Standing next to her hastily packed suitcase in Michigan’s Macomb County Wednesday night, Tyra Muldrow had a bad feeling in her gut.

“I have this eerie feeling that I need to get the hell up out of there,” says Muldrow, a 20-year-old Black woman from Florida. She was in Michigan as a door knocker, hired by a subcontractor for Elon Musk’s America PAC operation to turn out the vote for Donald Trump in the heavily contested working-class suburbs of Detroit.

Muldrow and the rest of her canvassing group of roughly a dozen people had just been fired en masse, after WIRED reported that they had been tricked and threatened as part of Musk’s get-out-the-vote effort. Speaking publicly for the first time about her ordeal, Muldrow says that the canvassers in her group were fired with little explanation beyond a complaint that someone had spoken with the press. Many, including her, were still owed money. Muldrow had to find her own way home; others are still stranded in Michigan.

A representative for Musk and America PAC did not return a request for comment.

      • als@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        9 days ago

        If the punishment is a fine and you functionally have infinite money (see Google, Apple etc) then the law is a suggestion

  • ohellidk@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    I want to feel bad for them, but they obviously haven’t looked more into who they’re working for and his history of screwing people over.

    • Gerudo@lemm.ee
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      9 days ago

      A lot have reported that they didn’t know they were campaigning for the PAC.

    • DashboTreeFrog@discuss.online
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      9 days ago

      hired by a subcontractor

      I doubt they had any real way of knowing who they were working for. From a previous article I can’t fully remember, I was under the impression some of these people didn’t even know what they were supposed to be doing until day of. There were so many articles about how much of a shitshow the whole thing was I’m losing track.

      Edit: apparently it’s stated in this article too.

      Only upon her arrival in Michigan did Muldrow realize what this job would really entail: canvassing for Trump.