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This sort of discussion never goes well, but using GoFundMe to finance occupations, especially across national borders, is an incredibly dangerous game. If a G

This sort of discussion never goes well, but using GoFundMe to finance occupations, especially across national borders, is an incredibly dangerous game. If a GoFundMe to harrass and harangue Ron DeSantis -- to effectively sponsor people to park outside his home and blast horns, among other things -- would he be okay with that? How about if Canadians paid millions for people to park on US interstates? Is that okay? This is entirely outside of the mission of GoFundMe. And it's interesting how exactly the same group of people lamenting the paying of bail for BLM protesters are falling in line with rights for this trucker group to harass and occupy Canadian cities.

tomohawk 5y ago
I'm glad the governor is looking into this. Undoubtedly there are FL residents who contributed to this worthy cause via GFM, and then to have GFM suddenly say they're going to redirect the funds? Seems like some sort of fraud to offer a service for one thing and then change it after money has changed hands. GFM obviously realized this was a problem, so changed their minds and is providing automatic refunds. But this sort of fraud can only have a negative impact on the cause people were wanting to fund. But GFM at the very least comes across as partisan, if not hypocritical. If they're going to be a partisan funder, then I'm sure there are other laws they need to comply with which they currently don't.
- PierceJoy 5y ago
  The plan presented to GFM by the organizers called for excess funds to be given to charities. How is it fraud for GFM to follow the organizer’s plan? The only thing they refused to do was fund the illegal occupation of downtown Ottawa.
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    To equate giving all of the funds to other charities and not allowing any of it to be used for its given purpose with giving the rest of the money after its intended purpose has been met is... well, not right. Like, consider a non-profit that you want to support its vision. Most of the money goes to its mission, the rest pays its execs. They decide to use 100% of it for the execs. According to your argument, that's just fine.
    - PierceJoy 5y ago
      - jtbayly 5y ago
        I neither believe it is truthful to call it "occupying the nations capitol" nor am I surprised that GFM won't fund it. Regardless, your response was a non-sequitur. You really need to deal with what I actually said. To help you along, I also wouldn't be surprised for a charity to redirect 100% of its income to its executives. But that wouldn't mean I would say it was fine for them to do that, even though the reason I gave the money was for clean wells in Africa. That's what you're defending.
        PierceJoy 5y ago
        > I neither believe it is truthful to call it "occupying the nations capito People who live in Ottawa disagree. > To help you along, I also wouldn't be surprised for a charity to redirect 100% of its income to its executives. But that wouldn't mean I would say it was fine for them to do that, even though the reason I gave the money was for clean wells in Africa. That's what you're defending. This is a textbook strawman. We're talking about a specific situation here, so stop trying to invoke entirely different situations to defend it. The fact is that this has turned into an occupation. It's not reasonable to expect GFM to fund that.
        jtbayly 5y ago
        Look, I've already explained that I'm not surprised. You are claiming I'm lying? Or what? Also my example is not a straw man. It's a simple analogy. This will be my last comment. The thing I'm trying to address is your claim that it's just fine and dandy for them to redirect all the money to charities because that's equivalent to what the original organizers were going to do anyway. It's not. It's so obviously not appropriate that GFM immediately realized they could never get away with that and changed their minds and decided to refund all of the money instead. So I don't know why you're even bothering to defend their original plan. You're probably literally the only person in the world who thinks it's fine. edit: removed potentially inflammatory analysis.
- ratsmack 5y ago
  I would think that every GFM campaign is approved by default once the money starts flowing in. To change it after the fact should be seen as a criminal act.
- benmmurphy 5y ago
  its a bit of dark pattern but i'm not sure if it is illegal. i suspect gofundme wanted the donations redirected so they would still receive the revenue the donations created. from their POV if they refund all the donations then they are paying fees for processing and refunding and not receiving any revenue. if gofundme wanted to still try and process the donations the more ethical option would be to set the default to be refund and allowed people to opt-in to have their donations redirected. also, my understanding is gofundme always planned to redirect funds to charities approved by the original organizers. i've seen some people claim that it was going to be charities approved of by gofundme alone but i have not seen evidence of this. i think in that case that would be deeply unethical.
6d6b73 5y ago
It's a protest not an occupation
- PierceJoy 5y ago
  You obviously don’t live in Ottawa.
- blast 5y ago
  It's obviously a peaceful protest*. The word "occupation" here is already spin from the side that wants to shut it down and is trying to build a case for doing so. Peaceful protest involves physically assembling and making noise. That is no doubt unpleasant both for those who disagree with the protestors and those who live in the neighborhood, but the right to do this in public is fundamental and vital in democratic society. I thought we were all raised to understand that? For the life of me I can't understand people who are so ready to trash those rights just because they don't happen to agree with a cause. Either these are democratic rights or they aren't, and if they are then they apply to everybody. * Edit: I shouldn't have said obviously. I should have said: from what I've seen. Some people are posting that there have been violent things going on, but those claims have come without evidence. In the few cases where I have seen objective information, such claims have turned out to be exaggerated. If I see objective information showing that the protestors have turned violent, I will change my mind. (As long as it is clear that it really was the protestors and not someone trying to make them look bad, since that kind of thing also happens at protests.)
  - SECProto 5y ago
    A friend was shoved into a snowbank by a protester because she wore a mask. I was verbally assaulted for the same while skating on the canal. They're not peaceful.
    - s1artibartfast 5y ago
      I think the real struggle is understanding the degree to which they are peaceful or not. Obviously nothing is black or white. As an example, I was once shoved by a person. People are not peaceful
bruceb 5y ago
"This is entirely outside of the mission of GoFundMe." https://twitter.com/gofundme/status/1278759152492220416 https://twitter.com/gofundme/status/1278759152492220416 It is not if they agree with what is happening. They are fine with occupying if they back the cause.
- defaultname 5y ago
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    The tweet literally says it is for CHOP.
    - s5300 5y ago
      Which was something like the entirety of a half of a city block mostly centered around urban farms
      - joemazerino 5y ago
        dang 5y ago
        Please keep flamewar rhetoric off HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - bendbro 5y ago
        You are seriously misinformed on CHOP/CHAZ. Likely 1-5% of the area was devoted to a garden. The rest was filled with protesters waging nightly war on the police and surrounding businesses. More than that, CHAZ/CHOP protestors were directly responsible for multiple killings of black people.
      - 5y ago
throwawaysea 5y ago
The thing is BLM protesters broke laws. They started fires, destroyed businesses, trapped drivers in tunnels, attacked police, set fires in people’s homes, and declared an autonomous zone that claimed to secede from the country - and this is just from my city. GoFundMe happily allowed them to be funded while Facebook and Twitter happily allowed them to organize. Driving trucks and using the roads as they are meant to be used does not seem anywhere nearly as egregious (I know some did more than this). It also seems appropriate given that bodily autonomy is the most fundamental civil liberty. If you don’t have control over your body, what do you have in terms of liberty and why does rule of law matter?
- PierceJoy 5y ago
  The vaccine isn’t being forced on anyone. Body autonomy is no more being violated here than any other time in history where vaccines have been required to do certain things, of which there are many examples. Not to mention, all the things you listed at the start of your comment have been done by the Ottawa occupiers. I don’t like to call them truckers because most are not, and most truckers are against this occupation.
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    Really? They've attacked police and burned people's homes? Seceded? I've not been following the news much, but I haven't seen this.
    - PierceJoy 5y ago
      They have attacked police. They have had dance parties on war memorials. They threw human shit at a home with a pride flag in the window. They assaulted people for wearing masks. Healthcare workers are now told to remove any indications that they work at a hospital for their own safety.
      - jtbayly 5y ago
        In other words, it's nothing alike.
gjsman-1000 5y ago
Remember when GoFundMe was actually encouraging people to donate on Twitter to CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle? During a pandemic when most states still had mask mandates? I do, and GoFundMe is a bunch of partisan hypocrites. Let me quote Elon: Professional Thieves.
- PierceJoy 5y ago
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  It wasn’t just during a pandemic. It was literally the week after the stay at home lockdown order for WA state expired. It was the start of the various “phases” of restrictions following the hard lockdown order, including in King County where CHAZ took place. And of course the phases got paused because of a sharp increase in cases that June - the primary month in which CHAZ, other riots, and peaceful protests took place (while virtually everything else was shut down).
landemva 5y ago
"... exactly the same group of people lamenting the paying of bail for BLM protesters are falling in line with rights for this trucker group ..." That seems to be a gross over-generalization.
- pl0x 5y ago
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't add regional flamewar on top of the flamewar we've already got here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
scj 5y ago
"Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." - Pierre Trudeau, 1969 When trying to grasp the Canadian point of view on GoFundMe, understanding the primal fear this quote invokes in us is vital.
klyrs 5y ago
A missing piece of this is Canada's Bill C51 [1], which characterizes interference with critical infrastructure as terrorism. A significant difference between CHAZ/CHOP and these protests is the legal context. Looters bad, rah rah, but GoFundMe doesn't want to touch (legally-defined-as) terrorists with a 10 foot pole. But C51 was passed with an eye towards stopping anti-pipeline protests, and conservative Canadians loved that*. But now, they want the right to interfere with critical infrastructure as a legitimate form of protest. Should have thought of that in 2015, I guess. [1] https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/LegislativeSummaries/412C51E https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/Resear... * though, it's worth pointing out that Trudeau was against it until he got elected, and it passed under his reign
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  This is a good point and if this law were enforced fairly and equally across all political causes, I would support it. Infrastructure is not, in my view, appropriate for political persuasion. It feels coercive in the same way ironically, that vaccine mandates are. However, I worry that often times these laws are enforced by whoever is in power in a one-sided manner. This was definitely the case in Seattle - we had a socialist city council member who helped BLM protesters break into city hall (a sort of manufactured protest event) but any hint of moderate or conservative protest and you can expect to be held to the letter of the law.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    No, you don't seem to get it. This is happening in Canada. The laws here are different from Seattle. The question of how this law is enforced has zero application to the BLM protests stateside. GoFundMe has made the choice to operate in Canada, and they're going to make inconsistent-looking decisions because the laws simply aren't the same on both sides of the border.
    - throwawaysea 5y ago
      Hmm - I might be missing something, but I think we are in agreement? I was just making a point that laws need equal enforcement to be just, regardless of jurisdiction. The Seattle mention was just to provide an example of a law being unequally enforced. I also agree that GFM may make different decisions for different locations to comply with the local laws, and also agree that protests should not displace the use of infrastructure like roads.
throwaway894345 5y ago
> And it's interesting how exactly the same group of people lamenting the paying of bail for BLM protesters are falling in line with rights for this trucker group to harass and occupy Canadian cities. The inverse is also true, and at least in the more recent case people can point to the earlier BLM precedent. I.e., “if the platform can be used to fund BLM protests, then it can be used to fund trucker protests”. If GoFundMe didn’t want their platform to be used for this kind of thing, they should be mindful of the precedents they set.
hintymad 5y ago
I thought the real issue was that GoFundMe didn't initially return the money to the donors, instead they gave the money away to a charity, or so they claim.
- scollet 5y ago
  They never did that.
  - StanislavPetrov 5y ago
    They didn't do that, but they released a statement that they were going to do that, until there was a massive outcry and several state attorney generals got involved and promised to open investigations.
StanislavPetrov 5y ago
>And it's interesting how exactly the same group of people lamenting the paying of bail for BLM protesters are falling in line with rights for this trucker group to harass and occupy Canadian cities. That's true, and its also interesting how exactly the same people who support the paying of bail for BLM looters and rioters (lawful protesters aren't arrested and don't need bail) are cheering the decision of GoFundMe to block the funds to the Canadian protesters. The issue as I see it is the failure of GoFundMe to have a consistent standard that is neutrally applied without regard to the underlying politics of those raising funds. If they say that its prohibited to raise funds for those involved in breaking the law, then that standard should be applied to both BLM and the truckers. Another important issue in this case was the initial decision of GoFundMe to keep all donated funds absent a proactive request for a refund by those who had donated. Its bad enough if GoFundMe decided to act in a nakedly partisan manner when deciding who is allowed to raise funds on their platform, but its entirely another matter for them to make people jump through hoops to get their money back. I'm glad to see GoFundMe reversed this decision and decided to offer automatic refunds, but it shouldn't have taken a huge outcry for them to reach this decision.
- kadoban 5y ago
  > lawful protesters aren't arrested and don't need bail That's only true if the police are perfect, which is very much not the case.

tomohawk 5y ago

I'm glad the governor is looking into this. Undoubtedly there are FL residents who contributed to this worthy cause via GFM, and then to have GFM suddenly say they're going to redirect the funds? Seems like some sort of fraud to offer a service for one thing and then change it after money has changed hands. GFM obviously realized this was a problem, so changed their minds and is providing automatic refunds. But this sort of fraud can only have a negative impact on the cause people were wanting to fund. But GFM at the very least comes across as partisan, if not hypocritical. If they're going to be a partisan funder, then I'm sure there are other laws they need to comply with which they currently don't.

PierceJoy 5y ago
The plan presented to GFM by the organizers called for excess funds to be given to charities. How is it fraud for GFM to follow the organizer’s plan? The only thing they refused to do was fund the illegal occupation of downtown Ottawa.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  To equate giving all of the funds to other charities and not allowing any of it to be used for its given purpose with giving the rest of the money after its intended purpose has been met is... well, not right. Like, consider a non-profit that you want to support its vision. Most of the money goes to its mission, the rest pays its execs. They decide to use 100% of it for the execs. According to your argument, that's just fine.
  - PierceJoy 5y ago
    - jtbayly 5y ago
      I neither believe it is truthful to call it "occupying the nations capitol" nor am I surprised that GFM won't fund it. Regardless, your response was a non-sequitur. You really need to deal with what I actually said. To help you along, I also wouldn't be surprised for a charity to redirect 100% of its income to its executives. But that wouldn't mean I would say it was fine for them to do that, even though the reason I gave the money was for clean wells in Africa. That's what you're defending.
      - PierceJoy 5y ago
        > I neither believe it is truthful to call it "occupying the nations capito People who live in Ottawa disagree. > To help you along, I also wouldn't be surprised for a charity to redirect 100% of its income to its executives. But that wouldn't mean I would say it was fine for them to do that, even though the reason I gave the money was for clean wells in Africa. That's what you're defending. This is a textbook strawman. We're talking about a specific situation here, so stop trying to invoke entirely different situations to defend it. The fact is that this has turned into an occupation. It's not reasonable to expect GFM to fund that.
        jtbayly 5y ago
        Look, I've already explained that I'm not surprised. You are claiming I'm lying? Or what? Also my example is not a straw man. It's a simple analogy. This will be my last comment. The thing I'm trying to address is your claim that it's just fine and dandy for them to redirect all the money to charities because that's equivalent to what the original organizers were going to do anyway. It's not. It's so obviously not appropriate that GFM immediately realized they could never get away with that and changed their minds and decided to refund all of the money instead. So I don't know why you're even bothering to defend their original plan. You're probably literally the only person in the world who thinks it's fine. edit: removed potentially inflammatory analysis.
ratsmack 5y ago
I would think that every GFM campaign is approved by default once the money starts flowing in. To change it after the fact should be seen as a criminal act.
benmmurphy 5y ago
its a bit of dark pattern but i'm not sure if it is illegal. i suspect gofundme wanted the donations redirected so they would still receive the revenue the donations created. from their POV if they refund all the donations then they are paying fees for processing and refunding and not receiving any revenue. if gofundme wanted to still try and process the donations the more ethical option would be to set the default to be refund and allowed people to opt-in to have their donations redirected. also, my understanding is gofundme always planned to redirect funds to charities approved by the original organizers. i've seen some people claim that it was going to be charities approved of by gofundme alone but i have not seen evidence of this. i think in that case that would be deeply unethical.

6d6b73 5y ago

It's a protest not an occupation

PierceJoy 5y ago
You obviously don’t live in Ottawa.
blast 5y ago
It's obviously a peaceful protest*. The word "occupation" here is already spin from the side that wants to shut it down and is trying to build a case for doing so. Peaceful protest involves physically assembling and making noise. That is no doubt unpleasant both for those who disagree with the protestors and those who live in the neighborhood, but the right to do this in public is fundamental and vital in democratic society. I thought we were all raised to understand that? For the life of me I can't understand people who are so ready to trash those rights just because they don't happen to agree with a cause. Either these are democratic rights or they aren't, and if they are then they apply to everybody. * Edit: I shouldn't have said obviously. I should have said: from what I've seen. Some people are posting that there have been violent things going on, but those claims have come without evidence. In the few cases where I have seen objective information, such claims have turned out to be exaggerated. If I see objective information showing that the protestors have turned violent, I will change my mind. (As long as it is clear that it really was the protestors and not someone trying to make them look bad, since that kind of thing also happens at protests.)
- SECProto 5y ago
  A friend was shoved into a snowbank by a protester because she wore a mask. I was verbally assaulted for the same while skating on the canal. They're not peaceful.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    I think the real struggle is understanding the degree to which they are peaceful or not. Obviously nothing is black or white. As an example, I was once shoved by a person. People are not peaceful

bruceb 5y ago

"This is entirely outside of the mission of GoFundMe." https://twitter.com/gofundme/status/1278759152492220416 https://twitter.com/gofundme/status/1278759152492220416 It is not if they agree with what is happening. They are fine with occupying if they back the cause.

defaultname 5y ago
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  The tweet literally says it is for CHOP.
  - s5300 5y ago
    Which was something like the entirety of a half of a city block mostly centered around urban farms
    - joemazerino 5y ago
      - dang 5y ago
        Please keep flamewar rhetoric off HN. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - bendbro 5y ago
      You are seriously misinformed on CHOP/CHAZ. Likely 1-5% of the area was devoted to a garden. The rest was filled with protesters waging nightly war on the police and surrounding businesses. More than that, CHAZ/CHOP protestors were directly responsible for multiple killings of black people.
    - 5y ago

throwawaysea 5y ago

The thing is BLM protesters broke laws. They started fires, destroyed businesses, trapped drivers in tunnels, attacked police, set fires in people’s homes, and declared an autonomous zone that claimed to secede from the country - and this is just from my city. GoFundMe happily allowed them to be funded while Facebook and Twitter happily allowed them to organize. Driving trucks and using the roads as they are meant to be used does not seem anywhere nearly as egregious (I know some did more than this). It also seems appropriate given that bodily autonomy is the most fundamental civil liberty. If you don’t have control over your body, what do you have in terms of liberty and why does rule of law matter?

PierceJoy 5y ago
The vaccine isn’t being forced on anyone. Body autonomy is no more being violated here than any other time in history where vaccines have been required to do certain things, of which there are many examples. Not to mention, all the things you listed at the start of your comment have been done by the Ottawa occupiers. I don’t like to call them truckers because most are not, and most truckers are against this occupation.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  Really? They've attacked police and burned people's homes? Seceded? I've not been following the news much, but I haven't seen this.
  - PierceJoy 5y ago
    They have attacked police. They have had dance parties on war memorials. They threw human shit at a home with a pride flag in the window. They assaulted people for wearing masks. Healthcare workers are now told to remove any indications that they work at a hospital for their own safety.
    - jtbayly 5y ago
      In other words, it's nothing alike.

gjsman-1000 5y ago

Remember when GoFundMe was actually encouraging people to donate on Twitter to CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle? During a pandemic when most states still had mask mandates? I do, and GoFundMe is a bunch of partisan hypocrites. Let me quote Elon: Professional Thieves.

PierceJoy 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
throwawaysea 5y ago
It wasn’t just during a pandemic. It was literally the week after the stay at home lockdown order for WA state expired. It was the start of the various “phases” of restrictions following the hard lockdown order, including in King County where CHAZ took place. And of course the phases got paused because of a sharp increase in cases that June - the primary month in which CHAZ, other riots, and peaceful protests took place (while virtually everything else was shut down).

landemva 5y ago

"... exactly the same group of people lamenting the paying of bail for BLM protesters are falling in line with rights for this trucker group ..." That seems to be a gross over-generalization.

pl0x 5y ago
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't add regional flamewar on top of the flamewar we've already got here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

scj 5y ago

"Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." - Pierre Trudeau, 1969 When trying to grasp the Canadian point of view on GoFundMe, understanding the primal fear this quote invokes in us is vital.

klyrs 5y ago

A missing piece of this is Canada's Bill C51 [1], which characterizes interference with critical infrastructure as terrorism. A significant difference between CHAZ/CHOP and these protests is the legal context. Looters bad, rah rah, but GoFundMe doesn't want to touch (legally-defined-as) terrorists with a 10 foot pole. But C51 was passed with an eye towards stopping anti-pipeline protests, and conservative Canadians loved that*. But now, they want the right to interfere with critical infrastructure as a legitimate form of protest. Should have thought of that in 2015, I guess. [1] https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/ResearchPublications/LegislativeSummaries/412C51E https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/Resear... * though, it's worth pointing out that Trudeau was against it until he got elected, and it passed under his reign

throwawaysea 5y ago
This is a good point and if this law were enforced fairly and equally across all political causes, I would support it. Infrastructure is not, in my view, appropriate for political persuasion. It feels coercive in the same way ironically, that vaccine mandates are. However, I worry that often times these laws are enforced by whoever is in power in a one-sided manner. This was definitely the case in Seattle - we had a socialist city council member who helped BLM protesters break into city hall (a sort of manufactured protest event) but any hint of moderate or conservative protest and you can expect to be held to the letter of the law.
- klyrs 5y ago
  No, you don't seem to get it. This is happening in Canada. The laws here are different from Seattle. The question of how this law is enforced has zero application to the BLM protests stateside. GoFundMe has made the choice to operate in Canada, and they're going to make inconsistent-looking decisions because the laws simply aren't the same on both sides of the border.
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    Hmm - I might be missing something, but I think we are in agreement? I was just making a point that laws need equal enforcement to be just, regardless of jurisdiction. The Seattle mention was just to provide an example of a law being unequally enforced. I also agree that GFM may make different decisions for different locations to comply with the local laws, and also agree that protests should not displace the use of infrastructure like roads.

throwaway894345 5y ago

> And it's interesting how exactly the same group of people lamenting the paying of bail for BLM protesters are falling in line with rights for this trucker group to harass and occupy Canadian cities. The inverse is also true, and at least in the more recent case people can point to the earlier BLM precedent. I.e., “if the platform can be used to fund BLM protests, then it can be used to fund trucker protests”. If GoFundMe didn’t want their platform to be used for this kind of thing, they should be mindful of the precedents they set.

hintymad 5y ago

I thought the real issue was that GoFundMe didn't initially return the money to the donors, instead they gave the money away to a charity, or so they claim.

scollet 5y ago
They never did that.
- StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  They didn't do that, but they released a statement that they were going to do that, until there was a massive outcry and several state attorney generals got involved and promised to open investigations.

StanislavPetrov 5y ago

>And it's interesting how exactly the same group of people lamenting the paying of bail for BLM protesters are falling in line with rights for this trucker group to harass and occupy Canadian cities. That's true, and its also interesting how exactly the same people who support the paying of bail for BLM looters and rioters (lawful protesters aren't arrested and don't need bail) are cheering the decision of GoFundMe to block the funds to the Canadian protesters. The issue as I see it is the failure of GoFundMe to have a consistent standard that is neutrally applied without regard to the underlying politics of those raising funds. If they say that its prohibited to raise funds for those involved in breaking the law, then that standard should be applied to both BLM and the truckers. Another important issue in this case was the initial decision of GoFundMe to keep all donated funds absent a proactive request for a refund by those who had donated. Its bad enough if GoFundMe decided to act in a nakedly partisan manner when deciding who is allowed to raise funds on their platform, but its entirely another matter for them to make people jump through hoops to get their money back. I'm glad to see GoFundMe reversed this decision and decided to offer automatic refunds, but it shouldn't have taken a huge outcry for them to reach this decision.

kadoban 5y ago
> lawful protesters aren't arrested and don't need bail That's only true if the police are perfect, which is very much not the case.