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One of D.C.’s many subcultures is that of policy salons. Any given day, think tanks, nonprofit organizations, and professional societies host panels, forums, and roundtable discussions in hopes of sparking a debate on the issues of the day.
And most of them include a complementary nosh.
But can a person feed himself simply by attending these events? That’s what a blogger recently laid off from his job is trying to accomplish. Using the nom-de-blog “Panel Crasher,” the person, who requested his identity and former employer not be made public so as not to spoil the concept, is going to several lunch events a week at think tanks around town.
The Panel Crasher lost his job at a nonprofit organization at the end of March when a federal grant that was funding his position expired. He suspects it might have been hacked off because of the mandatory budget cuts that went into effect because of sequestration.
After losing his job, the Panel Crasher says he started joking with his friends about how to fill his time between now and the fall, when he enters grad school. Finding a full-time job for just a few months seemed unlikely. But with the loss of income, he needed to figure out how to feed himself, and remembered all the lunch events he attended.
“I said, ‘Oh, I won’t have to worry about feeding myself because I can go to all these panels around town’,” he recalls in a phone interview. “I’ll start a blog. Isn’t that what unemployed people do?”
The Panel Crasher says he isn’t showing up to these events surreptitiously. When the events have sign-in sheets, he signs in. When there are RSVPs to fill out, he fills them out with the relevant information. But he now finds himself visiting organizations he might never have noticed when he was working at his nonprofit job or before that on Capitol Hill.
The first Panel Crasher blog post was an event at Family Research Center. The right-wing organization might have strong conservative values, but it’s a lousy place to get a free meal. “Their food is terrible,” he says. “I got there nine minutes late and all the food was gone.”
But another conservative organization, American Enterprise Institute, ranks among the best. “They have hot lunch food, which you don’t usually see,” he says. “Usually it’s sandwiches, bag of chips. [At AEI], you get ceramic plates.”
The day Panel Crasher visited the conservative think tank, for a panel titled “Lower Pay: Are Race and Gender to Blame?” he feasted on a lunch that suggested AEI is quite liberal when hiring caterers.
“They had a full hot bar buffet with a real nice shrimp gumbo situation, grilled chicken breasts, rice pilaf, and a delightful little spring salad,” he wrote.
Other big organizations avoid serving up big meals by scheduling events outside normal lunch hours. The Brookings Institution, for instance, has lots of panels slated for 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., and can thus get away with light snacks instead of a table of chafing dishes or deli platters. Hot food is a rarity, in fact. The left-wing Center for American Progress, the Panel Crasher says, is big and well-funded, but usually opts for sandwiches, though they tend to be “great.” The nonpartisan New America Foundation is the stingiest.
One snag, though, is when the Panel Crasher runs into a former colleague from his nonprofit or Capitol Hill days, especially when the topic is something that had nothing to do with what he worked on. “My background is in internatioal relations, so it’s awkward if i’m at a health care panel,” he says.
His typical response is to tell people that he was just in the neighborhood and decided to pop in. But, “for the most part people don’t ask any questions.” And with many of his friends in on the gag and a growing following, he’s starting to be forwarded invites to lunch events around town. He might even start branching out into dinner panels.
“There’s even free booze at some of these things,” he says.
