Remember when Tea Party activists got accused of being “Astroturfers,” paid lackeys of the eeeeeevil Koch Brothers, instead of legitimate protesters interested only in political change?  Good times, good times. As this ad on Craigslist in Austin dates two days ago demonstrates — heh, pardon the pun! — Wendy Davis isn’t the only pro-abortion progressive in Texas suffering from a case of projection:

In case it gets taken down, I’ve cached the page here. The special session got announced by Gov. Rick Perry on the 26th; this ad went up three days later, and just two days before a swarm of “volunteers” arrived at the capitol building today.  Pro-choice Texas employees get paid roughly minimum wage to “stand,” I mean start, assuming that the $1300 per month is for full-time work.  The position ranges to nearly $12.70 for standing around and yelling slogans like, “Hey hey, ho ho, fully-formed human life’s got to go,” and so on.

The employment comes from the ironically-named Grassroots Campaigns, which stages these demonstrations on behalf of client organizations like Planned Parenthood Federation of America, MoveOn, and the Democratic National Committee, among others.  There’s nothing much that’s “grassroots” about this; GCI’s clients comprise most of the professional progressive non-profit community, as the list at Wikipedia demonstrates. GCI’s money to pay these employees presumably comes from donors to those organizations.  Their website certainly doesn’t offer any other explanation.

But is this how Pro-Choice Texas rustled up so many protesters today?  Breitbart’s John Sexton asked them, and they claim that this is unrelated to the protests this week:

I called Grassroots Campaigns and spoke to an individual there familiar with the ad. He explained it is part of an ongoing campaign being run on behalf of Planned Parenthood. PP has been hiring grassroots fundraisers since last summer. The Craigslist ad is part of that fundraising campaign, not an attempt to hire protest organizers.

There is another link on the ad itself which leads to this page offering full time “Assistant Canvas Director” jobs. The job description reads in part “Canvass in the field for four days per week, to train new and experienced staff in the field and meet personal fundraising requirements.” So it’s definitely a fundraising job.

Planned Parenthood is working with Grassroots Campaigns to hire fundraisers in Austin and also, it appears, in other locations around the country. These job listings are not part of the recent attempts to block SB5 though it’s probably not a stretch to imagine some of the folks will be participating in the protests.

Or that they might be doing this on the clock, too.  Does anyone think that Planned Parenthood would object to that use of their resources? Keep that in mind when watching this big takeaway from the first day of competing demonstrations at the capitol building in Austin.  While the pro-abortion “volunteers” chant slogans in opposition to a bill supported by 62% of Texas voters, pro-life protesters sing “Amazing Grace” as a prayer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPxWrv6kTFU