Kiandria Demone, an entrepreneur and activist based in Atlanta, Georgia, with a growing online platform, has become known to, in her own words, “bully racists” off the internet or to stop doing whatever it is they’ve done.
So when followers across her platform began to share the story of Shiloh Hendrix—a white woman from Rochester, Minnesota, who has gone viral for launching a GiveSendGo campaign after footage of her targeting a young Black child with racial slurs on the playground surfaced—Demone looked into the matter. As she scrolled late into the wee hours, instead of seeing another potential opportunity to call someone out, she saw something much more sinister: a company profiting from hate speech.
“I was initially looking for things that were red flags as far as their compliance as a company,” she told theGrio during a recent phone interview. “I started thinking like, this isn’t going to be enough, because they’re just going to fix it and they’re going to keep operating.”
That’s when she remembered the fact that, “there’s a bank somewhere.”
“That’s who has some accountability,” she continued. “The bank can’t just do whatever they want to do. A payment processor they cannot just do whatever they want to do. They have a policy and they have regulations, there are laws, there are people who monitor that, there are people that the payment processor has to answer to.”
The 33-year-old social media disrupter has launched an effort to prevent Hendrix from receiving any money from her campaign on GiveSendGo, which has netted over $600,000. (The ask has since been increased to $1 million.) By directing her nearly 50k followers and all who want to help to put pressure on the fundraising platform and payment processor by making complaints, she hopes to hold them accountable for profiting off of hate.
To determine who the payment processor was, Demone used her tech savvy to break down GiveSendGo’s HTML code and found where the payment processor was listed, which she alleged was Square, though the company has denied being the payment processor. After she and many others began to reach out en masse to inquire, the company responded on their social media channels.
“This weekend, we received a significant number of inquiries across a variety of channels related to the fundraising platform GiveSendGo,” a post on Threads began. “GiveSendGo is not a Square customer. We do not and have not processed payments for them.”
In an email to theGrio the company reiterated their message from social media, writing: “We do not and have not processed payments for them.”
On April 30, the footage of Hendrix was leaked, and in the days since, she has alleged she’s facing an onslaught of hate and widespread backlash. She launched the online fundraiser with GiveSendGo, who also hosted fundraisers for Kyle Rittenhouse and January 6 rioters, to raise enough funds to protect herself and potentially move.
Demone noted that when people launch campaigns on GiveSendGo it’s often because their campaign doesn’t fit within the terms of other popular online fundraising platforms like GoFundMe.
“I believe that they know what they’re doing in supporting certain causes, and a lot of those certain causes uphold white supremacy,” she said.
For anyone who is curious about her thoughts on how Hendrix compares to situations like Karmelo Anthony, a 17-year-old Black boy in Texas, accused of murdering a white 17-year-old during a track meet, she doesn’t see them as the same.
Demone, who has a background in web development, said the idea to look into who the payment processor is came from her own personal experience. The activist also runs an online apparel shop selling t-shirts with quippy slogans on them, like “F—the patriarchy,” which she said draws a certain kind of attention from trolls. These trolls have, at times, held up her orders by making complaints against her store to the point where payments are frozen from the online payment processor.
“Y’all don’t tolerate [Demone’s products]. That’s suspicious, but this woman can profit off of calling a child the N word,” she said.
Joining the discourse around Hendrix has also brought its share of hate the activist’s way. She said since she began to post online about her initiative, she’s received death threats, hateful comments, and emails demanding her to stop what she’s doing. In a screencap of an email she shared online, someone told her she couldn’t stop what was already in motion and warned her to “stay safe.” None of it fazes her, however.
“I really don’t give a damn about a troll harassing me on the internet. I just don’t internalize that because I’ve already built, I guess, the stamina and the thick skin,” Demone explained, adding that she’s developed that thick skin through a life marked by trauma.
She realizes she could have just done what had been her usual approach and clowned Hendrix, but she said this situation was much more serious than that.
“This woman attacking a black child with a verbal assault for one, but bold enough to profit off of it, is crazy, so I didn’t want to do that, you know? I didn’t want it to turn this into a ‘he, he, ha, ha’ viral, social media moment. I wanted to actually figure out … a resolution.”
While Square has denied being the payment processor for GiveSendGo, an update to the documentation Demone is using to provide guidance alleges that Stripe has taken over as the payment processor for the donation platform. Stripe has neither confirmed nor denied being the payment processor and for now, she has not heard back directly from GiveSendGo or Square. She’s not deterred as she sees real momentum around this forming into movement to inspire change across the board with these online platforms by actively holding the platforms accountable through mass email and complaint campaigns. Momentum she said that has shocked her.
“This is not about me, this is not about any clout, and it’s not about a viral moment,” Demone explained. “I’m not even just focused on Shiloh Hendrix. I want these payment processors to know that we will hold them accountable.”
