There are, broadly speaking, two branches of activism. There are on-the-ground, grassroots organizers like Johnson, who work locally, passionately, with little money, often risking their lives and livelihood through their protests. And then there are the larger, more professionalized national groups with corporate donations and fund-raising power, whose high-profile leaders can garner lucrative speaking gigs and book deals. Tensions between the two paths have existed at least since the American civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. But social justice and modern civil rights have become increasingly fashionable in the
ten years since Trayvon Martin’s death, and more money than ever has flowed to the most visible groups. They have reaped tens of millions of dollars, while some local organizers stretched themselves to the brink of homelessness. Even as national groups have made overtures to work more closely with community organizers, activists in the latter camp have become concerned that their work is being co-opted by profiteers. This decades-old divide now exists in extreme form within Black Lives Matter. It is simultaneously a decentralized coalition of local organizers who eke out progress city by city, dollar by dollar, and an opaque nonprofit entity, well capitalized and friendly with corporations, founded by three mediagenic figures — Cullors and her co-founders Alicia Garza and Opal (now Ayo) Tometi.
The organization responded to the criticism three months later by releasing, for the first time, some detailed information about its finances. BLMGNF said it had raised more than $90 million in 2020. It incurred $8.4 million in operating expenses, distributed $21.7 million in grants to more than 30 organizations, and retained some $60 million in its coffers. But if the disclosures were intended to quiet dissent, they didn’t succeed. After the report was published, two activists in Ferguson, Missouri — Tory Russell and Michael Brown Sr., whose son was killed by a police officer there in 2014 — posted a video demanding $20 million for local programs and organizers. “The movement that has been catapulted into the limelight has forgotten about Ferguson and the freedom fighters [who] have literally given their lives to the struggle,” Russell said. A few weeks later, in March 2021, two mothers of victims of police violence, Lisa Simpson and Samaria Rice, released a statement calling for BLMGNF and others to stop capitalizing on their suffering. “We don’t want or need y’all parading in the streets accumulating donations, platforms, movie deals, etc. off the death of our loved ones, while the families and communities are left clueless and broken,” they wrote. “Don’t say our loved ones’ names period! That’s our truth!”
I described the activity to Jeffrey Tenenbaum, a nonprofit lawyer in Washington, D.C., with nearly three decades of experience. “The transactions at issue certainly raise eyebrows and potential red flags,” he said, cautioning that he was offering a general assessment of the law in this area and hadn’t reviewed the details of the transactions. He said they could run afoul of state and federal prohibitions on self-dealing and transactions among related parties.
The deals could have reasonable explanations. Close interactions among people in the nonprofit world are inevitable, especially in a niche like racial justice, compliance experts say. Kevin Scally, an executive at Charity Navigator, an organization that assesses thousands of nonprofits, says that groups are best off practicing “radical transparency” when they are under intense scrutiny and have experienced public conflict. Cullors and her network of contacts have a paltry record of disclosure, and they often attack the motives of those who criticize — or even question — them on financial matters. Bandele, for example, said it was “sexist” and “racist” for me to ask about the spending of Reform LA Jails in 2019. (For the record, I am a Black man, raised by a single Black woman, and police have pointed guns at me.)
The lack of transparency creates an opening for political opponents. In April, the New York
Post reported that between 2016 and 2021, Cullors purchased four homes worth nearly $3 million, fueling speculation that she was using the Black Lives Matter movement to enrich herself. There is no evidence that Cullors used money sent to BLMGNF to purchase personal property, and a spokesperson told the paper that she had received only $120,000 in compensation between 2013 and 2018 and was not paid a salary from 2019 on. In a recent interview with the Los Angeles
Times, Cullors noted that she has multiple outside sources of income, including two book contracts, a media-production deal, and paid speaking arrangements. (She also described media coverage of her purchases as not just “a character assassination campaign but a campaign to actually get me assassinated.”) As a rebuttal of the
Poststory’s more sinister implications, it’s persuasive. But touting her many avenues for earning money sits poorly with some in the movement who have lost the most.
One of the costliest consequences of poor transparency is that relatively small disputes can explode into public dramas that threaten to undermine the greater cause. On July 25, 2016, police officers in Watts shot and killed 18-year-old Richard Risher, and afterward, Risher’s mother, Lisa Simpson, got involved with the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter. At one protest, Simpson and other activists camped out in front of Los Angeles City Hall to call for the resignation of the police chief. Melina Abdullah — a co-founder of Black Lives Matter L.A. and a co-director of BLM Grassroots, a tier of officially recognized chapters — stood next to Simpson and gave a passionate speech calling on people to donate $5,000 to help pay for Risher’s funeral. “The last thing a grieving mother needs to be thinking about is how she is going to pay for her son’s funeral,” Abdullah said. “To even speak those words is a trauma every single time.”
Simpson says she never received any funeral money from the organization. She’s currently paying week-to-week to rent a room in a motel for herself and her 13-year-old child. Although her dispute involved the Los Angeles branch of Black Lives Matter, she named Patrisse Cullors and other activists at the national tier in the public letter that she wrote with Samaria Rice in March 2021. “We never hired them to be the representatives in the fight for justice for our dead loved ones murdered by the police,” the
mothers wrote. “The ‘activists’ have events in our cities and have not given us anything substantial for using our loved ones’ images and names on their flyers.”
the entire shyt was fugazi the minute that bytch started buying houses out of nowhere, and money went to gay organizations instead of the families they built their names off of. entire shyt from jump was fugazi, follow the money and you can see shyt was a trick bag...
