Bay Area’s GoFundMe shuts $10 million campaign for ‘Trucker Convoy’

0



Redwood City crowdfunding company GoFundMe on Friday shut down a campaign that raised more than $10 million for Canada’s “Trucker Convoy” protest against vaccine mandates that has gridlocked the nation’s capital and filled it with ceaselessly honking trucks and unruly and impolite protesters, in scenes reminiscent of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last year.

The protest, led by a would-be conservative politician named Tamara Lich who plays guitar in a bar band in Medicine Hat, Alberta, was sparked by a Canadian government rule requiring unvaccinated truckers crossing into Canada from the U.S. to get COVID tests and quarantine for two weeks.

Police in the capital city of Ottawa warned this week that guns appeared to have been brought into the protest area. Officials said in a news release they had evidence of “violence, hate crimes and unlawful behaviour,” and that many crimes had not been reported including “assaults, hate crimes, sexual assault, spitting and other threatening and criminal behaviour.”

The protest included streams of vehicles coming from across Canada, converging in Ottawa starting Jan. 29. It evolved to include a range of grievances related to coronavirus restrictions, with left-leaning Prime Minister Justin Trudeau targeted with profane vitriol. Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday praised the protest in a news release, saying participants were “peacefully protesting the harsh policies of far left lunatic Justin Trudeau who has destroyed Canada with insane Covid mandates.”

The Guardian newspaper reported Friday that U.S. organizers were operating a “Convoy to DC 2022” Facebook group that “quickly gained more than 100,000 members and announced a convoy next month.” Facebook’s parent company Meta shut down the group but the organizers have moved to the Telegram messaging service, according to the newspaper.

The number of trucks in the protest, also called the “Freedom Convoy,” has been hotly debated. Lich had claimed in a Facebook post that 50,000 heavy trucks were headed to Ottawa, but other reports suggest the number is far lower, with many cars and pickup trucks involved, and the total may be slightly over 1,000. Canada’s national broadcaster, the CBC, reported Jan. 29 that thousands of protesters had converged on the federal government center of Ottawa.

On Friday, GoFundMe said in a blog post that it had reviewed the situation in Ottawa, talked several times with local police and city officials, and found the Trucker Convoy fundraising campaign to violate its terms of service.

The Redwood City firm said it had released $1 million of the funds earlier this week after confirming that organizers had provided a “clear distribution plan” for the money to be used “only for participants who traveled to Ottawa to participate in a peaceful protest.” However, GoFundMe said, “Given how this situation has evolved, no further funds will be directly distributed to the Freedom Convoy organizers.” Donors may submit requests for refunds, and any remaining funds will be given to charity, GoFundMe said.

Canadians across the country have expressed outrage over reports that protesters had defiled the National War Memorial, which honors Canadian war dead and was the site of a 2014 murder of a Canadian soldier on sentry duty. Related protests have spread to other Canadian cities.

The Canadian Trucking Alliance, the primary group representing Canadian truckers, has disavowed the protest, saying about 85% of Canada’s 120,000 truckers are vaccinated and “a great number of these protestors have no connection to the trucking industry and have a separate agenda beyond a disagreement over cross-border vaccine requirements.”



Source link

Denial of responsibility! Planetconcerns is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.

Leave a comment