Update: I missed seeing Zach’s earlier post before I hit the button. Please accept my apology for duplicating some of his work.
Some blogs are reporting that Gladney was RIF’d and has no insurance. They are wrong. You remember Gladney, eh? The man that was allegedly accosted by union members during a healthcare reform event.
Apparently, Daphne Eviatar of The Washington Independent was fortunate enough to speak with Gladney’s lawyer friend. She tells us:
I just got off the phone with David Brian Brown, the St. Louis, Mo., lawyer who has appeared with Kenneth Gladney, the black man who claims he was beaten up by a bunch of Service Employees International Union members outside a town hall meeting in St. Louis. Gladney says he was just there innocently selling Gadsden flags — those flags with the coiled snake that say “Don’t Tread On Me” and became symbols of the recent GOP Tea Party protests.
Is there any misinformation about Gladney?
For one, Brown said, contrary to recent reports like this one from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Gladney wasn’t laid off and has health insurance. “He’s just unemployed,” says Brown, and “has insurance through his wife.”
And are there any videos of this event?
Meanwhile, though Gladney appears to be just fine in the video right after he was supposedly beaten up, he showed up the next day at a tea party event in a wheelchair. At the event, Bill Hennessy, the organizer of the St. Louis tea parties, asked the crowd to donate money to Gladney to help him pay for his injuries, despite the fact that he now says he has insurance. When I asked Brown about this, he said: “Well, who doesn’t need a donation? If people want to give him a donation because he’s injured and unemployed, that’s up to them.” Brown said Gladney has raised about $1,100 in donations so far.
And what about honorable Gladney?
Brown also told me that Gladney is not a conservative activist. He was just selling the 18th-century patriotic resistance flags to try to make some extra money. Brown said Gladney plans to sue both the individuals he says attacked him and the SEIU, since the “attackers” were wearing union T-shirts and “unions have a 100-year history of intimidation.”
So a trinket seller gets upsot, has insurance thru his wife but no injuries, and wants to sue his assailants because they have a ‘history’ . He shows up in a wheel chair and is willing to accept private money to pay for injuries he does not have.
Does Gladney appear to be an opportunist or a victim?
Gladney is an opportunist, not a victim.