An American man known as Todd Siegel has gone viral after a hefty $13000 donation towards a GoFundMe fundraiser to disrupt the ongoing campus protests at the University of Pennsylvania.
Siegel donated $13,000 to a unique fundraiser which was aimed at hiring a Mariachi band to play nonstop and disturb the peace of student protesters at UPenn.
GoFundMe fundraisers are usually for a more worthy cause – paying medical bills, funeral costs, or even flying a trapped family out of Gaza – but one Rob Martinez decided to take things in a completely different direction with his fundraiser.
According to Martinez, student protesters at his University have been making life miserable for all the other students and now it’s their turn to pay them back in their own coin.
His plan therefore is to raise a crazy amount of money to hire a Mariachi band who will be placed right next to the protesters and play music into their ears until they drive them nuts!
Narrating the situation, Martinez said the protests have disrupted campus life long enough.
He said the only way he sees to stop them is to ‘serenade‘ them for their efforts, just as they have constantly ‘serenaded his efforts‘ to study for his finals with a megaphone.
“Donate to have a mariachi band play next to the encampment continuously until we run out of money to pay them for their efforts,” Martinez wrote on GoFundMe.
“Also consider chipping in a few dollars to pay for nose plugs for the band members because the campers are not the biggest fans of bathing,” he added.
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The unlikely fundraiser raised a staggering $40,000, exceeding its planned target of $36,000.
This was helped immensely by Todd Siegel’s donation, hence his rise to infamy.
Siegel for whatever reason found the fundraiser resonating with him and made the massive donation.
With the unexpected response to his fundraiser, Martinez shared an update, writing: “I am shocked at the response, I had no idea that people would be so passionate about mariachi but I think this will be a really great thing.
“We are currently in the process of contacting and booking bands, as well as ironing out the details we need in terms of logistics for booking the band so we can get them on campus as soon as possible. Once again, thank you so much for your support and I hope you are excited for some mariachi!”
The Mariachi fundraiser is simply one manifestation of massive protests that have taken over Universities in the United States of America, mainly in reaction to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
According to the protestors at the University of Pennsylvania, whose efforts irritated Martinez so much, they are demanding that the school divest from companies with financial ties to Israel due to the country’s ongoing war in Gaza.
“Our core message is that the Israeli apartheid state is committing genocide in Gaza and we would consider that morally reprehensible,” said one protester on Friday, according to 6abc
Other Universities such as Columbia, the University of California, Los Angeles, and many others, have also seen similar protests.
Like the UPenn protests, the students are demanding their Universities end all financial ties to what they call the ‘apartheid‘ regime of Israel over its ongoing ‘genocide‘ in Gaza.
They are also demanding that the U.S. government end its unconditional support for the Israeli government and enforce a ceasefire to bring an end to the violence.
The largely peaceful protests have also had pockets of violence and have sometimes been forcibly dispersed by law enforcement.
They have sparked a massive conversation all across the United States over the role of Universities in breeding antisemitism and radicalization of youth, but also over the media’s over-the-top reportage of the protests at the expense of other world events such as the ongoing war in Gaza.
The Israel-Hamas war was sparked by the brutal attacks of October 7th, 2023 when Hamas militants and other Palestinian terror groups crossed the border into Israel and attacked a music festival, killing over 1,000 people and taking hundreds of hostages.
The Israeli response has since also led to the deaths of roughly 34,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and the wounding and maiming of thousands more while leading to the destruction of most of the housing and public infrastructure in Gaza including hospitals, universities, etc.
