedly threatened workers with arrest during protests, at one point telling them they had \u201cauthorization from the president of McDonald\u2019s to make arrests\u201d. On \u201cmultiple occasions\u201d officers \u201cseemed to take direction from McDonald\u2019s\u201d, the complaint charges.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I kind of preferred the old days, when the companies actually had to pay their own money for their thugs.<\/p>\n<p>These days, &#8220;Business friendly&#8221; politicians use the taxpayer&#8217;s money to brutalize their own citizens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that the Memphis Police department decided to offer their services to McDonald&#8217;s franchises as private anti-union thugs: Police claimed they had \u201cauthorization from the president of McDonald\u2019s\u201d to arrest protesting fast food workers, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed on Wednesday against the city of Memphis, Tennessee.The suit alleges that local police &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[413,364,407,465,526,442],"class_list":["post-180604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-civil-rights","tag-evil","tag-justice","tag-labor","tag-law-enforcement-misconduct","tag-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180604"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}