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[h1]GoFundMe defends Darren Wilson fundraising page despite racist postings[/h1]
• $225,000 raised on crowdfunding site for Ferguson officer who killed Michael Brown
• Website has removed racist statements posted by donors
Protesters at the St Louis County Justice Centre call for the arrest of police officer Darren Wilson on 20 August. Photograph: Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters
GoFundMe, the crowdfunding company, has defended its decision to host an online campaign to raise money for the police officer who shot dead Michael Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old in Missouri, after some donors posted racist statements.
More than $225,000 (£154,000) has been raised for officer Darren Wilson through a page dedicated to helping him and his family “during this trying time in their lives”. Organisers said that the money would go to “any financial needs they may have including legal fees”.
Wilson killed Brown in sharply disputed circumstances on 9 August. Police have said that Brown assaulted Wilson after being stopped for jaywalking. Witnesses have said that Brown was shot while attempting to flee a struggle. A grand jury has begun hearing evidence about the shooting.
Some of the more than 5,600 people to have contributed money to the GoFundMe page also left racist comments that were noted by Twitter users. “I am so sick of the blacks using every excuse in the book to loot and riot,” said one donor of $50, calling herself Diane Schroeder.
“Don’t let the savages win,” wrote one donor, calling himself Timothy Flagg. An anonymous donor told Wilson: “We appreciate your service in the animal control division of the Ferguson police department.”
GoFundMe typically takes 5% from the total raised by campaigns using the site, meaning that it stands to collect more than $11,000 from the fundraising effort for Wilson so far.
In a statement released on Friday, a spokeswoman for GoFundMe said: “Some donors’ comments have contained content that is in violation of GoFundMe’s terms and have been removed accordingly.”
The website’s acceptable use policy states that it may not be used for activities relating to the sale of “items that promote hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime”.
However, the statement on Friday also said: “The content of the campaign itself is not in violation of GoFundMe’s terms of service.”
“Much like Facebook and Twitter, GoFundMe is an open technology platform that allows for the exchange of ideas and opinions within the bounds of our terms of service,” said the statement, which was attributed to Kelsea of “GoFundMe Customer Happiness”.
The company’s decision to allow the page to continue prompted calls for a boycott from Shaun King, a Los Angeles-based civil rights activist. “Unless the Wilson campaign is ended we ask that you never use the site again for new campaigns,” he said on Twitter.
Janai Nelson, the associate director-counsel of the NAACP legal defence and educational fund, said on Friday that people were directing money to one side of “an extraordinarily racially charged incident” despite not having information to prove that Wilson acted appropriately.
“We don’t know enough, and don’t have have enough facts from the case, for such a public outcry in support of the officer,” Nelson told the Guardian.
Organisers said that Shield Of Hope was “the official non-profit organisation accepting donations for Officer Wilson at this time”. The new crowdfunding page had raised more than $15,000 within a few hours on Friday.
[h1]Crowdfunding: The New Way to Promote Racism[/h1]
So now, they have a new crowdfunding site, backed by Shield of Hope. In just today, it has raised 24k dollars (and continues climbing by the minutes). So, it seems killing this young black man was the most lucrative thing Darren Wilson has ever done in his life, and probably will ever do. I find today’s revelation to be quite unnerving and very indicative of the American mindset overall.
To put this into perspective, the Brown family attorney, created a page on ‘gofundme.com’ for the Mike Brown Memorial Fund. In nine days, the crowdfunding page has generated only $180,000; the overall goal to meet is 200k. However, a separate group called the Wisconsin Hope Lab has set up a scholarship fund for Mike Brown’s siblings.
We have an officer that kills a young man, and he receives $250k, and climbing, in 4.5 days; yet the young man’s family receives less than $200k in 9 days. This seems quite backwards to me. First of all, Darren Wilson isn’t going to have to represent himself in court because he was on-duty when the shooting took place, which means the city will be on the hook for the cost of his defense. Second, the people sending him money are the same ones telling all Mike Brown supporters to “wait for all the evidence,” yet will turn around and criminalize Michael Brown based on the account of the officer himself – I have yet to see actual proof of a witness recounting the allegation that Brown charged at the officer; it’s not even found in the Mike Brown eye witness audio clip I transcribed a few days prior to this article.
There is a double-standard in this country that I find quite appalling. There also seems to be hidden racism throughout much of the country, and let’s face it, hidden racism is probably the worst kind. People won’t blatantly come out and say they hate this kind of person or that kind of person, yet when it comes to important things like giving jobs, accepting college applications, or treatment by police, the racial parts of that person come out to play.
I will never say people aren’t allowed to put their money towards whatever they want to, but for Americans to flock to, and fund, a murderer’s crowdfunding whilst slow-rolling the victim’s crowdfunding page is quite disgusting. And don’t get me wrong here – I don’t actually believe Darren Wilson is racist. What I do believe is that we live in a society of bigots that constantly flash black crime whilst hiding white crime, even though white people commit more crime than black people do. In fact, 70% of all crime in the United States is committed by a white person, yet the majority of Americans continue viewing black people with suspicious eyes; this is especially true with cops given that they search black people’s vehicles three times as often as white people’s cars, even though both are pulled over at the same rate.
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when I read this title
