What Happened to Black Lives Matter?

Investigative reporter Andrew Kerr’s piece in yesterday’s Washington Examiner exposes the corruption behind the curtain of Black Lives Matter (BLM), the nation’s most influential social justice organization.  BLM was founded in 2013 by black activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, in response to the acquittal of Hispanic neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman after the fatal shooting of black teenager Trayvon Martin in self defense.  The movement gained national exposure after the August 9, 2014 shooting death of black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.   BLM immediately launched protests which turned into several weeks of riots, with businesses looted and set on fire. The St. Louis Chief Financial Officer estimated a total cost at $20 million.  Months later a grand jury and the Obama Justice Department concluded that the shooting was in self defense.  By the May 25, 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the group had amassed several million in contributions and had a worldwide network of chapters and affiliates.  Within five days of Floyd’s death BLM coordinated protests occurred, almost simultaneously, in 2,000 cities in 60 countries.  Many of the protests, especially in over 200 U.S. cities, devolved into riots with government buildings and businesses burned, police officers, bystanders and reporters attacked, and widespread looting and violence.  In the end the “mostly peaceful” protests took 25 lives and cost at least $1 billion in damage.   So how did BLM get the money to finance these protests and where did it go?

According to the Examiner story, BLM did not become a legitimate charitable organization until December of 2020, when it received tax-exempt status.  Prior that that, its funding was funneled through two ultra liberal California charities, the Thousand Currents Foundation and the Tides Foundation.  The Thousand Currents Foundation is funded by the MacCarther, Packard  and Kellogg Foundations, and Nicholas Pritzker’s Libra Foundation among others.  The Tides Foundation receives its funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Atlantic Advocacy Fund, The Ford Foundation and the California Endowment, all large scale donors to progressive causes.  In 2020 alone, BLM received transfers totaling $66.5 million from the Thousand Currents Foundation.  Last May BLM co-founder Patrice Cullors announced that she was leaving the group to pursue other interests.  Cullors had been had been receiving a salary of $20,000 a month since 2019 and had expensed some $26,000 for meetings at a luxury Malibu resort that year.  She was also being investigated for $3.2 million in personal real estate purchases allegedly made with BLM funds.  At the time of her departure Cullors appointed two activists, Monica Themba and Monifa Bandele to lead BLM, but four months later both revealed that they had never accepted the job.

The investigator reported that BLM claimed closing out 2020 with $60 million in its bank account.  The only remaining leadership of the group are board members Shalomyah Bowers and Raymond Howard, neither of whom would return telephone calls.  The investigator actually went to the Los Angeles office identified in BLM tax filings as the place where its financial records are held, and learned from a security guard that there was never a BLM office at that location.  The organization has yet to file a tax return for 2020 and nobody can say where the $60 million BLM said it had in January 2020 actually is.

To sum up;  Black Lives Matter received  contributions of some amount beyond $70 million from corporations including Target, Facebook, Walmart, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Square, Etsy, Levis, Gap, Nike, MacDonalds, Wendys, Coca-Cola, Peloton and liberal billionaires, laundered through two California Foundations.  The return on this investment was a year of riots, at least $1 billion in property damage, 25 deaths, a historic increase in crime and violence nationally, the partial destruction of dozens of cities, all of which had a significant and disproportionate negative impact on the lives African Americans.   Outside of the small group of activists and consultants who lined their pockets with the largesse of stupid corporate leaders attempting to validate their racial virtue, exactly who has benefited from Black Lives Matter?