Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL 9) failed to appear at a protest that she helped organize Tuesday night in Evanston, Illinois, wherein demonstrators delivered petitions to Bain Capital’s local office. Despite Schakowsky’s failure to show, Huffington Post is now claiming Schakowsky, a co-chair of President Obama’s campaign, attended the event.
Schakowsky has been out in front of multiple protests on behalf of Sensata Technologies, a company owned by Bain Capital. One protest in particular was held at a campaign stop of Mitt Romney’s outside Schakowsky’s district in Elk Grove Village just before Romney announced Paul Ryan as his VP pick. Sensata protesters subsequently turned out to protest Ryan’s homecoming in Waukesha, Wisconsin. These same protesters were evicted by security and Secret Service after they interrupted Romney’s speech inside the event.
HuffPo author Cole Stangler echoes Obama campaign talking points via Cheryl Randecker, a Sensata employee on hand to comment on the plant’s closing. Randecker has been the most prominent spokesperson for “Sensata employees,” frequently appearing in media coverage.
Randecker, a 52-year-old mother who has worked at the Sensata plant for 33 years, is slated to lose her job by the end of the year. And like others at the plant, she says she’s been forced to train her replacement from China.
“With so many hardworking Americans still out of work, the last thing our country or our state needs is another corporation shipping good, American jobs to China,” Schakowsky said outside Bain’s Evanston, Ill., offices on Tuesday. “Not only is Bain taking away these workers’ incomes and livelihoods, the company is forcing them to train their replacements from China. That’s outrageous.”
She continued, “I applaud all the workers at the Senasta [sic] plant who have had the courage to stand up against this epidemic of outsourcing.”
Breitbart News was only able to confirm the presence of three protesters who worked for Sensata Technologies, a company located outside Rep. Schakowsky’s district, at the protest. All of the other protesters were professional organizers from Stand Up Chicago, ARISE Chicago, and Chicago Jobs with Justice — an astroturfed crowd.
Schakowsky’s absence, however, did not stop the petitions from being delivered. Cheryl Randecker told reporters, “there are 35,000 signatures from around the country.” Given the lack of protesters from Sensata and the number of protesters from outside Schakowsky’s district, it would be interesting to know who the signatories are and whether or not they have any clue what Sensata is.
This, of course, has no bearing on how Huffington Post decided to cover the story. As long as there were only a few missing links, such as the protest organizer herself, the story needed to be told, facts or no. And who would check if the Representative was actually there, anyway?