The crowdfunding platform “GoFundMe” has sparked outrage in recent weeks after twice pausing donations to the Canadian Freedom Convoy before deciding they would shut the group’s donation page down altogether at the $10 million mark due to alleged “terms of service” violations.
Further angering supporters of the convoy, which is protesting oppressive Wuhan virus vaccine mandates, was GoFundMe’s initial decision to seize the donations and “work with organizers to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers and verified by GoFundMe.”
After a massive backlash, GoFundme backed down and said they’d be refunding donations directly to the donors.
Stepping in to fill the void has been the Christian-based crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo, located in Massachusetts. Earlier this month, they announced they would be hosting a page for Freedom Convoy donations. Since that time, they’ve faced cyber attacks and increased scrutiny by the Usual Suspects on the left and in the media, both of which apparently have had an abrupt – and very convenient – change of heart when it comes to supporting peaceful protests.
Because dictators will be dictators, government officials in Ontario pleaded with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice last week to issue an order effectively freezing donations to the convoy from GiveSendGo. The court granted their wish:
The Ontario government says it has successfully petitioned a court to freeze access to millions of dollars donated through online fundraising platform GiveSendGo to the convoy protesting COVID-19 restrictions in Ottawa and at several border crossings.The province obtained an order from the Superior Court of Justice that prohibits anyone from distributing donations made through the website’s “Freedom Convoy 2022″ and “Adopt-a-Trucker” campaign pages, said a spokeswoman for Premier Doug Ford.Ivana Yelich said the order binding “any and all parties with possession or control over these donations” was issued Thursday afternoon. She cited a section of the Criminal Code that allows the attorney general to apply for a restraint order against any “offence-related property.”
In response, GiveSendGo tweeted that the Canadian government has “absolutely ZERO jurisdiction” over how they process donations and noted that they would continue to proceed as normal:
Based on GiveSendGo’s actions in response to the court order, as well as co-founder/CEO Jacob Wells’ statements regarding high-level attempts to shut down the fundraising page for the Freedom Convoy, this company gets it:
“Big Tech really has taken it upon themselves to be the arbiters of truth. And it’s a place that they were never intended to be, and it’s caused more damage than good,” Wells told Fox News Digital in a phone interview Monday. “We are now stepping into that place because there is a natural pushback from many people because America was founded on these ideas of freedom.””This is like the tip of the spear and what is coming in a tsunami of technology that is pushing back against this authoritarian style of social platforms where it’s like these people just think that they get to control the narrative,” he said. “It’s mind-blowing to me that they actually think that is the way that it ought to be, because in my perspective, it only breeds more distrust and more vitriol, more divide.”
“Literally, men and women have given up their lives, their security, they give up their safety and leave everything on the line to see freedom exist in this country and to walk on that to say, ‘Well, I’m going to take that from you.’ That’s such a mockery of those sacrifices,” Wells also told Fox News Digital.
All of that said, there could still be forced compliance depending on how GiveSendGo’s third-party payment processors respond:
Although GiveSendGo is refusing to comply with the court order, it may still be forced to comply. That’s because the order also applies to the website’s third-party payment processors.In its website HTML code, GiveSendGo says it uses “WePay or Stripe” to process payments.WePay is owned by JPMorgan and Chase. A source at JPMorgan and Chase tells CNN that WePay has not processed any payments for GiveSendGo for several months, and the two companies have no relationship.CNN reached out to Stripe for comment and if [they] would comply with the order, but did not immediately receive a response.
It would appear that GiveSendGo isn’t waiting to find out. On Saturday, they posted an update giving clarification as to the status of donations and whether or not they were in fact “frozen”:
As always, stay tuned for further developments.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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