GoFundMe Page Trolls Border Wall With 'Ladders' Campaign, Raises $80,000 for Immigration Nonprofit
The campaign isn't actually about ladders.
What's the best way to climb over a wall? If you're thinking "a ladder," you're probably right. Hence a trolling GoFundMe page titled "Ladders to Get Over Trump's Wall."
Some background: On Sunday, conservative activist Brian Kolfage set up a GoFundMe campaign to pay for President Donald Trump's proposed border wall on the U.S.–Mexico border with private funds. The campaign has raised almost $12 million from nearly 200,000 people in just five days.
That gave one Twitter user an idea. "The MAGA dumdums are crowdsourcing money for the wall," @HoarseWisperer tweeted Wednesday. "Should we crowdsource money for ladders just to troll them?"
The tweet was a joke, but the Human Rights Campaign's Charlotte Clymer ran with it anyway. Clymer set up the "ladders" GoFundMe, which has since raised more than $80,000.
Last night, @HoarseWisperer joked about a GoFundMe to buy ladders in response to this border wall nonsense. I laughed but then thought: "Wait, why not?"
We've now raised $13,000 for, um, "ladders". (Actually going to @RAICESTEXAS). #GoFundTheWallhttps://t.co/CHMKJZqj25
— Charlotte Clymer (@cmclymer) December 20, 2018
As Clymer notes above, the money won't actually go to buy ladders. All funds raised will be donated to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), a Texas-based nonprofit that provides immigrants and refugees with low-cost legal services. "This GoFundMe isn't really about ladders at all," the GoFundMe says. "It's about lifting people up."
Clymer says RAICES "loves" the idea, and that the nonprofit would be added as a team member to the campaign.
Clymer wants to draw attention to the fact that immigrants help the nation, not hurt it. "I've really been happy with how this has generated conversation on just the absurdity of the wall in general," she tells Business Insider. "Undocumented folks are not bringing crime or drug smuggling or any of this job-stealing nonsense to our country." Those who support the wall "know it won't help, but they would gladly spite themselves just to keep brown people out of our country," she adds to Newsweek.
Her criticism of the wall itself is spot-on. Click on this this link for a rundown of why it's such a bad idea.
This isn't the first time the wall has inspired some trollish citizen resistance. Last year, the company behind Cards Against Humanity announced that it had bought a plot of land on the U.S.–Mexico border with the goal of making it "as time-consuming and expensive as possible" for Trump to build his wall. As Reason's Christian Britschgi wrote at the time, their efforts were likely for naught, considering that Trump doesn't seem to care all that much for private property rights.
It was still an entertaining way to make a point. But I'm not sure it reaches the trolling heights of a ladders-to-get-over-the-wall fundraiser.
