Deep diving reporters at the Washington Examiner went spelunking into the BLM financial records. They were shocked to learn that “for months” nobody “appears to have been in charge.” They gave the IRS a bogus address on tax forms and “the charity’s two board members won’t say who controls its $60 million bankroll.”
BLM millions floating in limbo
As “multiple charity experts” warn, this lack of Black Lives Matter™ transparency is shocking. The murky state of their “finances and operations raises major legal and ethical red flags.” BLM isn’t just a “ship of fools,” it’s become the Flying Dutchman.
“Like a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction,” CharityWatch Executive Director Laurie Styron colorfully describes.
When co-founder Patrisse Cullors got caught, last May, with her hand in the cookie jar and a collection of houses, thanks to BLM supporters, she “appointed two activists to serve as the group’s senior directors.”
They didn’t tell anyone until September that the replacement administrators “never took the jobs due to disagreements.” When Washington Examiner looked them up, they were clueless, claiming “they don’t know” who is running “the nation’s most influential social justice organization.”
When Paul Kamenar, counsel for conservative watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center, sniffed something strange in the wind coming from the organization’s bank accounts, he called for “a full audit and investigation into Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the legal entity that represents the national BLM movement.”
He spells out that this “is grossly irregular and improper for a nonprofit with $60 million in its coffers.”
$3.2M on real estate
BLM has been taking intense heat from the Black activist community ever since the New York Post exposed the story that Patrisse Cullors, who was the executive director, “spent $3.2 million on real estate across the United States.”
That they noted “followed BLM’s disclosure in February 2021 that it closed out 2020 with $60 million in its bank accounts.”
While BLM continues to swear up and down that Cullors spent their money on those houses, they admit that “other activist organizations under Cullors’ control offered contracts to an art company led by the father of her only child.”
She oozed away in disgrace, leaving activists Makani Themba and Monifa Bandele with all the hot potatoes. They didn’t want to get stuck cleaning up Cullors’ mess so ran for the hills before signing any paperwork.
They told the Examiner, “they do not know who took over as BLM’s top executive after their departure. And neither would say who served on the council.” Specifically, Themba notes, they “never actually started in the position, so we never received any detailed information.” By law, “a charity’s finances are ultimately the responsibility of its board of directors.”
BLM bylaws explicitly state that its executive director “shall have charge of all funds and securities of the Corporation.” That would be Shalomyah Bowers and Raymond Howard. Neither of them would “return numerous requests for comment asking who has been in charge of BLM and its money since Cullors left the charity in May.”