Over $5 million has been raised for Canada Freedom Convoy on the Christian-owned platform GiveSendGo after the notoriously liberal GoFundMe announced last week it was shutting down the cause on its site.
Praise God!
It’s a win-win as far as Christians, conservatives and liberty-loving people are concerned.
GoFundMe was further outed as anti-conservative, while a pro-freedom alternative gained prominence.
Total donations to Canada Freedom Convoy stood at over $5 million as of Monday only three days after the campaign was launched on its GiveSendGo page.
The Canadian truckers and their supporters are protesting COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Even with all the glitches/attacks, $4million+ has been donated in 48 hrs on GiveSendGo. This is nothing short of a MIRACLE even with all the issues God is growing this company. We’re so excited to be on this adventure. (FYI it took over 2 weeks for the gfm to reach the $10M)
— GiveSendGo (@GiveSendGo) February 7, 2022
GoFundMe distributed only $1 million of the $10 million raised for the truckers before freezing the funds last week.
The San Francisco Bay-area company said the campaign was in violation of its terms, because “the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation,” with some reports of violence.
GoFundMe originally said that the remaining $9 million would be distributed to “credible and established charities verified by GoFundMe,” but after significant online backlash, announced that it would be returned to the original contributors.
The site has shut down other conservative causes, including a legal defense fund for Kyle Rittenhouse, who was found to have acted in self-defense when he shot and killed a man during the Kenosha, Wisconsin, riots last summer.
A convoy of thousands of trucks arrived in Ottawa, Canada, the nation’s capital, during the last weekend in January, blocking streets around Canada’s Parliament building, BBC reported.
#Ottawa ?? Happening Now: Reinforcements have arrived. Truckers line the streets at Slater and Kent Streets. Trucks as far as the eye can see lining the streets of Ottawa. Such enthusiasm. Canadians feeding Canadians: eggs and breakfast served up hot on a cold day.#HonkHonk pic.twitter.com/mGSrUKqRuq
— ????Americanka ??? (@PolcaDorka) February 5, 2022
“Ottawa’s Mayor Jim Watson said some protesters had harassed staff at a soup kitchen, demanding free meals after they were turned away by restaurants for their refusal to comply with indoor mask mandates,” according to the news outlet.
Tractors, Freedom Convoy 2022, Ottawa Saturday, February 5, 2022 pic.twitter.com/TA0NT0zDKH
— Justice Centre (@JCCFCanada) February 5, 2022
Canada Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich said on GiveSendGo’s page, “We plan on being here for the long haul — as long as it takes to ensure that your rights and freedoms are restored.”
“We are asking for Donations to help with the costs of fuel first, and hopefully food and lodgings to help ease the pressures of this arduous task.”
GiveSendGo’s new higher profile status has not come without growing pains.
Saturday the site reported having server errors after experiencing cyber attacks in the form of bots and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), a technique used by malicious actors to overwhelm a website with fake traffic.
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!
— GiveSendGo (@GiveSendGo) February 5, 2022
In a Monday statement, GiveSendGo co-founder Jacob Wells said, “We’ve seen nearly 10 million bots trying to overwhelm our servers in just the past two hours. Though this has caused issues for the platform, we will not let it stand in the way of providing a safe and effective means of fundraising for our campaign owner across the globe.”
The Western Journal was able to access the donation page Monday on the first try, but server errors occurred when trying to return to the page soon thereafter.
With a few tries, the page did open again.
GiveSendGo said the FreedomConvoy campaign has been its largest ever.
Rumble — an alternative to YouTube that does not censor conservative viewpoints — offered to help GiveSendGo with technical support via a Saturday tweet and the fundraising site apparently took them up on the offer.
Hey rumble, sent you a message!
— GiveSendGo (@GiveSendGo) February 5, 2022
Rumble hash-tagged “#teamwork #Freedom” after the two organizations connected.
Message received! We are now in direct contact with @GiveSendGo #teamwork #Freedom
— Rumble (@rumblevideo) February 5, 2022
Christopher Bedford — a senior editor with the Washington Examiner — told Fox News on Monday that his organization Right Forge, founded last spring, was also helping GiveSendGo.
Right Forge worked with the platform over the weekend “to scale them up, to defeat hacker attacks against them, [and] to move them over to our servers,” Bedford said.
This weekend is exactly the reason we founded RightForge: Standing up alongside great companies like @GiveSendGo to support freedom in the US, Canada, and across the world — no matter what Big Tech thinks. #FreedomConvoy2022 @AmericaNewsroom pic.twitter.com/4ApYnj6pLJ
— Christopher Bedford (@CBedfordDC) February 7, 2022
Another Big Tech tactic employed against conservatives has been to remove them from their servers, as Amazon did to Parler last year.
GiveSendGo sought direct donations to help it ramp up its services, as well as thwart cyber attackers.
How to Support GSG as we fight this battle.
1. Please pray, its our best offense/defense.
2. Share & use us even as we are having growing pains.
3. Be patient with our team
4. If you want to contribute to our cause: https://t.co/qmTO1TGh07 (if you can get to it #funnynotfunny )— GiveSendGo (@GiveSendGo) February 5, 2022
The company acknowledged the reported incidences of violence, but said that was not a reason to shut down the entire fundraising campaign.
This verse is so encouraging! pic.twitter.com/OUiJjYM3Es
— GiveSendGo (@GiveSendGo) February 6, 2022
Here’s to Canada’s liberty-loving truckers and conservative platforms like GiveSendGo helping the cause of freedom to endure.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
