As the outrage surrounding President Donald Trump’s Executive Orders over immigration continues to swell, actor Kal Penn decided to transform a hateful Instagram comment into fuel for a fundraising campaign for Syrian refugees.
Over the weekend, a bigoted Instagrammer left Penn a scathing comment that read: “…Because you don’t belong in this country you fucking joke.”
Penn, who was actually born in New Jersey no less, had the brilliant idea to use the comment as a jumping off point to create a fundraising campaign for Syrian refugees “in the name of the dude who said I don’t belong in America.”
“We are better than the hateful people,” Penn said, “who tell us we don’t belong in our own country, that America can’t be a beacon of freedom and hope for refugees from around the world. We will turn their bigotry, along with the President’s, into love.”
Since going live over the weekend, Penn’s campaign has already generated more than half a million dollars. At the time of this posting, Penn’s campaign donations were about to break the $558 thousand threshold. Impressively, the campaign managed to surpass a quarter million dollars in donations less than 24 hours after going live.
To the dude who said I don't belong in America, I started a fundraising page for Syrian Refugees in your name. https://t.co/NOR5P48fBi pic.twitter.com/jtJOsK9GrU
— Kal Penn (@kalpenn) January 28, 2017
Aside from Penn, it’s no secret that a growing number of Silicon Valley tech CEOs have expressed their opposition to Trump’s new immigration rules, including Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was particularly outspoken on the matter, stating the following in a Facebook post over the weekend
Trump’s actions are hurting Netflix employees around the world, and are so un-American it pains us all. Worse, these actions will make America less safe (through hatred and loss of allies) rather than more safe. A very sad week, and more to come with the lives of over 600,000 Dreamers here in a America under imminent threat. It is time to link arms together to protect American values of freedom and opportunity.
