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February 5, 2007
Profiles in Moonbattery: Saru Jayaraman
Where you have moonbattery, you will have corruption, hypocrisy, and thuggery — but it isn't usually as blatant as in the case of NYU professor and worker's rights activist Saru Jayaraman, who has been using the Jesse Jackson playbook to enrich herself at the expense of New York City restaurants and their employees.
Jayaraman heads a racket calling itself the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC). It extorts cash from high-end Manhattan restaurants by agreeing not to protest in front of them in exchange for large payments. For example, ROC thugs burst into the Redeye Grill during dinner service with loudspeakers and noisemakers to present the manager with a letter accusing him of racism, sexism, and employee violations, and threatening to launch pickets, media attacks, and lawsuits if the restaurant didn't fork over $3 million.
When the restaurant refused to pay, Jayaraman launched weekly protests to drive away customers. When the National Labor Relations Board ruled that the protests weren't legal, she changed them from protests to "prayer vigils."
Whether you call them protests, prayer vigils, or shakedowns, Jayaraman has no trouble finding people to mind them. She recruits moonbats from the class she teaches at NYU. About the only restaurant workers among the protesters are those employed at Colors, which ROC owns, requiring them to take part in shakedowns of other restaurants as a condition of employment. Despite a lot of noise from Jayaraman about unionizing restaurant workers, Colors employees are not unionized, nor are they apparently paid very well.
ROC is officially a 501(c)3 tax-exempt charity, which helps it avoid complying with the labor laws it supposedly wants to enforce on others. It was founded after 9/11, ostensibly to help workers from the WTC restaurant Windows on the World, and has collected funds from the Red Cross and the September 11th Fund. But when Windows on the World owner David Emil opened a new restaurant, ROC picketed the place and drove it out of business — leaving former Windows on the World workers unemployed again. Other restaurants have since gone under after forking over huge extortion payments to ROC.
Workers at targeted restaurants, far from being exploited by their employers, have actually resorted to counterprotests in an attempt to shout down the ROC goons who chase away the diners who would be leaving them tips.
Like many parasitic thugs, Jayaraman is a true believer in leftist politics. Her office features pictures of Malcolm X and Che Guevara, as well as a sign reading:
Capitalism is not healthy for children and other living things.
Capitalism allows people to become wealthy by creating wealth. But Jayaraman has found an easier way to line her pockets. That this sort of lowlife criminal can be found teaching classes at a pricey university speaks volumes about the state of academia.
On a tip from Number 2.
Posted by Van Helsing at February 5, 2007 8:19 AM
Comments
Yeah, she's smiling now, but wait until she tries shaking down the wrong chowhouse, and Vinnie from Canarsie comes a-calling, to explain to her the "facts" of life... toting a fungo bat as a handy visual aid to emphasize the point.
Posted by: TC@LeatherPenguin at February 5, 2007 10:28 AM
Another Profile in Moonbattery: Seattle Peace Nuts Prepare to Unleash the Dreaded Giant Puppets at Deserter Court Martial
OT: Seattle Peace Nuts Prepare to Unleash the Dreaded Giant Puppets at Deserter Court Martial
In an artist's studio in downtown Tacoma, about 20 anti-war protesters were rehearsing a piece of street theater they were planning to perform at the gates of Fort Lewis.
David Solnit, 43, an artist who came from Oakland, Calif., to help make giant puppets for the rally, said the U.S. had not accepted the excuse of Nazi soldiers that "they were just following orders."
Posted by: V the K at February 5, 2007 1:01 PM
Did she buy those clothes she's wearing or did she create them herself, from growing the cotton to weaving the cloth to sewing the garments? If not, she's giving capitalism a bit of a boost.
Posted by: Pam at February 5, 2007 5:25 PM
V the K? Whenever I see them big paper maché monstrocities I always think, "a sawed off whiffle ball bat, a couple of bottle rockets... BANG! We're having some ad hoc 'Burning Man', baby!"
Then I remember I'm married now, and can't just willy-nilly have some of that old-time fun anymore.
Posted by: TC@LeatherPenguin at February 6, 2007 10:26 AM
Pam, I don't even need to see the label on those jeans to know whoever sewed them together got paid jack-diddly squat.
Posted by: TC@LeatherPenguin at February 6, 2007 10:27 AM
TC suffers from the hate-America/hate-capitalism ideology which seeks to demonize our companies and capitalism with mostly false accusations of "slave labor" and "living wage" propaganda. Capitalism, led by American companies, is raising the standards of living around the world. Getting paid "jack diddely squat" for you is a lot of money for them, that's why China has the world's fastest growing car buying market, and India is second.
Posted by: Chris at February 7, 2007 12:47 PM
