Daily Archives: May 20, 2022

On Monday night, Terry Crews was grilled over his criticism of Black Lives Matter by CNN host Don Lemon. As Gina Bontempo pointed out on Twitter: Don Lemon did everything he could to talk over Terry and silence him as soon as they started approaching what the BLM organization is *really* about.

So what is Black Lives Matter really about?

Many conservatives insist Black Lives Matter is a Marxist, anti-police, radical organization that wants to tear down America. Meanwhile, most liberals simply view Black Lives Matter as a heroic movement and powerful slogan signaling support for racial justice and opposition to police brutality.

Both are right. There is Black Lives Matter, and there is black lives matter.

Let me explain.

In 2013, the national outcry over Trayvon Martins death and George Zimmermans acquittal sparked a national outcry over racial injustice. Amid this controversy, three activists, Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi, started a hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, which soon went viral. They then founded the national Black Lives Matter organization.

Black Lives Matter as a broad sentiment and movement then gained national attention and name recognition after the 2014 deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Meanwhile, the official group expanded and many more local chapters formed.

No doubt, the organization itself was quite radical from the very beginning. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors described herself and fellow co-founder Alicia Garza as trained Marxists in a recently resurfaced video from 2015.

We actually do have an ideological frame[work], Cullors said of her organization. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.

Meanwhile, the national organizations official platform, published in 2015, contained a specific call to [disrupt] the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.

At the local level, official Black Lives Matter chapters are essentially far-left front groups that use racial justice as a Trojan horse for leftist policy and ideology. For example, the official organization Black Lives Matter DC openly dedicates itself to creating the conditions for Black Liberation through the abolition of systems and institutions of white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy and colonialism.

Unsurprisingly, conservatives have bashed the radical group en masse.

Black Lives Matter is an openly Marxist, anti-American group, conservative commentator Mark Levin said. There's no denying it. And it is fully embraced by the Democrat Party and its media and cultural surrogates.

Black Lives Matter is a Marxist movement, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz tweeted. Black Lives Matter is not about police, it's not about race, it's not about justice. It's about making us hate America so they can replace America.

You know, I know plenty of people who are for Black Lives Matter. A lot of them are nice people, Fox News Host Tucker Carlson recently said. Im not mad at them. I disagree I think Black Lives Matter is poison.

These kinds of conservative criticisms of Black Lives Matter are widespread. And on one hand, theyre right: The official Black Lives Matter organization is Marxist, is anti-American in its values, and its views are rightfully alarming to anyone who believes in the Constitution, capitalism, and civil society as we know it. But in applying their reflexive response to all Black Lives Matter supporters, conservative critics are failing to see the forest for the trees.

A whopping 51 percent of the public tells pollsters they support black lives matter. Most of these people, I suspect, dont even know that there is an official Black Lives Matter organization. And Im sure hardly any of them could name Patrisse Cullors or Alicia Garza.

Whether its where Im from in deep-blue Massachusetts or where I live now in Washington D.C., walking by a Black Lives Matter sign sticking out from someones yard is just about an everyday occurrence. After the death of George Floyd, more of my acquaintances, friends, and relatives than I could count posted #BlackLivesMatter. Many others changed their picture to a black square or otherwise signaled their support for the movement.

I can personally guarantee you that the vast majority of these people, while liberal, do not support ending capitalism or dismantling the family. Conservatives are led astray as soon as they apply their (valid) criticisms of Black Lives Matter the organization to the Black Lives Matter movement and its supporters broadly.

Just look at the way some on the Right responded to Sen. Mitt Romney after he attended a Washington, D.C. protest against police brutality, telling reporters he did so to make sure that people understand that Black Lives Matter.

Heres a sampling of how hostile the response was from some conservative pundits on Twitter:

Even President Trump attacked Romney over it:

No matter how you feel about the conservative Mormon senator politically (and Im far from a fan), no one can credibly argue that Romney supports destroying the nuclear family, ending capitalism, or abolishing the police.

Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana faced a similar unfair backlash when he announced his support for Black Lives Matter and unveiled a modest police reform proposal:

It may well be true that in particular conservative circles, everyone is well aware of the obscure history of the Black Lives Matter founders Marxist roots. But the average person on the street and the average person who shares the hashtag are most certainly not. And the movement itself has become something much bigger, broader, and more benevolent than the original organization.

However, its by no means just conservatives who err in their approach to Black Lives Matter. For one, many on the Left fail to acknowledge at all the Marxist roots of the official Black Lives Matter organization, and thus, paint anyone who objects to the organization as racist, unthinkingly inveighing: How could anyone not support black lives? This kind of clever naming of a controversial movement, similar to Antifa supposedly standing for anti-fascist, makes it easy to baselessly paint critics as extreme and immoral. Yet this is a reductive oversimplification that serves only to divide.

So, too, much of the blame for the Black Lives Matter perception gap lies with liberals, Democrats, and others who support the movement for failing to adequately distance themselves from the radical organization.

For example, I visited one of my favorite coffee shops in Arlington, Virginia over the weekend. Like many a hipster coffee shop, it had a Black Lives Matter sign in the window and had a fundraiser going on for the cause as well. But I was dismayed to read the flyer and notice that the proceeds of the fundraiser were going to the official Black Lives Matter DC organizationyes, the same one that openly wants to abolish capitalism.

Now, I highly doubt that the owners of this coffee shop, even if they are progressives or Democrats, actually support Marxism. More importantly, Im certain that most customers who donated, even in the liberal-leaning neighborhood, do not realize they are donating to a Marxist, anti-American revolutionary organization by participating in the fundraiser. But they are.

Many a mainstream liberal has signaled support for the generic black lives matter cause by sharing fundraisers that, if you look closely, go to official Black Lives Matter organizations that do not actually represent their views. Meanwhile, liberal-leaning media outlets such as MSNBC regularly platform official members of the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement and pass the radical activists off as within the mainstream.

From corporations to politicians to random Facebook users, Black Lives Matter supporters need to do a much better job distancing themselves from the radical organization at the root of their slogan. (Or, alternatively, they should come up with a new and different slogan that doesnt have such malign associations.)

This lack of due diligence is lazy and irresponsible, but more importantly, its dangerous.

Marxism is a vicious ideology, and its one that is rooted in a divisive vision of irreconcilable class conflict. As important economist Ludwig von Mises noted, According to the Marxian view... human society is organized into classes whose interests stand in irreconcilable opposition. Moreover, as Mises explains, Marxists believe that peoples very thoughts ought to be determined by their class and that those who differ from the prescribed worldview are class traitors.

Such a divisive ideology only fuels perpetual conflict, not progress toward reconciliation. By failing to drive this toxic extremism out loudly and clearly from their side of the issue, the large majority of Black Lives Matter supporterswho simply seek reform, justice, and reconciliationtake a chainsaw to any chance of achieving common ground and consensus.

When Don Lemon took issue with Terry Crews's take on Black Lives Matter, Crews was crystal clear, saying, This is the thing. Its a great mantra. Its a true mantra. Black lives do matter. But, when youre talking about an organization, youre talking about the leaders, youre talking about the people who are responsible for putting these things together. Its two different things.

We need more of that kind of clarity in our discourse. Right now, the debate over Black Lives Matter is muddled and confused. Liberals and conservatives alike need to make an effort to listen and understand the other sides perspective, not the strawman caricature of it used as a punching bag in partisan echo chambers. Until both sides take the time to understand each other, we will keep talking past each otherand any real progress or harmony will remain a fantasy.

Follow this link:

Is Black Lives Matter Marxist? No and Yes. - Foundation ...

NEW YORK (AP) The foundation started by organizers of the Black Lives Matter movement is still worth tens of millions of dollars, after spending more than $37 million on grants, real estate, consultants, and other expenses, according to tax documents filed with the IRS.

In a new, 63-page Form 990 shared exclusively with The Associated Press, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation Inc. reports that it invested $32 million in stocks from the $90 million it received as donations amid racial justice protests in 2020. That investment is expected to become an endowment to ensure the foundations work continues in the future, organizers say.

It ended its last fiscal year from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021 with nearly $42 million in net assets. The foundation had an operating budget of about $4 million, according to a board member.

The tax filing shows that nearly $6 million was spent on a Los Angeles-area compound. The Studio City property, which includes a home with six bedrooms and bathrooms, a swimming pool, a soundstage and office space, was intended as a campus for a Black artists fellowship and is currently used for that purpose, the board member said.

This is the BLM foundations first public accounting of its finances since incorporating in 2017. As a fledgling nonprofit, it had been under the fiscal sponsorship of a well-established charity, and wasnt required to publicly disclose its financials until it became an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit in December 2020.

The tax filing suggests the organization is still finding its footing: It currently has no executive director or in-house staff. Nonprofit experts tell the AP that the BLM foundation seems to be operating like a scrappy organization with far fewer resources, although some say Black-led charities face unfair scrutiny in an overwhelmingly white and wealthy philanthropic landscape.

Still, its governance structure makes it difficult to disprove allegations of impropriety, financial mismanagement and deviation from mission that have dogged the BLM foundation for years, one expert said.

It comes across as an early startup nonprofit, without substantial governance structure in place, that got a huge windfall, said Brian Mittendorf, a professor of accounting at Ohio State University who focuses on nonprofit organizations and their financial statements.

People are going to be quick to assume that mismatch reflects intent, he added. Whether theres anything improper here, that is another question. But whether they set themselves up for being criticized, I think that certainly is the case because they didnt plug a bunch of those gaps.

The BLM movement first emerged in 2013, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. But it was the 2014 death of Michael Brown at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, that made the slogan Black lives matter a rallying cry for progressives and a favorite target of derision for conservatives.

BLM co-founders Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Ay Tometi had pledged to build a decentralized organization governed by the consensus of BLM chapters. But just three years into existence, Cullors was the only movement founder involved in the organization.

And in 2020, a tidal wave of contributions in the aftermath of protests over George Floyds murder by Minneapolis police meant the BLM organization needed much more infrastructure.

When Cullors revealed the windfall of donations last year, local chapter organizers and families of police brutality victims reacted angrily. Until then, the foundation had not been transparent with the most devoted BLM organizers, many of whom accused Cullors of shutting them out of decisions about how financial resources would be allocated.

YahN Ndgo, an activist and former organizer with the BLM chapter in Philadelphia, said Cullors reneged on a promise to hand over control of the foundation's resources to grassroots organizers.

When resources came in, when opportunities came in, (the foundation) alone would be the ones to decide who was going to take advantage of them, without having to take any consideration of the other organizers whose work was giving them the access to these resources and opportunities in the first place, said Ndgo, who organized a group of chapters that confronted the foundation over issues of transparency and accountability.

In 2020, the foundation did spin off its network of chapters as a sister collective called BLM Grassroots. It has a fiscal sponsor managing money granted by the foundation. Melina Abdullah, cofounder of BLM's first chapter in Los Angeles, also directs the grassroots collective and said its organizers continue to have direct impact in communities across the country.

Well never stop doing that," Abdullah said. "Thats the work we were born out of.

In a recent interview with the AP, Cullors acknowledged the foundation was ill-prepared to handle the moment. The tax filing lists Cullors as an uncompensated founder and executive director. She resigned last year. The foundation also paid nearly $140,000 in severance to a former managing director who had been at odds with local BLM chapter organizers, prior to Cullorss tenure as director.

The filing shows Cullors reimbursed the organization $73,523 for a charter flight for foundation-related travel, which the organization says she took in 2021 out of concern for COVID-19 and security threats. She also paid the foundation $390 over her uses of the Studio City property for two private events.

During the last fiscal year, Cullors was the foundation boards sole voting director and held no board meetings, according to the filing. Although that is permissible under Delaware law, where the foundation is incorporated, that governance structure gives the appearance that Cullors alone decided who to hire and how to spend donations. That was never the truth, current board members said.

For all the questions raised about its oversight, the BLM foundations tax filing shows its stewards havent squandered donations. Instead, it granted tens of millions of dollars to BLM chapters, Black-led grassroots organizations and families of police brutality victims, whose names rallied the larger movement.

This 990 reveals that (the BLM foundation) is the largest Black abolitionist nonprofit organization that has ever existed in the nations history. What were doing has never been done before, said Shalomyah Bowers, who serves as the foundations board secretary.

We needed to get dollars out to grassroots organizations doing the work of abolition, doing the work that would shift the moral tide of this world towards one that does not have or believe in police, prisons, jails or violence, he said.

Earlier this month, the foundation announced Bowers as one of three members of its board of directors. He serves with board chair Cicley Gay, a communications professional with more than 20 years of experience in nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, and DZhane Parker, a member of BLMs Los Angeles chapter whose work focuses on the impact of mass incarceration on families.

We are decolonizing philanthropy, Gay said. We, as a board, are charged with disrupting traditional standards of what grant making in philanthropy looks like. It means investing in Black communities, trusting them with their dollars.

The foundation will launch a transparency and accountability center on its website to make its financial documents available for public inspection, Bowers said.

To get here, the foundation has relied on a small grouping of consultants, some of whom have close ties to founders and other BLM organizers. For example, the tax filing shows the foundation paid nearly $970,000 to Trap Heals LLC, a company founded by Damon Turner, who fathered a child with Cullors. The company was hired to produce live events and provide other creative services, Bowers said.

The foundation paid more than $840,000 to Cullors Protection LLC, a security firm run by Paul Cullors, Patrisses brother, according to the tax filing. Because the BLM movement is known for vehemently protesting law enforcement organizations, the foundation felt its protection could not be entrusted to former police professionals who typically run security firms, said Bowers, adding the foundation sought bids for other security contractors.

Bowers, who has previously served as deputy executive director, is founder and president of a firm that received the lions share of money spent on consultants in the last fiscal year. Bowers Consulting provided much of the foundations operational support, including staffing, fundraising and other key services and was paid more than $2.1 million, according to the tax filing.

The foundations reliance on consultants is not unusual for newer nonprofits, said Mittendorf, the Ohio State accounting professor. But having clear policies around business transactions could reduce any appearance of impropriety, he said.

Its a best practice not to engage in business transactions with people who have influence inside the organization or with companies affiliated with people who have influence inside the organization, Mittendorf said. Make sure you have conflict of interest policies and other controls in place, so that those transactions are all being done to benefit the organization and not to benefit the individuals.

The tax filing indicates the foundation has a conflict-of-interest policy. And Bowers said the last BLM board approved the contract with his firm when he was not a board member.

Our firm stepped in when Black Lives Matter had no structure and no staff, he said. We filled the gap, when nothing else existed. But let me be crystal clear, there was no conflict of interest.

Controversy surrounding the organizations finances has elicited probes by at least two state attorneys general. Board members said they are cooperating with civil investigations in Indiana and Ohio, and they have turned over relevant documents to those authorities.

Isabelle Leighton, interim executive director of the Donors of Color Network, an organization that promotes racial equity in philanthropy, said discrimination in the nonprofit sector leaves little room for Black-led progressive movement organizations to publicly make mistakes. Such organizations are typically receiving much less financial and operational support than wealthy, white-led nonprofits, but receive much more criticism, she said.

Its tapping into a deep narrative that people of color do not deserve to have the same resources that those who have already made it get, Leighton said. Its intended for people to start to doubt and create their own new echo chamber of criticizing who deserves to receive resources.

The foundations tax filing rebuts claims that the BLM foundation ignored the larger movement. Nearly $26 million, or 70% of its expenses, were grants to organizations and families in the last fiscal year.

Twelve BLM chapters, including those in Boulder, Colorado; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Detroit; Los Angeles; Gary, Indiana; and Philadelphia, received pledges for grants of up to $500,000. The family foundations created in honor of Floyd and others killed by police and vigilantes Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant each received contributions of $200,000.

Jacari Harris, executive director of the George Floyd Memorial Foundation, said in a statement the organization was incredibly grateful for the grant, the largest one-time contribution we have received to date within the U.S. Harris said the funds will help provide college scholarships, mental health support to the Black community and educate about the dangers of police brutality around the world.

The Michael O.D. Brown: We Love Our Sons & Daughters Foundation, run by Michael Brown Jr.s mother, Lezley McSpadden, was approved for a larger multi-year grant of $1.4 million. A representative of the Brown foundation told the AP that an initial $500,000 had been received in 2021.

McSpadden is happy to have the BLM foundations support, the representative said.

Among its larger grants are $2.3 million to the Living Through Giving Foundation, a nonprofit charity platform that encourages giving at the local level; and $1.5 million to Team Blackbird, LLC, a rapid response communications and movement strategy project that increases the visibility of movement organizations.

The tax filing does not reveal the foundations largest donors.

Transparency and accountability is so important to us, but so is trust, said Gay, the BLM foundation chair. Presenting (donor) names after the fact, at this point, would likely be a betrayal of that trust.

____

Aaron Morrison writes about race and justice for the APs Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter.

Link:

Black Lives Matter foundation has $42 million in assets - knkx.org

A Meta executive told employees on Thursday that they are prohibited from talking about abortion on Workplace, an internal version of Facebook, citing an increased risk that the company is seen as a hostile work environment.

The policy, which Meta put in place in 2019 but hasnt been reported until now, prohibits employees from discussing opinions or debates about abortion being right or wrong, availability or rights of abortion, and political, religious, and humanitarian views on the topic, according to a section of the companys internal Respectful Communication Policy seen by The Verge. Some employees have called on management to do away with the policy in the aftermath of a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, arguing that the ban is at odds with employees being allowed to talk respectfully about issues like Black Lives Matter, immigration, and trans rights.

During an all-hands meeting with employees Thursday, Metas VP of HR, Janelle Gale, said that abortion was the most divisive and reported topic by employees on Workplace. She said that even if people are respectful, and theyre attempting to be respectful about their view on abortion, it can still leave people feeling like theyre being targeted based on their gender or religion, according to a recording of her comments obtained by The Verge. Its the one unique topic that kind of trips that line on a protected class pretty much in every instance.

A spokesperson for Meta didnt have a comment for this story by press time.

Most large companies have yet to clearly state their stance on abortion bans, though several have signaled their opposition. Amazon and Tesla have said they would cover some expenses for pregnant employees who need to travel for an abortion, and Salesforce told employees in September that it would assist with moving expenses if they wanted to leave Texas due to its abortion ban. Lyft and Uber have promised to cover legal bills for drivers who are sued under state laws for driving a person seeking an abortion. One of the strongest stances taken has been by Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, who argued in an op-ed that companies need to take a stand on reproductive rights.

After Politico published the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion seeking to overturn abortion rights at a federal level, Metas number-two executive, Sheryl Sandberg, called abortion one of our most fundamental rights on her public Facebook page. Every woman, no matter where she lives, must be free to choose whether and when she becomes a mother, she wrote. Few things are more important to womens health and equality.

But Meta proceeded to push back on discussion of abortion internally soon thereafter. The day after Sandbergs public comments, one of Metas most senior executives, Naomi Gleit, wrote in an internal post seen by The Verge explaining why the company had placed restrictions around discussion of abortion. At work, there are many sensitivities around this topic, which makes it difficult to discuss on Workplace, Gleit wrote. She said that employees were only allowed to discuss abortion at work with a trusted colleague in a private setting (e.g. live, chat, etc.) and in a listening session with a small group of up to 5 like-minded people to show solidarity. She encouraged employees to use Metas social apps to share their views in their personal capacity, and that the company will continue to offer our employees access to reproductive healthcare in the U.S. regardless of where they live.

The policy banning discussion of abortion has caused division among employees in recent weeks, with some supporting it and others sharing their frustration about having posts on the topic removed, according to screenshots of Workplace posts and comments seen by The Verge. During the all-hands meeting led by Sandberg, Gale, and other execs Thursday, several comments about the policy were posted by employees underneath the livestream and removed as the meeting progressed.

In an internal post earlier this month titled Support & Silence, a female employee who has been at the company for 10 years wrote that the policy had led her to feel a strong sense of silence and isolation on Workplace. She wrote that an earlier version of her post had been taken down and that the new version had much of the content removed.

The same policy explicitly allows us to discuss similarly sensitive issues and movements including immigration, trans rights, climate change, Black Lives Matter, gun rights / gun control, and vaccination, she wrote. The argument about why our policy treats one issue quite differently than other sensitive issues feels flimsy and unconvincing to me. The entire process of dealing with the Respectful Communication policy, being told why my post is violating, and crafting this new post has felt dehumanizing and dystopian.

Read more here:

Meta tells employees to stop discussing abortion at work - The Verge