New progressive crowdfunding platform is here and is already funding civil disobedience
This is our original press release. Free to further distribute to any kind of media outlet who wish to publish, edit-and-publish or simply use as source for quotations. All readers are encouraged to distribute this further either directly or via. media outlets to reach the target group: Activists around the world.
FIREFUND.net claims to be a platform ‘for the movements, by the movements’ and aims to organise international solidarity — and since last week, they are now LIVE and open for ‘business’.
FIREFUND is a newly launched platform for ‘organised solidarity’ between social movements and their supporters. Basically, it is a crowdfunding platform, that allows activists to receive micro-donations from everyone with bitcoins or credit cards.
Based on crowdfunding principles, FIREFUND provides a platform for activists around the world to reach out to an international community with the purpose of financing their struggle and in general campaigning for their cause at the same time.
The idea behind is to transform acts of solidarity such as “likes” or “retweets” into direct support of a certain struggle, carried out by the activists hosting the crowdfunding campaign. It is actually one of their three rules of FIREFUND that it is not allowed to crowdfund on behalf of others, because “… the ones with their feet on the ground, are the ones we need to support”, says Mikkel Thydal, co-founder.
“I think many of us feel hopeless when facing problems of global warming, inequality, capitalism and so on. So who do we support if we want to change? Personally, this has been one of the big questions. Until I realised how many battles are being fought right now, that we all should simply get behind, especially now that we have the technology to do it.”
Karl Kristiansen, founder
HOW TO USE FIREFUND
Activists creates the campaign by working together with the platform activists, editing the text, creating the content, deciding on the amounts and dates, etc.
When launching the campaign, the campaign will be reachable for anyone with a internet-connection — which could engage the wider communities of solidarity with our contemporary movements.
FIREFUND is one new initiative in the wave of progressive web applications in the so-called ‘post-snowden’ era, that is build on the belief that it is time to utilise the internet more efficiently in the struggle for social change. The idea is to create a direct link between the people pushing for change and the ones who want to see them succeed.
The platform is currently administrated by a collective of 15 activists based in Denmark, Sweden, Italy, Catalonia, Greece, Canada and USA working together in a decentralised online network. It is non-profit and everyone works as volunteers.
The first official campaign is now live on the webplatform. The London ‘rent strikers’ who threw the biggest rent strike in London history and are now preparing round two. In the first days, they collected almost 10 % of their
€6.000 goal, now with 22 days left of the campaign. The strikers will only receive the donations, if the goal is reached within the time-limit.
Pledge solidarity with the rent strikers here.
CONTACT & FURTHER INFOMATION:
MAIL: firefund@riseup.net
Public Key ID (for PGP encryption): 60E250D7
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/firefund.net
TWITTER: https://www.twitter.com/firefundnet
REDDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefund
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpg_6P88q1uAub7aPHyd9Xg
MANIFESTO: https://www.firefund.net/about-manifesto
TERMS: https://www.firefund.net/about-terms
PRESS CONTACT:
Name: Karl Kristiansen
Title: Founder / activist
Mail: karlkristians@gmail.com
PGP Key ID: 7CF63C19
Skype: karljonkrist
For telephone communication and interviews, please write an email with a phone number we can reach you on.
