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April 4, 2025 6 mins
Adam Schwart joins Mendte in the Morning to talk about his company that pays people to show up at protests and how many protests we see that are attended by people being paid.
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Adam Schwart is the founder of an organization called crowdsondemand
dot com. He has a job you might not know
even existed. He supplies paid protesters for those protests you
see on TV all the time. Yeah, many, if not most,
of the people you see there are paid. And when
the mainstream media is presented with that, they say, no,

(00:20):
there's absolutely it's debout. There's no evidence they're paid. Yeah,
we know somebody who knows about it. So let's talk
to him right now. Here is Adam Schwart. Good morning
to you. When did you come up with the idea
of crowds OnDemand dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Adam, good morning, Ken, and I've had the business for
about thirteen years now. It's great to be on with
you guys. And basically the premise of the business is
that context is everything. The same speech delivered to a
thousand people would not have the same effect if it

(00:53):
was given to ten people. Imagine Martin Luther King giving
his famous I have a Dream speech to ten people.
It wouldn't wouldn't be very effective. So I started the
business in college. When I was at UCLA. I mostly
worked on the democratic side for campaigns, though I would
definitely consider myself an independent now. And uh, I saw

(01:17):
there was a huge demand for gathering demonstrators, gathering protesters.
A lot of the guys who ran those campaigns were
used to being able to get huge groups together on
short notice and uh and that was just harder and
harder in this sort of more digital age. But there's

(01:37):
still this huge value of you know, being able to
gather a crowd for either a rally, protest, marketing event.
And and it really inspired me to create a business
that gave people, the people the opportunity I commensated for
advocating for their point of view.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Manam how many protests do you supply a year? Do
you think? Oh?

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Hundreds, one hundred? Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
And this is amazing because we had many in the
mainstream media saying for the longest time, there's no evidence
that any of these people are paid. And I had
you on the show I do on TV in New
Jersey last week and we talked about this. At first,
I was dead set against the concept, and I said,
it's not organic, it's not real, it's fake, it's propaganda.
And you had a very good point. You said, well,

(02:23):
you know how many people are paid news anchors are paid,
and you read the news, so why should Yeah, why
shouldn't they Why shouldn't a protester be paid? My only objection,
as you recall from last week, was my feeling is
people watching on TV should know if somebody is paid.
And you had a good argument to the contrary, correct.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
And that argument is that we all have different incentives
for being somewhere. Right, there are people Look at the
BLM rallies of twenty twenty. There are a lot of
various housewives who attended those rallies. They didn't know anything
about BLM. They didn't know anything about police brutality or
lack thereof. They were there to flex on Instagram, right,

(03:05):
think about woodstocks. So most of those people were just
there to get laid, right, I mean, they weren't there
to protest to Vietnam. So if I'm fine with doing that,
ken if we all have to put a label with
our motive for being anywhere, But otherwise I think you
should analyze a protest for the issue that it's advocating,

(03:26):
because everybody, especially at protests, is being compensated in one
way or another, whether you're a union member who's being
incentivized or perhaps threatened by your union to come, whether
you're getting cash compensation, whether you have a you're a
quote unquote activist group member who's getting paid by the

(03:47):
advocacy group and essentially expected to be there or organized.
So the reality is there's nothing wrong with being compensated
for advocating your point of view. Tucker's paid to do it,
Rachel Maddow is paid to do it. As long as
you're sincere and it crowds on Demand. All of the
people that we provide are sincere advocates for their positions,

(04:09):
so we provide.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
I just want to mention really fast. Adam just disappointed
at the Larry Meti show. METI in the Morning is
a family show, a family friendly search. So that's okay.
You were talking about chickens when you said that before
It is seven wor Metia in the Morning. Cabrozatto in
with Adam Schwartz, founder and owner of crowds on demand
dot com, and I was curious, are there certain organizations

(04:35):
that try to hire you to get protesters that you
just can't supply that you feel morally I don't want
to be behind this?

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Sure, Ken, Well, there's two types, right. First of all,
even morals aside, we don't engage in any illegal activity, right,
so even if I had no morals, that wouldn't be
to my benefit as a businessman to do.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
The to do that.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
So no blocking roads, bridge is you know, violence, vandalism.
But in terms of morals, we would say we don't
work with any hate groups, and we don't work with
any hostile foreign countries. Right, that's pretty simple because we
don't want to advocate for their position, regardless of the
legalities there.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Well, this is fascinating, and you do groups that are
small and large. What is the smallest you've done and
what is the largest you've done? In terms of supplying protesters.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
The largest is into the tens of thousands. I won't
say the exact amount. That's not a regular occurrence for us,
is you can imagine given the cost. The smallest is
literally one. There are times where we have one person
outside of building, and sometimes we've done that for a
period of a year. So sometimes it's a lot of

(05:49):
keyble for a short time, and sometimes it's a couple
people for a long time. I don't like doing one.
It's kind of lonely to be out there by your
cell phone, say at least at least I have two.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Three Adam, can I can? I have a request for
the next time, but you know you put this together.
Can they please stop with the hey hey ho ho stuff.
I mean there has to be a better chance than
hey hey ho ho, whatever you want to say.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
After I got to go.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
So if you can find somebody to write chance for them,
that could be another side business.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
Natalie's a good chant writer. You know this is a
good side hustle.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
All right, Alie, you'll have to tell me your your
political views offline and we'll we'll put you at the
protests you agree with.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Adam Schwartz, founder of crowds on demand dot com. Check
out the website. It's got a interesting a job you
might not know existed. You might get a good side
hustle out of it. Thank you so much for being
on this one. It was a pleasure having you on.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Adam Ken, thanks for having me, and sorry for the
bad language. You're good your family friendly listeners.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
You're a good man. Thank you very much, sir,
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