Despite technical issues, GoFundMe competitor GiveSendGo has managed to raise over $1 million in just 12 hours
Christian fundraising website GiveSendGo has blamed“heavy DDoS and bot attacks” for server downtime after taking over raising cash for the Canadian trucker convoy on Friday. The platform began raising funds for the truckers protesting against Covid-19 vaccine passports and mandates on Friday after its better-known competitor GoFundMe froze the Freedom Convoy’s account with $7 million in donations.
Popular alternative video platform Rumble has offered technical help to GiveSendGo. “We are hearing, but have not validated, that GiveSendGo is experiencing server issues and a possible denial of service attack,” Rumble said in a tweet. “If true, Rumble would be happy to help in anyway we can. We have equipment and engineers on standby, please feel free to reach out.”
We are hearing, but have not validated, that @GiveSendGo is experiencing server issues and a possible denial of service attack.
If true, Rumble would be happy to help in anyway we can. We have equipment and engineers on standby, please feel free to reach out.
The site, which has been offline intermittently since re-launching the campaign on Friday, nevertheless boasted it was able to raise funds for the convoy five times faster than GoFundMe, citing $1.1 million raised in “just over 12 hours” in a tweet posted Saturday morning.
We have been under heavy DDOS and bot attacks. In spite of all of this we still have managed to raise funds 5X faster than the gfm did. GFM raised 10mil in 3 weeks. GSG campaign has already raised over 1.1mil in just over 12 hours!
The Freedom Convoy 2022 campaign on GiveSendGo has named $16 million as its fundraising goal. In a video posted on the campaign page, organizer Tamara Lich pledged that the convoy was planning to “be here for the long haul, as long as it takes to make sure your rights and freedoms are restored.”
The money has continued to flow in despite connectivity issues, with over $1.35 million raised as of Saturday afternoon. According to the campaign page, donations will go to the cost of fuel first, and then to food and lodging. A crew of volunteers has been carrying jerry-cans of fuel to the truckers, who must heat their trucks even when the convoy isn’t moving, and some temporary shelters have been built to store fuel, food and water along the roads.
GoFundMe shut down the convoy’s campaign on Friday after releasing just $1 million of over $8 million raised for the cause. While it had initially threatened to donate the massive sum to charities it considers to be “credible and established,” the company later opted to automatically refund donations after it was threatened with a fraud investigation by the state of Florida.
The UN Secretary-General on Saturday said that Africa was “a source of hope” for the world, highlighting the examples of the African Continental Free Trade Area and the Decade of Financial and Economic Inclusion for African Women.
For the last three years, a retired cook in northern Burkina Faso has been providing shelter for people displaced by armed attacks in the country, where the security situation continues to deteriorate.
Read the full story, “First Person: Hope and shelter, amid the fighting in Burkina Fasoâ€, on globalissues.org →find more fun & mates at SoShow now !
Organizers of the Beijing Olympics are touting greater gender equity at this year’s Games, but Nordic combined remains the only event not open to women.
(Image credit: Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images)
Missouri man who fought to ban ‘inappropriate’ queer-themed books from public school libraries faces felony charge for child abuse
A US man who pushed to ban several LGBTQ books from public schools now faces a felony charge for second-degree child molestation. He is also facing a misdemeanor charge of attempting to show pornographic material to a minor in a separate case.
The accused, 29-year-old Ryan Utterback from a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, appeared for a hearing on Thursday, according to KMBC-TV. According to court documents, the felony charges relate to separate incidents in 2020 – when he allegedly touched a 12-year-old girl under her clothes and rubbed a teen’s leg underneath her jeans.
The misdemeanor case alleges that Utterback used his cellphone to show pornographic video footage to a child, beginning from when she was around four. He also faces another misdemeanor charge of fourth-degree domestic assault. The second hearing will reportedly take place in March.
The charges came after he and other parents complained at a North Kansas City School District board meeting last year about “pornographic” LGBTQ-themed books on school shelves. At the meeting in October, Utterback held up enlarged prints of two pages from the graphic memoir ‘Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic’, while another parent argued that distributing the material amounted to “solicitation of a minor.”
“I definitely understand their struggles and it’s not lost on me. But again those conversations are to be had at home. Only I have the intimate understanding as to what is and isn’t appropriate for my children,” Utterback had previously told KMBC.
The school district pulled two books from the school libraries, but later reinstated them after a warning from the ACLU. Besides the graphic memoir, which deals with gender identity, the second book was ‘All Boys Aren’t Blue’, a compilation of essays about growing up as a queer black person.
In a tweet this week, George M. Johnson – the author of the second book – highlighted the charges against Utterback and his earlier objections about the books being “pornographic and inappropriate for his kids.” Johnson noted that “our books teach [and] give resources to kids about predators like him.”
Neither Utterback nor the school board have offered comments as of yet.
For the last three years, a retired cook in northern Burkina Faso has been providing shelter for people displaced by armed attacks in the country, where the security situation continues to deteriorate.
