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The fundraising platform GivingFuel has again deleted a fundraising effort started by Portland-area far-right activists who have provoked violent confrontations in the city.
A far-right group called Portland's Liberation, a recently-formed offshoot of Patriot Prayer, had its fundraising page deleted after receiving a report that the group had recently been engaged in violence.
That violence—a street clash between right-wing agitators and antifascist customers eating dinner at a local cider pub—is the subject of a recent lawsuit filed against Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson and other people who engaged in violence.
Although Portland's Liberation leader Haley Adams is not named in the suit, she filmed the May Day fights at the bar Cider Riot, which ended with one woman being hit in the head with a baton and knocked unconscious.
The fundraising page asked for donations so that Adams and her supporters could travel to New York to protest "late term abortion." Lawmakers in New York passed a law to roll back restrictions on abortions after 24 weeks (the time when many fetuses can viably survive outside the womb) for women with serious medical complications or fetuses that will not survive after delivery.
An employee at the Oregon chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported the fundraising page to GivingFuel in late April. The page was deleted on May 8. GivingFuel also deleted a fundraising effort posted by closely-linked Patriot Prayer last year, after finding the group had violated the website's terms of service by allegedly "advocating and celebrating violence."
"We are grateful that GivingFuel made this stand for the Portland community. GivingFuel expressed concern immediately upon being informed that their platform was being used to facilitate violence," CAIR Oregon said in a statement sent to WW. "Both Patriot Prayer and Portland's Liberation are far-right groups that are driven by hate who seek to terrorize the people of Portland. Enough is enough. We stand with the bravery of Cider Riot, in standing against these hate groups. We all must do our part to counteract hate."
GivingFuel did not immediately return a request for comment. Adams and Gibson did not immediately respond to emails and texts.
UPDATE (7:35 p.m. May 9, 2019): In two emails, Adams criticized CAIR Oregon for challenging her group's fundraising efforts.
"Why would you anyone take the funding page down when it's for an event I'm speaking at?" she wrote. "Isn't this against my free speech. Lol."
In a second email, she called the civil rights organization a "terrorist group."
"Why is there a Terrorist Group ( CAIR ) trying to silence me?" she wrote. "Maybe because they want to enslave Christians and JEWS? Why are they racist towards me? Is it because I'm a Jew???"