Dogging Paula II

Stories from Inside: While two dozen activists leafleted outside Wednesday night's booksigning by popular TV cooking personality Paula Deen, ten more joined the line of fans waiting to have their books signed at the Dupont Circle Books-A-Million. "A woman standing near me in line asked a Books-A-Million employee what the protest was about," reports Eric Wingerter, the Online Coordinator for the Smithfield Campaign. The employee said that the store had been warned that there was a group of activists that "follow Paula around the country" and that store workers were under instructions to kick out anyone who seemed to be associated with them. "She asked us to alert her if we saw anyone with Justice at Smithfield literature so that they would be ejected," Wingerter reports. "This angered some of the folks around me, who weren't involved with the protest. One young woman told the store employees 'They have a right to be here. This is America!'" When Wingerter got to the front of the line, "Paula had a big smile on her face," he reports. "I shook her hand and told her I really admired how she was able to turn her life around, but that I was very concerned with the folks in Smithfield's Tar Heel plant, who face brutal working conditions every day. I told her that I'd been encouraged when she promised Larry King that she would meet with the workers on his show, but was disappointed that she refused to follow up afterwards." Deen and her husband told Wingerter - who kept shaking Deen's hand to prolong the encounter - that they have met with workers, but Wingerter, shortly before being escorted away by security guards, pointed out to her that "meeting with workers that the company selects is not the same as meeting with the workers who have repeatedly asked for the chance to tell you their story." Some of the Deen fans who showed up Wednesday night had been "extremely disappointed" to hear her dismiss Smithfield worker complaints about safety and debilitating injuries on Diane Rehm's WAMU show (starting at minute 44) earlier in the day. "This is work," Deen said, in response to questions about injured workers at Smithfield's Tar Heel (NC) plant. "That's why they call it work, not play."