On September 1, 26 chapters of Black Lives Matter Grassroots filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Courtroom accusing the highest govt of the Black Lives Matter International Community Basis (BLMGNF) of illegally “siphoning” $10 million in donation cash.
Along with denunciations of a lot of the BLMGNF management, the go well with accuses Shalomyah Bowers, the pinnacle of BLMGNF, and his Bowers Consulting Agency of funneling tens of millions of {dollars} from BLM’s coffers, utilizing the group as his personal “private piggy financial institution.”
The day after the lawsuit was filed, Melina Abdullah, co-founder of the BLM Los Angeles chapter and co-director of BLM Grassroots, held a press convention asserting the lawsuit, at which she claimed that Bowers pays himself upwards of $2 million a yr.
Following Abdullah’s press convention, the BLMGNF Board of Administrators launched an official statement denying the allegations in opposition to Bowers and different leaders and labeling the lawsuit “one other spherical of wrestle for ‘management’” of BLM. It referred to as the allegations “slanderous and devoid of actuality.”
The Board of Administrators introduced ahead counterclaims in opposition to Abdullah and different BLM Grassroots leaders, alleging that they’ve been taking $10,000 per thirty days in private stipends, occurring secret retreats to Jamaica, and docking the pay of BLM operatives pressured to take depart as a result of they or a member of the family had contracted COVID-19.
The BLMGNF assertion contains excerpts from a January 2022 letter from BLM Grassroots leaders detailing “numerous allegations of Melina Abdullah’s monetary malpractice, unprincipled choice making, and a management fashion rooted in retribution and intimidation.”
The controversy surrounding the lawsuit is simply the most recent in a protracted line of scandals involving BLM’s funds. Amid the favored protests in opposition to the brutal homicide of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020, the bourgeois media and the Democratic Social gathering promoted Black Lives Matter and its leaders because the official voice of the tens of millions of all races and ethnicities demonstrating in opposition to police brutality. This promotion was accompanied by official endorsements and huge donations of money from company America to BLM.
The households of victims of police brutality and plenty of native activists, nonetheless, quickly questioned BLM’s monetary secrecy:
Three months after 10 native BLM chapters printed a November 2020 assertion demanding better monetary accountability from BLMGNF administrators, the group publicly launched details about its funds for the primary time. It reported that BLMGNF had raised greater than $90 million in 2020, incurred $8.4 million in working bills, distributed $21.7 million in grants to greater than 30 organizations, and retained some $60 million.
In March 2021, Lisa Simpson, the mom of 18-year-old Richard Risher, killed by Los Angeles police in 2016, and Samaria Rice, the mom of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, killed by Cleveland police in 2014, launched an announcement demanding that BLMGNF cease exploiting the deaths of their youngsters to earn money.
They wrote: “We don’t need or want y’all parading within the streets accumulating donations, platforms, film offers, and so on. off the dying of our family members, whereas the households and communities are left clueless and damaged. Don’t say our family members’ names, interval! That’s our fact!”
In April 2021, the New York Publish revealed that Black Lives Matter co-founder and nominal head Patrisse Cullors and her spouse had bought 4 properties price roughly $3 million between 2016 and 2021. Lower than two months after the information grew to become public, Cullors resigned as govt director of BLMGNF, claiming she wished to focus on different tasks, together with books and a manufacturing cope with Warner Bros.
In April 2022, a New York Journal report revealed that BLMGNF had bought a $6 million luxurious residence in southern California with donation cash. Based on the report, BLMGNF purchased the 6,500 square-foot property, full with seven bedrooms and loos, a sound stage and music studio, a pool, and parking for nearly 20 vehicles, in October 2020 to function a “safe-house” and headquarters for BLM management to create social media content material. In June 2021, Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Melina Abdullah recorded a video outdoors the mansion to mark the primary anniversary of George Floyd’s homicide.
In Could 2022, the Related Press printed tax paperwork exhibiting that BLMGNF paid out tens of millions to entities managed by kinfolk and shut associates of then-Govt Director Cullors. BLM paid out $25,997,945 in grants, together with a $2,167,890 payout to the Bowers Consulting Agency, owned by Shalomyah Bowers.
Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African research at California State College Los Angeles and co-founder of Black Lives Matter LA, was featured in a Levi’s denims “Great thing about Turning into” advertising marketing campaign, regardless of the information that Levi’s contractor labored to kill a minimal wage invoice in Haiti.
With every revelation, the fraudulent character of Black Lives Matter has grow to be clearer and clearer. The group misplaced credibility amongst tens of millions of Individuals who’d beforehand supported BLM underneath the impression these on the helm had been real a couple of struggle in opposition to police violence. The parasitic layers within the management had been despatched into disaster, prompting Cullors to resign as govt director in June 2021. Since then, nearly each information story about Black Lives Matter has concerned a scandal.
Based on the lawsuit filed by Black Lives Matter Grassroots, Bowers was initially employed by Cullors to assist run BLMGNF in 2020. Melina Abdullah claims that when Cullors determined to step down as govt head of BLMGNF, she left Bowers with a transition plan at hand over management of the BLMGNF to the BLM Grassroots management.
Based on the lawsuit, Cullors appointed two BLM members, Monifa Bandele and Makani Themba, as co-senior executives to supervise the transition, whereas Bowers remained in his administrative position. However Bowers allegedly did not comply with Cullors’ transition plan and BLM Grassroots was denied entry to BLMGNF’s social media accounts.
“That is the case of a rogue administrator, a intermediary, turned usurper, who was employed to gather donations and account for expenditures of the Black Lives Matter motion,” the lawsuit reads.
Whereas claiming that Bowers sees BLMGNF as his private “piggy financial institution,” the go well with additional alleges that Bowers’ actions had been the catalyst for the collection of fraud investigations launched by state and federal authorities into BLMDNF’s funds, which BLM Grassroots claims paved “a path of irreparable hurt to BLM in lower than eighteen months.”
As a part of its counterclaims in opposition to Abdullah and BLM Grassroots, BLMGNF cited letters that BLM Grassroots allegedly despatched in January over considerations about Abdullah’s management.
One grievance alleging Abdullah’s mishandling of a $7 million finances reads:
“I’m writing to you right now with some critical considerations in regards to the administration and operations of Black Lives Matter Grassroots… It’s my view that the Black Lives Matter Grassroots group, of which I’m a component, is ill-equipped presently to run and handle a multi-million greenback group.”
In an article discussing BLM’s a number of monetary scandals, the World Socialist Net Website defined the true character of the group:
The details which have emerged show that Black Lives Matter is basically a creation of the company media and the Democratic Social gathering, not a real expression of rebel common opposition to the pervasive brutality and social inequality of American society. The revelations illustrate the venal and privileged social layers whose pursuits are expressed by the elevation of race, slightly than class, because the important dividing line in society.
Past exposing the venal and egocentric character of the BLM management, the most recent allegations lay naked the reactionary character of racial politics and the right-wing social pursuits it serves. For all of their speak of the “struggle for Black liberation,” the layers behind BLM don’t have anything in widespread with—and are hostile to—the lots of employees and youth of all races who’re coming into wrestle in opposition to capitalism.
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