A grass-roots movement called the People’s Union USA was at the center of a request for Americans to participate in a 24-hour shopping boycott on Friday. It urged them to avoid spending money at big-box stores and to stick instead to small businesses or, ideally, not spend any money at all.
“If we disrupt the economy for just ONE day, it sends a powerful message,” reads a line explaining the event on the group’s website.
The boycott became popular on social media in the days leading up to Friday, spreading widely with endorsements from celebrities including the author Stephen King, the actor John Leguizamo and the singer Bette Midler.
But who is behind this group? A man named John Schwarz.
In a lengthy bio on the group’s website, Mr. Schwarz, 57, details his parents’ divorce, his meditation practice and his various homes over the years, including a stint living in New England.
While the movement has spread far beyond Mr. Schwarz’s organization, with many participants seemingly unaware of the group’s existence, some details of Mr. Schwarz’s past that were not included in his official biography complicate his place at the center of what appears to be an earnest attempt at economic protest.
In 2007, Mr. Schwarz was sentenced by a Connecticut judge to 90 days in jail and five years’ probation for disseminating voyeuristic material, according to a representative from the Middlesex County criminal court clerk’s office who reviewed court records while speaking with The New York Times earlier this week.
According to court records cited in a report in The Hartford Courant at the time of his sentencing, Mr. Schwarz, then 39, had been accused of photographing an unconscious 18-year-old woman’s exposed breast and texting the image to her cellphone.
“I have nothing to hide,” Mr. Schwarz said when reached by phone for comment on Friday. “Yup. I was convicted in 2007 of something that never should have happened and it is completely fabricated.”
(The Times identified Mr. Schwarz via public record databases and his previous addresses.)
The teenager worked at the Sugar Cube Cafe, a now-closed coffee shop in Cromwell, Conn., which Mr. Schwarz owned, according to state corporate records.
In 2006, the young woman told investigators that she and a friend had visited Mr. Schwarz’s home to watch a movie, according to The Courant report, which cited court records. He offered them pudding. The teenager ate a few bites but said she stopped because she thought it tasted weird. The two subsequently passed out. She told the police that she had left feeling “nauseous and weak,” and that she believed she might have been drugged.
Mr. Schwarz pleaded guilty on the charge of disseminating voyeuristic material under the Alford doctrine, which means he did not admit guilt but acknowledged that prosecutors probably had enough evidence to convict him. As part of his sentence, The Courant said, Mr. Schwarz was ordered to register as a sex offender. In an email on Friday, the Connecticut State Police said Mr. Schwarz was no longer listed as a sex offender because he had completed his registration term.
The sentencing judge, Frank A. Iannotti, “noted that the drugging allegations were ‘unproven,’” and added that “two 18-year-olds eating something and passing out simultaneously ‘doesn’t make sense,’” The Courant also reported.
“This whole thing was a big scam,” Mr. Schwarz said during Friday’s interview. “It’s going to be expunged. I passed my polygraph test three times. Three times. I did not take a photograph. I did not do anything inappropriate to anybody.”
“I’m not talking about it,” he added, saying the issue was in his past and that it had been a “sledgehammer” to his life.
“Bottom line is, no matter what you want to say, I served my time,” Mr. Schwarz said, declining to answer further questions before ending the call.
Mr. Schwarz says on his website biography that he lives in the Midwest. (A P.O. box in Ringwood, Ill., is listed on the People’s Union USA website.) On social media, he goes by TheOneCalledJai and has directed supporters of his organization to follow his personal accounts under the same name as he sells merchandise and solicits donations for the People’s Union USA on GoFundMe, collecting more than $93,000 as of Friday afternoon.
The money from the GoFundMe will be used for “building the website, pushing this movement forward, and working toward officially unionizing and forming a nonprofit,” according to the People’s Union USA website.
The site also promises transparency about where the money will go, listing about $5,000 in expenses thus far on largely administrative needs, including website domain costs and a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office fee. The website promises to offer regular updates. It was last updated on Feb. 26.
Mr. Schwarz said on his group’s website that the profits from People’s Union USA merchandise will “go toward future operational costs, including payroll, expansion, and ensuring this movement keeps growing and thriving.”
While the movement has pushed for people to support small businesses in the United States, the merchandise is being sold through a drop-shipping company. Mr. Schwarz said he is working to shift the group’s merchandise operation to a local business in Illinois.
“I have not taken a penny of that money for myself,” Mr. Schwarz said of the GoFundMe money. “We’re selling T-shirts, and I’m using the money for that to pay for the person who needs to go to all the emails that are coming in, because I will not touch the GoFundMe for that, even though I technically could. It says administration and things like that, but I don’t want to. I want all of those funds, the people’s funds, to go right to what we’re building.”
Friday’s boycott is one of several the People’s Union USA has planned for the coming months, according to its website.
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