Most of us have been moved by the plight of a victim, who often have GoFundMe campaigns set up to help them. The causes of these plights, of course, vary enormously, from cancer patients to car accident survivors, but one recent trending GFM campaign that’s raised a shocking amount of money isn’t for someone who’s had to deal with any of those life-changing issues.
Nope, 50-year-old Juli Briskman’s $96,000 GoFundMe campaign is all for having flipped the bird at President Trump when his motorcade drove by her riding a bike a few weekends back. A press corps photographer caught the moment from behind, and Juli was so proud of it, she posted the image on her own Facebook page.
To her credit, she owned up to her employers right away that it was her in the picture, which shows no identifying face, having been taken from behind. Perhaps more surprising is that she worked for a marketing firm that does lots of government contract work in the Washington, DC area, where showing a clear political agenda on one’s social media page might be somewhat ill-advised.
And that it was because it didn’t take long for Briskman to get called in by the brass at Akima, the firm in question, in whose employ she had been for just eight months. Ironically, part of her job was monitoring other employees’ social media postings.
Her bosses were none too pleased with her Trump-birding picture, and immediately let her go, saying she had violated company policies about sharing inappropriate language on Facebook. But Briskman had seen a senior director share a verbally direct insult on his own page, and he wasn’t fired.
So Briskman did what everyone does these days: she brought in the ACLU and went on a talk show to plead her case, in this instance, the Megyn Kelly show.
Meanwhile, a friend set up that GoFundMe campaign and the contributions have been pouring in. As of Tuesday night, the viral campaign had hit an astounding $95,533, donated by 4,152 supporters in just eight days. While we have no idea what Ms. Briskman made in a year at Akima, we’re pretty sure it wasn’t that much, so she got the last laugh all around here.
Ironically, Briskman, a single mother of two teens, has never even been particularly political and says she just felt annoyed that Trump was playing golf while, in her mind, the world was burning.
Not only has the GFM campaign now given her a good year to relax, she has a whole new raison d’etre: a reason for living.
“Juli Briskman is an inspiration to us all,” wrote GFM campaign organizer Rob Mello, whose relationship to Briskman, if any, is unclear. “This week we learned that she was fired from her employer for exercising her first amendment rights. You can show your support by donating here,” Mello wrote in the campaign description.
So you go, you finger-flipping good woman, you go! Light up the world with your middle finger, spreading light where there is despair and making money for nothing. We salute you.
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