Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP
As RedState reported Friday evening, GoFundMe has decided to shut down the fundraiser set up to provide money to the Freedom Convoy in Canada, a group of truckers, farmers, and others protesting draconian COVID-19 mitigation measures.
According to the crowd-funding site, they did so because of threats of violence and harassment, though, they provided no evidence of that claim. In fact, the only violence so far appears to have come from someone running over some of the Freedom Convoy participants in what is still a developing story we reported on earlier Saturday.
Worse, GoFundMe announced that it was only going to offer manual refunds, and that the unclaimed money would go to “approved” charities. That meant that thousands of people who didn’t hear the news could end up having their money go to causes they didn’t approve of. In short, GoFundMe was fine stealing people’s money for political reasons.
Now, after a pressure campaign, including threats by donors to use credit-card charge-backs (which could have cost the crowd-funding site a hefty processing fee on each transaction), GoFundMe has backed down. They have put out a statement saying they will process the refunds automatically.
The update we issued earlier enabled all donors to get a refund and outlined a plan to distribute remaining funds to verified charities selected by the Freedom Convoy organizers. However, due to donor feedback, we are simplifying the process and automatically refunding donations.
— GoFundMe (@gofundme) February 5, 2022
In my opinion, this had nothing to do with simplifying the process and everything to do with GoFundMe fearing financial reprisal from an army of donors. If this move was about making things easier, they would have done automatic refunds from the beginning.
Still, I don’t think this decision should earn GoFundMe an ounce of goodwill or forgiveness. This is a company that has continually allowed fundraising for left-wing causes, including violent ones such as the BLM riots of 2020 and the CHOP/CHAZ in Seattle. Further, they went so far as to advertise for those causes on GoFundMe’s official Twitter account. The company also sought to smear Gov. Ron DeSantis by encouraging people to give to scam-artist Rebekah Jones‘ fundraiser.
Rebekah Jones refused to manipulate COVID data so the state would appear to meet its target to reopen. Then she was fired.
Read her full story with @NPR below & support Rebekah’s mission on her GoFundMe: https://t.co/hFjse3Gqkm https://t.co/HGB8DIjR8p
— GoFundMe (@gofundme) June 16, 2020
In short, GoFundMe is owned and run by left-wing political hacks. They have continually shut down fundraisers with any connection to the “right,” while allowing all manner of insanity from the left. Black Lives Matter is a scam organization, yet GoFundMe never once shut down their fundraisers — even as cities burned in 2020 during BLM-organized protests.
It is long past time for well-meaning people to stop giving money to GoFundMe. The company has shown itself to not only operate in bad faith, but it has gone so far as to attempt to misappropriate donated funds for political reasons. That GoFundMe backed down on that point is not enough to reset the deck. There are other ways to raise funds for worthy causes, and they should be used. If GoFundMe wants to operate as a left-wing enforcer, it can do so while only getting money from the left.
Source: GoFundMe Caves After Attempting to Steal ‘Freedom Convoy’ Donations – RedState
