“I don’t build to have donors, I have donors to build”
That’s our philosophy too. We raise money to build Legal Insurrection, and its CriticalRace.org and new EqualProtect.org projects. We’ll never let fundraising be the purpose of Legal Insurrection.
James O’Keefe is out at Project Veritas. He was Project Veritas. I don’t see how it survives without its founder and motivator.
Of course, there probably are two sides to any story, blah, blah, blah. He took some lady’s sammich! He spent money on dance stuff, he paid for his wedding which actually turned out to be a staff party, blah, blah, blah. I assume there will be some mud slinging, but it will be by people you’ve never heard of who fed off James’ notariety and grand persona.
I don’t know James well, but I’ve met him several times, most recently in Wisconsin at an event. He entered onto the stage like a rock star with teenage girls (now in their 60s and 70s) swooning. Kemberlee used to work for James in the early days of Project Veritas, and James was her reference when we hired her in 2014.
In his 40+ minute video, it was touching to hear him talk about how he started Project Veritas in his parents’ garage, and of his struggles to build the organization and the support from his parents. One part jumped out at me and hit me, when he addressed how fundraising was one of the issues over which he clashed with the Board and executives.
Fundraising drives so much of conservative non-profit world. I get it, you need donations to pay the bills, but I’ve observed that fundraising for many organizations becomes an end in itself.
So when James talked of how he pushed back against the fundraising philosophy of those against him in the organization, he paraphrased Howard Roarke:
“I don’t build to have donors, I have donors to build.”
That hit hit close to home. That’s our philosophy.
We are not slick fundraisers. Until Ilana started pitching in last summer, we didn’t even have a “development” plan or department or person. Our donors have been almost entirely readers and fans of the website, people I know, and people who know people I know.
We raise money to build Legal Insurrection, and its CriticalRace.org and new EqualProtect.org projects. We build to keep access to this website free, and not to stratify readers with different access levels, and to make our resources at the CRT and EPP websites free for others to use. We build to help people under attack.
We’ll never let fundraising be the purpose of Legal Insurrection. For all our team, Legal Insurrection is a labor of love.
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Comments
O’Keefe IS Project Veritas. Expect it to collapse under the weight of its own self important administrators.
I wonder if Pfizer has some hand in this. They’ve been caught so many times that it had to grate on them.
I expect O’Keefe to land on his feet.
I think Pfizer was definitely the signal that it was time to act, but a bunch of the board members were already compromised. They have pronouns in their freaking bios. This was something that was clearly planned for a while, and the Pfizer embarrassment was just the final straw.
I think O’Keefe will probably continue to be successful, but it’s definitely on him that he allowed a bunch of OBVIOUS leftists to become members of the board of a conservative organization.
Because people want to think well of their friends. I think he was befriended by those people just to take him down. It takes very few to do this.
The board was populated with people from every background for a reason. To prove that PV’s mission was to expose corruption on all levels. Having a diverse board would shield PV from being labeled conservative in theory. We all know that game plan didn’t work out as intended.
What PV did show was that most corruption seems to come from the liberal side of the spectrum. Or maybe they are just easy targets. Exposing hypocrisy on either side should be the game plan. But slaying sacred cows is fun to watch.
Did you know one of James’ first targets was Lucky Charms? He had it banned from school because it made fun of the Irish!
We don’t need validation “from every background.”
Next step, the FBI releases a mysterious statement about what they found when they searched his house. Even money they, in conjunction with Pfizer and with things they have on members of the board suitable for blackmail, are behind this.
One hates to be a conspiracy theorist, but the stench in the country is becoming overwhelming.
Infiltrated and destroyed. It would be interesting to know the backgrounds of the movers and shakers that coordinated this removal. Subterfuge from within and without I wager. On a similar note, Mark Steyn… after being in the lead to unmask the deaths of Brits from the jab… was given a “new” contract by GBNews which was pushed by the Govt’s censorship office. Steyn walked and since then GBNews has spiraled down.
I wonder how many days until the Pfizer video is deleted from the PV channels?
I wonder if O’Keefe has any IP ownership in the videos he is in. He narrates them all.
James: no more “board directors”! YOU be the director. Anyway, PV is poison. James is gold.
Project Veritas Statement About James O’Keefe’s Non-Firing Firing
https://www.independentsentinel.com/project-veritas-statement-about-james-okeefes-non-firing-firing/
People should demand their donations back, because they’ve been defrauded by the board of directors: people gave for James, not PV’s new woke b.s.
If he wants to be a charity he has to have a board of directors.
It seems obvious that Pfizer threw some money around and got him thrown out. One of the board of directors told a reporter that he gets a raise if O’ Keefe is removed. Hmmm. Wonder how that could be? It’s a win/win for Pfizer. Either the Project Veritas survives and moves in a liberal direction or it fails completely.
From Citizen Free Press, “Meet the O’Keefe Saboteur Barry Hinckley.”
https://twitter.com/amuse/status/1623512341760311297
Also, Veritas has released a laughable damage control slimeball of a statement where they suddenly make frantic allegations that absolutely no hint of has appeared before – claiming he was spending money on crap…. then provide less than $200k of claims, almost all of which is ‘Black Cars’, which I assume is a car chartering service. This is kiddie stuff and laughably obvious they’re just slinging crap at a wall hoping to stop the bleeding.
They further claim that he ‘unilaterally fired the CFO’, which apparently has to be done with board approval – and IF true, is far more impactful than a bunch of whiners complaining he was mean to them, but is yet another thing that has not even been hinted at until this frantic damage control.
This REEKS of desperation, like the idiots on the board thought they could just sideline him and take control without a fight.
It does make you wonder what someone has on board members, doesn’t it?
“Black cars” refers to “Uber Black” which means a nicer car – can hold more luggage and sometimes people. They have less demand (because they are a premium service) which means in bigger cities they are easier to get and you won’t be waiting for 30-40 minutes in airports like SFO. I’ve used them when time was at a premium or I was transporting a customer, and my company questioned it, but paid it with a 30 sec explanation.
A loss.
I liken what he did and was known for to what the FBI and our state security organizations and apparatus do. The difference is motivation. The FBI, its leaders in particular, do it to build leverage. They tuck these things away to use one day as leverage against you/us when we are winning an argument. They are big on personal peccadillos, human frailties and faults. They are dossier builders, nothing more than cheap, petty blackmailers responsible for the likes of everything from small tawdry stories about Donald Trump peeing on a bed somewhere to the treasonous Steele dossier and lying to a judge (who was only too happy to hear the lie) on justification for eavesdropping warrants.
It pains me suggest recalling something (anything) that Chuck Schumer ever said, but think back to his comment “these guys can get you a thousand different ways,” or something to that effect.
James, by comparison, was outing the organizations who were defrauding and destroying society by exposing their outright hypocrisy and lies; he probably couldn’t give a tinker’s damn about who they were sleeping with. What Planned Parenthood was doing with the remains of a aborted infants wasn’t a peccadillo; what Pfizer is doing isn’t either.
Think about all the harm CNN, NBC, and the MSM et al have done to the country over the years, then think about what they’re taking credit for today, outing the facts about the bordellos their stars and management have been running in their back rooms, the sort of thing O’Keefe could probably give a rat’s pitute about..
Think what he and Andrew Breitbart could have done together.
(With apologies for misspellings.)
Well that sent me down the rabbit hole. The more I read about recent happenings the more I am convinced Andrew Breitbart was murdered … not that I ever doubted otherwise.
Exactly! And SC Justice Scalia
You just don’t have a heart attack with a pillow over your face!
At least O’Keefe’s legacy with PV will have ended with triggering the demise of Pfizer and the covid poison pokes.
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/pfizer-knowingly-allowed-dangerous-components-its-vaccines
This truly is an evil company.
Now he is off to establishing what I am sure will be an even greater legacy. I keep thinking of the several projects he has to leave behind which will certainly never get finished now that the undercover people will certainly be exposed if he takes them with him… if he can. He probably has to rebuild his organization from scratch. His donors following him will be a great start because he can then focus on his mission. But starting anew putting people in place is a major challenge.
If you’ve ever built something and had it taken away from you, then you appreciate how hard it is to return to square one.
Project Veritas will implode upon itself without it’s founder. O’Keefe’s next venture will continue his exposes with a new name, being wary of the new outfits members. Hopefully, just a bump in the road. Lesson learned.
Some of us here might even consider financial contributions over to a new O’Keefe entity as well.
For a number of years I worked for a nation-wide conservative Political Action Committee. I finally left when I realized how corrupt it was. The director of the PAC was also the major fundraiser. It was eventually revealed that about 90 percent of all the money raised went to fundraising costs, salaries and expenses. I no longer give any money to statewide or nation wide political groups. All my donations go to local groups and candidates which are transparent with their finances. (And to a few select groups like LI which I trust.)
I had a similar experience “smiling and dialing” for a Republican fundraising consultant in MA while I was working for a state congressman. He was arrested when it was discovered that he personally pocketed 95% of the money. Most of the very worst people I ever met in my life was through politics. It was discouraging watching good honest candidates get chewed up by the money machine alone. I also met a lot of winning candidates who should have been in prison. Completely mean, crooked, despicable people. I’m glad I had the opportunity to earn my cynicism when I was young.
Through my donor advised fund, I have made annual grants to Project Veritas for several years, as I do for LI. Today I cancelled the recurring grant for PV. It’s small, so they probably won’t miss it. But I do what I can.
When do we see the undercover video of the board member laughing about removing O’Keefe?
My favorite episode of this crap is the SQLite project’s response back during that spasm of safety and diversity statements, policies, and so on demanded by the newly righteous of technology projects.(*)
The guy who ran SQLiteagreed, then published as the projects declaration the interpersonal parts of a medieval religious order’s rule … that amounted to “Be excellent to each other.”
The wailing and gnashing of teeth that followed was glorious.
(*) They even got Linus(**) to sputter some self-flagellating crap, demonstrating that even super-human nerd brains don’t translate to success with people politics. And they ridiculously knee-capped “Girls Do IT” nationally — I have some direct insight into this playing out in one city.
It’s all and only about controlling who gets to win. The “cause” is merely fodder. All else is distraction.
(**) Linus Torvolds — founder and still despicable dictator of he Linux project.
You gotta love this guy. Asked at a Google Talk why he bothered with his other project that ate the world — Git — he responded that the competing projects sucked.
He went on to name-check the one hosted and sponsored within Google at the time, called Subversion, with the motto CVS (Another project in the category(***) — ed.) done right.” Paraphrasing he elaborated: “Why would you even try to do that? They’re both so fundamentally broken they’re worse than useless.”
(***) These projects are all software to help wrangle vast-y volumes of changes, from gaggles of people, to massive, deeply interwingled piles of picky computer code.(****) He’s not wrong about the uselessness of the other two “tools”, and most of the rest in the category.
(****) Useful description of one reality of making working software:
“It’s like writing a series of detective novels. As a team in different places, working at different times. With no problems in continuity, no characterization errors, no plot holes. Also, no spelling or punctuation mistakes. On a deadline.”
Some tools to help wrangle the details of doing that help. Most of the tools that are supposed to help with doing that, don’t. So, software people do the same thing to themselves with their products as they do to their users. It’s a sickness.
O’Keefe is a great patriot and was the heart and soul of Project Veritas-I predict that he will be back on his feet in the very near future