Even though he no longer works for the White House (R.I.P. the Obama administration), Kal Penn is still a pretty political guy. And this weekend, he combined his deeply held beliefs with telling a racist troll to go fuck themselves by starting a crowdfunding campaign to benefit Syrian refugees in honor of a guy who said he “doesn’t belong in this country.” (Penn was born in New Jersey, by the way.)
As Penn told MSNBC in an interview earlier today, “We’ve seen an uptick in this kind of anti-American rhetoric of ‘you don’t belong here’ and ‘you’re not American’ and all that nonsense. I kind of thought, well, I’m a relatively privileged guy, this can roll off my back. But what about the 14-year-old me? Or the American kids out there who see these kinds of comments?” The campaign’s initial goal of $2,500 was raised within minutes on Saturday afternoon, and as of this writing is at $578,292. The campaign is still active, and you can donate to it here.