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We crashed Ron DeSantis's fundraiser tonight with a humiliating billboard and got on the local news [1]

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Date: 2022-09-20

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s first dalliance with human trafficking was shocking, but not surprising. In fact, in hindsight it feels like it was inevitable, the culmination of four years spent aggressively pushing the bounds of his legal authority and amping up the cruelty of fascistic gambits.

It’s become abundantly clear that the 47 desperate, asylum-seeking migrants from Venezuela that DeSantis had shipped to Massachusetts were kidnapped at the governor’s behest. It was done without hesitation, because the prospect of public accountability has long since disappeared.

The national political media cannot help but see DeSantis’s stunts through the prism of partisan politics, leading to irresponsible and nauseatingly cynical stories like the one published in the New York Times tonight. The story declared DeSantis a political winner for the cruel stunt, normalizing mass kidnapping as a PR strategy in a shadow presidential primary.

Meanwhile, few people are listening to the heartbreaking testimony of the actual victims, because human interest doesn’t drive conversation in DC. Anticipating that pivot to horse race coverage, a few collaborators and I have been working overtime to keep focus on DeSantis’s crime. We’ve been going since last week, and I want to highlight some of our antics. They’ve earned plenty of media attention down in Florida, but for everyone else, hopefully this is both cathartic and instructive about how we should treat these scumbag fascist wannabes.

Let’s work backwards, starting with the two stunts we pulled today. First, we flew a plane banner across Orlando, calling DeSantis a human trafficker. It was seen in Disney World and got some attention on Reddit, while local Fox 35 reached out to ask us whether they could use the footage (we obviously authorized them to blast it far and wide). Orlando Weekly also covered the stunt.

Tonight, we crashed Ron DeSantis’s fundraiser in Boca with a mobile billboard that played the press conference that took place last week in Martha’s Vineyard and first outlined the horrible details of the kidnapping plot. There was another message on the side of the billboard, too:

x Ron DeSantis is hobnobbing with rich donors in Boca Raton, basking in kudos for making them richer.



But Ron DeSantis does not deserve a single moment of peace, so we sent this mobile billboard with video from Martha’s Vineyard, detailing his cruelty. pic.twitter.com/5tLq9qUNjT — Jordan Zakarin (@jordanzakarin) September 21, 2022

We’ve actually made a habit of posting up outside of Republican mega-donor fundraisers with mobile billboards that draw attention to the participants and their heinous crimes. Last week, we sent one to the mansion of tech zillionaire Keith Rabois, who was hosting a massive fundraiser for Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, Charles Grassley, and just about every major Republican Senate candidate, including JD Vance, Blake Masters, and Dr. Oz.

Rabois, part of the so-called PayPal mafia with Peter thief and Elon Musk, was booted out from his job as COO at the tech company Square for sexual harassment back in 2009. That scandal was predated by years of horrible activity and outbursts that got him essentially kicked out of Stanford Law School. A few years ago, he scampered back to again work under Thiel at the Founders Fund. Must be nice to have rich friends.

So, with that context in mind, check out the billboard we sent to greet Rabois and his crowd of thirsty Republican sociopaths:

This drove up and down the neighborhood for hours the night of the fundraiser

Last Thursday was a busy day for us, as it kicked off our ongoing DeSantis trolling. We had no real choice, as news outlets were already falling prey to the allure of horse race analysis and failing to do justice to the sheer monstrousness of it all.

Please donate to help us take down Ron DeSantis!

We were ready for the this to happen, and within a few hours, we began flying a banner that said “RON DESANTIS HURTS CHILDREN” over Central Florida. The message conveniently referred both to DeSantis’s migrant kidnapping and his other anti-child policies, including the “Don’t Say Gay” law, the destruction of public education, outing trans kids, denying parents unemployment, etc, and many more. Here’s that banner:

x We just flew this plane banner saying DESANTIS HURTS CHILDREN over central Florida to let folks know DeSantis is a monstrous individual who uses migrant kids as political props. Vote this reprehensible individual out of office and lets make sure he never holds power again. pic.twitter.com/xJxqJxhTLE — Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) September 15, 2022

This is just the start for us. It took a few weeks of haggling with a billboard company in Tallahassee, but we just got the green light to put up a giant poster across the street from the Governor’s Mansion that should absolutely humiliate and infuriate DeSantis. It’s more mocking than policy-based, but that’s just as important when you’re dealing with a fascist bully whose only real credentials are his soullessness and cruelty.

We’re also in the finishing stages of putting together a website that highlights his deep ties to white nationalists and ongoing refusals to condemn Nazis that march with his campaign signs. As outrages pile up, it’s easy to forget things like that, but I’ve never seen a politician not named Steve King be so unwilling to do even pretend that they oppose neo-Nazis.

Now, here’s where I get to the ask. All of this costs money, and we don’t have any big donors or nonprofits helping us out. We’ve all put our own cash into the pot, and now we need a few thousand dollars more to put up our billboard across from the governor’s mansion and get the website up.

As the national media continues to fall into the trap of normalizing DeSantis and his fascist tendencies, it’s up to us to keep his crimes and inhumanity front and center. To do that, we need to wrest control of people’s eyeballs and the internet’s attention. Big stunts and gestures work, and it’s time to fight fire with fire.

Every cent donated to our fund goes right to our campaigns. We don’t take a dime. We aren’t consultants pocketing a big chunk of money or a PAC spending all of it on paying ourselves. This is all going toward taking down Ron DeSantis’s impervious image.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/20/2124210/-We-went-to-Ron-DeSantis-s-fundraiser-and-blasted-videos-detailing-his-cruelty-and-crimes-tonight

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