GoFundMe, one of the largest crowdfunding platforms, removed a fundraiser connected to a parent group fighting against Virginia’s Loudoun County Public School district’s (LCPS) indoctrination campaign.
Scott Mineo runs the Parents Against Critical Theory (PACT) group, which aims to highlight the ongoing critical race theory campaign inside of LCPS. According to the Washington Free Beacon, Mineo started a GoFundMe page in mid-March after “anti-racist” Loudoun County parents launched an intimidation campaign against PACT and other parent groups.
The fundraiser had garnered nearly $4,000 in just a few days. On March 22, a former Loudoun County School Board Equity Committee member urged the current committee members and the school board to report the fundraising page. Three days later, GoFundMe had caved to activists and removed Mineo’s fundraiser.
In an email, GoFundMe said the fundraiser was considered “prohibited conduct.” The crowdfunding platform offered no other explanation, though similar to Amazon, its guidelines claim the company can remove any posts it deems “unacceptable” or offensive.
Mineo told The Daily Wire that he believes GoFundMe caved to activist groups and the district’s left-wing equity committee.
“GoFundMe canceled my campaign because they are weak, afraid to push back, and are unwilling to reach out to the very people running campaigns they shut down because of hysterical activist groups or equity committees,” Mineo said. “What LCPS doesn’t understand is that I’m not going away and I will continue to expose their false narrative.”
Mineo said that the censoring has “slowed things down a bit,” but that he was able to create a new fundraiser on the GiveSendGo platform.
The initial fundraiser was a direct response to a Facebook group called “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County, which compiled a list of parents that disagree with the controversial critical race theory training.
The Daily Wire reported:
A group of current and former teachers and others in Loudoun County, Virginia, compiled a lengthy list of parents suspected of disagreeing with school system actions, including its teaching of controversial racial concepts — with a stated purpose in part to “infiltrate,” use “hackers” to silence parents’ communications, and “expose these people publicly.”
Members of a 624-member private Facebook group … named parents and plotted fundraising and other offline work.
Organizations tied to the school district have also threatened teachers and parents for speaking out against critical race theory curriculum. The district’s Minority Student Achievement Advisory Council (MSAAC) pledged to “silence the opposition,” referring to parents who question the schools’ adoption of critical theory.
MSAAC has also demanded that teachers be dismissed from their jobs if they criticize the district’s equity training. Kiara Jennings, who leads MSAAC, emailed the district’s Superintendent, School Board Chair, Equity Committee, and the NAACP asking that teachers not be allowed to speak out against diversity training, even in private feedback surveys.
The district has spent a pretty penny on equity and diversity training thus far. Between 2018 and 2020, LCPS spent $422,500 on training inspired by critical race theory.