Case file 10-31-B. Subject: a duck liver, a ballot measure, and a grassroots campaign with a professional landscaper.
I've been in the tunnels a long time. I've seen rats organize. Real grassroots stuff. One rat finds a dumpster, tells two friends, and by midnight there are forty of us and nobody got a stipend. That's a movement.
Then I opened the campaign finance reports for D.C. Initiative 86.
Initiative 86 is on Tuesday's D.C. ballot. A "yes" vote bans force-feeding birds and the sale of foie gras, the fattened duck and goose liver served at restaurants where the menu has no prices on it. The campaign behind it, Pro-Animal DC, calls itself "a grassroots movement of voters, volunteers, endorsers, and donors."
Fox News Digital pulled the filings. Here is what the grass is made of.
Pro-Animal DC reported $474,190.62 raised for the campaign. Of that, $386,435.77 came from one backer: Pro-Animal Future, a nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon. The D.C. grassroots, it turns out, were shipped in from the other side of the country.
The biggest expense was $126,780.36 in stipends to one paid professional organizer. Another $89,224 went out in 293 payments to 64 people listed as "consultant - circulator," roughly $1,394 apiece.
Paid volunteers. Down in the tunnels, we call those employees.
Then came the lodging. On July 31, Pro-Animal Future spent $22,418.69 on Airbnb rentals. Pro-Animal DC has said that housed about 60 out-of-town "volunteers" for a July signature drive called "Goosapalooza," and its website promoted the "free housing." So the grassroots flew in, unpacked, and checked out by 11 a.m. with a five-star review for the host.
The campaign's star cameo was CodePink's D.C. coordinator, Olivia DiNucci, who posted a TikTok backing the measure, according to Fox News. Pro-Animal Future says CodePink has no role beyond that video. Noted. Fox described the video as far afield from DiNucci's usual battles supporting the Communist Party of Cuba and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Those governments jail dissidents. But the duck? The duck gets a lawyer.
Now look at the long game. In 2024, a related nonprofit, Pax Fauna, published a 10-year roadmap. Local ballot fights first, then statewide "factory-farming" bans. The plan said such measures could "provoke a sort of identity crisis for the voting public" and help them "storm the nation."
Storm the nation. Over duck liver.
Here's the uncomfortable truth. Foie gras was never the target. Almost nobody reading this has ordered it, because a plate runs more than a week of groceries. Bart Hutchins, chef and co-owner of Butterworth's on Capitol Hill, told Fox: "If they ban foie gras here, they'll eventually ban meat here." The roadmap is right there in writing. Today it's the fancy liver. Tomorrow it's your bacon, your chicken wings, and the Thanksgiving turkey.
I asked a rat in the evidence locker for comment. He said if anybody ever offers him $1,394 to hold a clipboard, he's available, and he has strong feelings about ducks.
Case remains open. I've filed a motion to have the campaign's Airbnb declared D.C.'s newest grassroots neighborhood, since it's the only place in town where the grass was professionally installed.
The Demorat is satire. This article is a parody based on real news reports and is not meant to be taken as literal fact.
The real story that inspired this
