By Lukas Mikealionis, Fox News
A Berkeley, Calif., activist who expressed support for Antifa and was charged last summer with vandalizing people’s property with hateful graffiti has raised more than $85,000 after media reports about his tough living conditions.
Ismael Chamu, 21, a fourth-year student at the University of Callifornia at Berkeley, started a crowdfunding campaign to help him pay for housing, food and school supplies.
“His family has struggled in recent months to make ends meet. He currently helps support his two sisters, younger brother, mom and dad. He has to leave his current housing on the 13th. Money will be used to buy food, secure housing, and school supplies,” the campaign’s page states.
Chamu has raised the money since Monday, thanks to a puffy article in the Los Angeles Times, describing his grand aspirations and problems of barely making ends meet.
“Ismael constantly scrambles to find shelter and enough food for himself and his siblings while working a campus job, leading a student club and trying to earn a bachelor’s degree in sociology,” the article read.
But Chamu is a well-known progressive activist in the Berkeley area who does not shy away from violent rhetoric and actions – a fact the Times article initially omitted.
On June 27, 2017, he was arrested and later charged with felony vandalism and possession of tools to commit vandalism or graffiti in an incident involving painting private property with hateful and racist graffiti.
Some of the messages included “F— White People,” “F— the police,” “F— Frat Boys,” “Kill Cops” and “Kill Yuppies,” “Eat the Rich,” “Class War” and “Black Lives Matter.”
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