Woke poker pros and celebrities donating to Minnesota Freedom Fund, which pledges to bail rioters out of jail

[Dan Druff]

VIRTUE SIGNALING ALERT

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https://twitter.com/ikepoker/status/1266186735970590720


Check out the thread. Fairly large sums of money ($400-$2000) were donated by prominent poker pros such as Ike Haxton, Jesse Martin, Dan Smith, Dani Stern, and Jason Koon.

I then googled this "Minnesota Freedom Fund" and came up with the following article in The Hollywood Reporter, which is NOT a right-leaning publication:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...esters-1296264

A number of Hollywood stars on Thursday said they made a donation to a fund meant to help bail out Minneapolis protesters. Some of those bold-faced names include Seth Rogen, Steve Carell and Ben Schwartz.

Peaceful protests turned into rioting and looting Wednesday night in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd, an African American man who died Monday after his throat was kneeled on by a white police officer.

While it is not clear how many arrests police made throughout Wednesday night, celebrities made donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a community-based nonprofit that pays bail for low-income individuals, according to the fund's website.

So these genius virtue signaling poker pros are shipping money to get "justice for George Floyd", but are really funding the bail and legal defense for the criminals who looted and destroyed Minneapolis. Several Hollywood celebrities have also already donated.


Oh, but Sloppy Joe says that it's just a strawman argument that people support the rioting.

[Shizzmoney]

As always with tragedies like these, there are a ton of "charities" popping up, and with that... comes opportunities to ship the scammatar.

The Minnesota Freedom Fund existed since 2016, but really got traction as it's main focus is "to community based nonprofit that combats the harms of incarceration by paying bail for low-income individuals". They raised $35 million after Floyd's death as when protests are going on every day, this would be considered a charity that be useful to pay bail for said protesters.

Well, not unless its run by all white people who only have spent $200k of the money so far #rolled

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https://twitter.com/twt/status/1272726417650995202

There is also another charity, The Black Lives Matter Foundation (which is not affilated with the first actual Black Lives Matter org), and is run by one guy. The Black Lives Matter Foundation is based in Santa Clarita, California and has one paid employee: its founder Robert Ray Barnes, a music producer in L.A.

BuzzFeed reports the "charitable organization" raised at least $4.35 million in early June, according to estimates.

"I don't have anything to do with the Black Lives Matter Global Network. I never met them, never spoke to them," Barnes said. "Our whole thing is having unity with the police department."

He also refused to tell the outlet how much his foundation has raised in total. Tax filings shows it took in $279,000 in donations in 2017. It collects donations through PayPal, GoFundMe, and employer matching programs, furthering the confusion.

[BCR]

Oh man, that’s priceless I’m sure the Minnesota Freedom fund guys could use a new summer home, so that’s nice of the poker community to chip in.

[Dan Druff]

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https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/status/1272748769663041536

That's a partial list of poker people who donated to the Minnesota Freedom Fund because Ike Haxton told them to do so.

[Dan Druff]

Go read the responses to the Minnesota Freedom Fund tweet.

Furious people, including many black ones. Justified fury, may I add.

I love the "we see y'all" they wrote in their first tweet, trying to connect with black people by using their idioms, in order to diffuse some of the anger and suspicion. And then the haughty, "What? We spent $200k! What's your problem?" response when they collected $35,000,000.

They'd have been better off responding with, "EASY MARKS SFO"

[Dan Druff]

Right now I'm getting nasty responses on poker Twitter from the victims of the Minnesota Freedom Fund scam, telling me that they don't give a shit about what I think, and that their donation helped raise awareness anyway.

Very sad.

At least the black people who got ripped off are indignant and openly stating their regret for supporting it. The woke white poker left is still making excuses that they don't regret it.

[duped_samaritan]

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/status/1272748769663041536

That's a partial list of poker people who donated to the Minnesota Freedom Fund because Ike Haxton told them to do so.

You might be jumping the gun with the whole 'white people just put it in their pockets'.

They obv never expected $35m in donations a couple weeks ago. At $150 average bail the $200k could've easily been the result of bailing as many people as they could - I imagine there's quite a bit of paper work for each case. Now they have to figure out what to do with $35 million.

Not saying they aren't going to scam the money, but there's no evidence they already have.

[Dan Druff]

Embedded Tweet

https://twitter.com/ToddWitteles/status/1272748769663041536

That's a partial list of poker people who donated to the Minnesota Freedom Fund because Ike Haxton told them to do so.

You might be jumping the gun with the whole 'white people just put it in their pockets'.

They obv never expected $35m in donations a couple weeks ago. At $150 average bail the $200k could've easily been the result of bailing as many people as they could - I imagine there's quite a bit of paper work for each case. Now they have to figure out what to do with $35 million.

Not saying they aren't going to scam the money, but there's no evidence they already have.

Poker Twitter is hammering me super hard right now.

Which I fully expected when I made that tweet. I shot it at a lot of well-known and well-liked players, and I admit it wasn't particularly friendly.

It's pretty amazing the level of willful ignorance being displayed, though.

I will admit that it's POSSIBLE the fund isn't scamming, and is just a combination of being overwhelmed AND really bad at PR.

However, some huge questions remain:

1) Why are they refusing transparency, and why aren't the offering for an audit to be done by a trusted left wing organization? That would shut most people up fast. Instead, they put out that condescending message and wouldn't respond to any questions.

2) Why did they delete the list of names and pictures of board members?

3) They only spent about $15k/day bailing people out, by their own admission. I don't know where you're getting $150. Most of my traffic infractions cost more than that. I'm guessing the bail was at minimum $500, and probably 4 figures in most cases -- and far higher than that in the case where people are accused of more serious matters.


Transparency is key here. If they really did nothing wrong and ultimately show such transparency, and were simply just overwhelmed, then they mishandled it badly tonight.

The correct response would have been, "We will have an audit done by a trusted news organization which will prove the money is all still there, and we have X and Y plans for it", rather than the BS they put out.

[Dan Druff]

Well now that I pissed off a ton of well known poker pros, I'm sure it will be a great time when I see them at the 2021 WSOP.

Oh well.

At least Anna Khait will still be cool with me.

[Dan Druff]

So apparently bail is pretty low for some things in Minnesota, but I still have a feeling it was higher for many things related to the protests, especially those accused of any kind of violence, destruction, or arson.

I'm less certain now than when I first made the tweet that it's a scam, but at the same time, the management of the fund are doing themselves no favors by the way they've handled it.

They didn't state in the tweet that they're overwhelmed and simply didn't have time to spend more than $200k. Others are saying that for them, but that hasn't been the MN Freedom Fund's claim.

Furthermore, the complete lack of transparency and the lack of promise of such transparency is very suspect. It's not like they're unaware that people are suspicious.

Guess we will see. If I turn out to be wrong, I will have to eat crow and apologize to Poker Twitter, as I promised.

[BCR]

i mean, they might not outright steal it, but it will be over half administration costs that is essentially paying themselves, and then you basically paid for their pet causes for the next 20 years. Basically anyone who donated to bail out rioters will mostly agree with their pet causes and won’t have an issue with where the money goes ideologically, which is likely to be immigration issues from what it looks like.

They took in way too much money to stay focused on just Minnesota rioters and protestors. They really don’t appear to have arrested that many, and being the cops fucked up, they are going to really err on the conservative side. Probably a bunch of petty theft and disturbing the peace type charges, probably a lot of release on recognizance.

It doesn’t look like it was set up as some scam, just a bunch of white lawyers who happened to have chose a great name that played well for this unique situation and now have a ton of money for their pet projects. I assume they’re probably thinking how much do we have to spend to get them off our backs? Right now if I was a struggling black lawyer I’d be sending in my resume tomorrow and requesting 5x my normal salary demands in order to be the face of the Minnesota Freedom Fund. They need a brother in a suit bailing guys out on video within a few days and shooting some black power fist as they walk out.

You’ve basically gave them a huge endowment for the next few decades of issues they want to tackle and pay themselves to get involved with. I’d be shocked if they could spend $5 million bailing out people arrested specifically for protest/riot/GF related crimes strictly in Minnesota.

[Dan Druff]

i mean, they might not outright steal it, but it will be over half administration costs that is essentially paying themselves, and then you basically paid for their pet causes for the next 20 years. Basically anyone who donated to bail out rioters will mostly agree with their pet causes and won’t have an issue with where the money goes ideologically, which is likely to be immigration issues from what it looks like.

They took in way too much money to stay focused on just Minnesota rioters and protestors. They really don’t appear to have arrested that many, and being the cops fucked up, they are going to really err on the conservative side. Probably a bunch of petty theft and disturbing the peace type charges, probably a lot of release on recognizance.

It doesn’t look like it was set up as some scam, just a bunch of white lawyers who happened to have chose a great name that played well for this unique situation and now have a ton of money for their pet projects. I assume they’re probably thinking how much do we have to spend to get them off our backs? Right now if I was a struggling black lawyer I’d be sending in my resume tomorrow and requesting 5x my normal salary demands in order to be the face of the Minnesota Freedom Fund. They need a brother in a suit bailing guys out on video within a few days and shooting some black power fist as they walk out.

You’ve basically gave them a huge endowment for the next few decades of issues they want to tackle and pay themselves to get involved with. I’d be shocked if they could spend $5 million bailing out people arrested specifically for protest/riot/GF related crimes strictly in Minnesota.

On June 5 they rebranded as a legal defense AND bail fund, due to the sick money that came in.

And that's fine. As long as it's spent along the lines of the original cause, it wasn't a scam.

However, so far they've handled this mess REALLY badly. On a side note, the white management tweeting "we see y'all" to the angry black followers is condescending and pandering.

The next few days will be crucial. Either they get super-transparent and prove the money is all still there (and that there's a legit plan being developed for its use), or they're gonna look really bad.

I agree that a black lawyer would be a great asset at this point. As it stands, here are the honkys running the thing:



(They've removed the above from their site, btw. "We see y'all" indeed, but apparently we're not allowed to see them!)

[Dan Druff]

And uh oh regarding the prez of the MN Freedom Fund.

HE REPRESENTS FUCKING COPS

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https://twitter.com/teegrez/status/1272784240661463040

[Dan Druff]

MN Freedom Fund responded this morning. Didn't say much. A lot of defensive posturing and excuse-making, zero promise for any transparency.

Shaaaaaaaaaaady.

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https://twitter.com/MNFreedomFund/status/1272888415508402179

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https://twitter.com/MNFreedomFund/status/1272890092865105938

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https://twitter.com/MNFreedomFund/status/1272893229982257152

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https://twitter.com/MNFreedomFund/status/1272897056634474497

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https://twitter.com/MNFreedomFund/status/1272901621945638917



"That's where transparency gets exciting".....

.,, while showing no transparency.


Congratulations, SJWs, you've been rolled.

[Dan Druff]

Poker Twitter, including Andrew Barber and former NWP poster kidnotor, still thinks this charity is totally on the level, and I'm just being a right-wing conspiracy nut.

Even though most complaining about this are on the left.

Yup.

[Sidewinder]

Right now I'm getting nasty responses on poker Twitter from the victims of the Minnesota Freedom Fund scam, telling me that they don't give a shit about what I think, and that their donation helped raise awareness anyway.

Very sad.

At least the black people who got ripped off are indignant and openly stating their regret for supporting it. The woke white poker left is still making excuses that they don't regret it.

Is there anything more pathetic than a white liberal poker player?

[Bootsy Collins]

Poker Twitter, including Andrew Barber and former NWP poster kidnotor, still thinks this charity is totally on the level, and I'm just being a right-wing conspiracy nut.

Even though most complaining about this are on the left.

Yup.

You should link the 22Q thread.

[dwai]

[Dan Druff]

Scott Seiver made a really dumb version of that "clown having his makeup put on" meme about me, related to my Minnesota Freedom Fund claims.

Almost nobody clicked the like button despite his large Twitter following.

That guy has irritated me from the first moment I met him, and that was long before I knew his politics.

Okay, carry on.

[MumblesBadly]

Scott Seiver made a really dumb version of that "clown having his makeup put on" meme about me, related to my Minnesota Freedom Fund claims.

Almost nobody clicked the like button despite his large Twitter following.

That guy has irritated me from the first moment I met him, and that was long before I knew his politics.

Okay, carry on.

Druff, why do you only obsess about potential fraud committed by “liberals” when the Orange Assmonkey in the Oval Office has committed countless frauds AND has corruptly propped up his resorts and family businesses using directed government expenditures and quod pro quo sweetheart deals with foreign powers since he got into office?