New reporting in New York magazine Intelligence or
to be specific indicates that, there are more issues brewing
in regard to the BLM funding and where it's being spent.
Now, I wanna make a quick distinction, because I think a lot of people like
to just conflate the national chapter of Black Lives Matter,
with some of the local chapters.
And what we're having a conversation about right now, is specifically about
the national chapter, which of course is led by people like Patrice Cullors.
Who has been essentially called out by some of the local activists and
has been written about in this New York magazine piece.
And again, it has to do with the funding that the national chapter was able to
secure through donations.
And the lack of transparency associated with where that money goes and
more importantly, where some of that money has been spent.
So, one of the things that's come up is the fact that
Patrice Cullors has purchased homes, okay.
I'm not really in the camp of let's go after people because they bought a home.
But in this case, there are some issues,
because the money appears to have come from the BLM donations and
the whole purpose of the home seems pretty unclear.
Now, in a video that's been taken down on YouTube since,
you have Alicia Garza who's one of the leaders of Black Lives matter.
Chiming in, like they're all sitting around,
they're talking about the controversy that's been brewing about this home.
And she says, y'all don't know anything about what it takes to live in a box here.
But let's talk about the house that's being referred to as a box.
None of the women acknowledged that the house was far from a box,
with more than 6500 square feet.
More than half a dozen bedrooms and bathrooms, several fireplaces,
a soundstage, a pool and bungalow and parking for
more than 20 cars according to real estate listings.
The California property was purchased for
nearly $6 million dollars in cash, in October of 2020,
with money that had been donated to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Fund.
So I keep referring to it as the national chapter, but
this is really like the international chapter of Black Lives Matter.
This is the organization that received all this money in the form of donations and
it was a lot of money.
So, let's get into those details.
In October of 2020, the organization received an infusion of
$66.5 million dollars from its fiscal sponsor.
An intermediary commonly used by fledgling nonprofits to process donations.
Now, let's pause for a second.
That money flowed in because of the George Floyd story,
because of the fact that George Floyd was murdered, people were furious about
it as they should have been and they wanted to take action.
And one of the ways people felt they were taking action was by donating
money to the Black Lives Matter fund.
And so they get this infusion of money more than $66 million.
And then some of this timing when it comes to the home purchase is concerning, right.
Because two weeks later, a man named Diane Pascal purchased
the seven bedroom house that would become known as campus.
According to California business registration documents Pascall is
the financial manager for Janaya and Patrisse consulting,
an LLC run by Cullors and her spouse.
Janaya Khan by the way, has since said that she has separated from Cullors.
I just wanna note that just to, I guess give you all the details, but
local activists of course are not happy about this.
Because, if you look at what's happening on a local level,
a lot of these activists are dealing with the aftermath of the arrests,
that they've received for being part of the BLM protests.
They might need help with some of the legal funds and all of that.
And they feel like they've been completely abandoned
by the Black Lives Matter Global Network of group.
Now, the group formally released a batch of financial information in
February of 2021.
We talked about this when we initially covered the story, when it said it had
taken in more than $90 million in 2020 and still had $60 million on hand.
The house was not mentioned though.
Soon after the report, local activists went public with complaints,
that they felt unsupported by the Black Lives Matter Global Network Fund,
despite their pleas for help and one of those activists.
And I think it's important to hear the actual activists out the people who
are doing the work.
Tory Russell happens to be one of them.
And in March of last year, he actually put out a video, demanding, I'm sorry.
Yeah, March 2nd of last year, he put out a video along with, Michael Brown,
Sr. and he basically was calling out what's been going on with
the lack of transparency, with the way this money has been spent.
And he also had a demand.
So, I don't want to put words in his mouth why don't we watch the video and
then I'll fill in some blanks.
>> The movement that is catapulted into the limelight,
has forgotten about Ferguson and the freedom fighters.
Freedom fighters like King the Seals, Edward Crawford and Daniel Jones,
have literally given their lives to the struggle.
But have rarely spoken about and families are not taken care of.
Brother Ali, Joshua Williams and
many other political prisoners from the Ferguson movement, are incarcerated or
have been and still has received no assistance from Black Lives Matter.
What kind of movement are we building, where we're saying Black Lives Matter, but
the freedom fighters and the families are being left behind.
Where's our restitution, where's our organizing,
where is our building of a movement.
We have groups like the lost voices and the Freedom fighters here.
And thousands of other youth activists in their twenties and thirties have been out
in the streets protesting for months and months and years for years.
Still forgot.
We're asking that Black Lives Matter Leadership, funds $20 million for
Ferguson organizers, organizations and community foundations to do the work.
We're not begging for a handout, we're coming for what we deserve.
>> Now, I want to give you the statement in response to the reporting that we're
talking about here.
Okay, New York magazine did this report and
Patrisse Cullors has responded to it by saying this.
Yesterday's article in New York magazine is a despicable abuse of a platform that
is intended to provide truthful information to the public,
journalism is supposed to mitigate harm and inform our communities.
The fact that a reputable publication would allow a reporter,
with a proven and very public bias against me and other black leaders.
She hasn't provided any evidence of that, I don't know what the bias is.
To write a piece filled with misinformation, innuendo and
incendiary opinions is disheartening and unacceptable.
But, we just heard from an activist in Minnesota, and
that is the person is not a reporter does not seem to have
like some terrible bias against Patrisse Cullors,
someone who wants accountability.
Someone who wants to know why there's this disconnect between the overarching
Black Lives Matter foundation and what the local activists are are experiencing.
And Tory Russell has since been struggling to raise $1.2 million dollars for
a community center, it's one of his goals.
They shouldn't be walking around no black people, he says no black communities.
He said of the organizers leaders, they should be somewhere in shame.
Now again, that's Tori Russell's words, not mine.
And his frustration is shared by other activists that are mentioned in
the context of the New York magazine piece that Shawn Campbell has written.
The other thing I wanted to mention is some of the mothers who have lost
their sons, to police violence also have spoken out.
including Lisa Simpson and Sumilia Akane, I'm sorry, Samaria Rice,
who both of course lost their sons due to police brutality.
They asked Black Lives Matter to stop using their son's names while fundraising,
let me give you an exact quote.
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 our loved ones.
Images and names on their flyers.
And there are also some legal issues, that the Foundation is dealing with.
BLMGNF was awarded tax exempt status, for instance,
from the IRS in December of 2020 two months after the houses purchase.
But the distinction means that the group would have to disclose information
about donors and expenditures in an annual filing known as a 9 90.
But they have not submitted those forms for either to 2020 or 2021.
And then when you look at the state level, they're having issues with that as well.
California's attorney general told the group in February of 2022,
that it was considered delinquent.
Remember they have to file these financial disclosures.
But BLM has since retained the high profile democratic lawyer Mark Elliott and
maneuvered to get more time to formally submit data from 2020 by switching from
calendar year two fiscal year tracking.
In the meantime, contributions to the group have been essentially shut down.
Amazon smile suspended the organization from its platform in February of 2022.
And BLMGNF has removed donation links from its own website.
And apparently, this is the part that concerns me the most because the report
in New York magazine also includes review of some internal documents over at BLM.
And the internal documents make clear that they were trying to figure out a PR
strategy for explaining the house.
So one of the things that they thought of was, okay why don't we
refer to this as the place where we create our activism content?
This is like the hub where we can come together,
people can come together and work on their organizing, put out their videos.
The other idea that they had, which of course kind of conflicts with the initial
idea of using the space to produce videos, is they thought, well why don't we keep
it as or market it as like a safe space for people who need a place to stay.
Who need a place of refuge,
I guess because they are being targeted by the alt right.
They're being targeted by people online, whatever it is.
But again, those two possibilities conflicted and honestly,
it's a little unclear what the house is being used for.
So look, it is possible that the house is being used for something that
makes sense that actually it falls in line with what BLM is trying to do.
The problem is we need to hear about that from its former now leaders because
Patrisse Cullors has stepped down.
By the way, Patrice Cullors is more than welcome on our show, we have reached out
to her several times asking her to come on to share her side of the story, but
we have not heard back on that.
So final thing I wanna mention is the alleged retaliation against journalists or
reporters who share this story.
Conversations on the BLM security hub chat,
show efforts to monitor social media for negative mentions of BLMGNF, with members
using their influence with the platforms to have such remarks removed.
It's currently not possible for instance,
to share the New York post article on Collors home purchases on Facebook?
Because the sites parent company meta,
has labeled the content abusive at other points.
Shalomyah Bowers and his associates direct a private
investigator to look into BLMGNF detractors and
journalists including me, writes Sean Campbell.
So I mean that is.
It's a form of intimidation.
It's a way of trying to prevent reporters and
journalists from sharing this story, which I think is wrong.
Because while I believe in what BLM is supposed to be doing and carrying out.
Again is this disconnect between the leadership that has been receiving
the funding, and what the local activists on the ground have been experiencing.
And really for any organization to run smoothly, you need to have a system
of accountability in place, you need transparency.
And unfortunately those two things were really missing from this whole equation.
So again, just want to invite Patrisse Collors or
any other Black Lives Matter leadership on the show.
If there's a part of this story that's not being shared, they should share it.
We should know, we should have a better understanding of this.
But for now things do not look good and some of these investigations are ongoing.
We'll see what happens