What Dem Books Look Like???

“$15,000 dollars to come and speak at one of their local chapters?!?!?!” Ain’t no way!!!! This was my response in finding out how much Opal Tometi would charge us, BLM - Williamsburg, an unofficial local chapter, this insane amount to come and speak at our annual BLM conference. This was back in 2017 while I was still a lead organizer in BLM. Evidently, that was yesterday’s price because now she starts at $25,0000.

Yes, we were an unofficial chapter, but unofficial BLM chapters were the norm. The price had nothing to do with our chapter status. It had nothing to do with liberating our people. Tometi’s speaker fee in 2017 shows what BLM has been about this whole time, the money. 

My homie and Director of Black Organizing for the IBFA, Tory Russell, already started off this conversation by calling for us to dismantle and #defundBLM. In this joint, I take a closer look at BLM and money. How much money has BLM received? Where did all that money go? Let’s jump in.

We had to get these articles off after the segment of Torraine Walker questioning Melina Abdulla about the money on the Roland Martin show. She danced around the question and lied. She stated: “At the time, I didn’t know about dollars coming in.”

As this picture of them toasting champagne on the one year anniversary of George Floyd’s death reveals, she did know about the money coming in. This is why we need to expose BLM and look into how they are handling the money for the movement. BLM is profiting off of Black pain and is a danger to the very Black lives that they claim mattered. Instead of being a true journalist like Torraine, Roland Martin did a horrible job. While we can clearly see that Melina was lying and not directly answering the question, Roland covered for her by jumping in when Torraine asked follow up questions. We called him out on his journalism and how he handled the interview. As you can see, he stood ten toes down on his poor journalism and misinformation. Here is the full episode right here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb_jdSAQ7CY&t=1s. While he claimed to only “cover the NEWS” and provide “FACTS in this dispute. I’ve covered it from day one,” let me show you what really happened with BLM and the money they received.

This info is coming from research, people who sat at the table with Alicia, Opal, and Patrisse and my prior work as a lead organizer of the unofficial BLM Williamsburg chapter. First I want to shout out Julia Davis aka Ayaba Sibongile aka “Mama Julia” for what she uncovered. Mama Julia is one of the founding members of the IBFA. She discovered that BLM had actually started the Global Network Foundation in 2013, was fiscally sponsored by Thousand Currents and Tides and received funding from numerous foundations. One of her sources was Influence Watch. 

Just like Tory showed that BLM was capping with that  “leaderless movement” line, they also were capping with the “we are not an organization” line. Check out this article that Patrisse pinned “We didn’t start a movement. We started a network” in 2016. She explains how they created the “BLM network infrastructure.” Nowhere in this article did they mention the official Global Network Foundation that they started 3 years ago. 

This is what we do know, here are all the tax documents that are publicly available: 2019, 2020, 2021. There are also several articles, including this one from AP, that a 60 page filing was submitted to the IRS in May. 

Influence Watch indicated that BLM was first fiscally sponsored by Thousand Currents. They were sponsored by Thousand Currents from 2016 to 2020. In 2020, the Tides Foundation took over. Due to their fiscal sponsorship, BLM really didn’t have to be transparent surrounding the money. As we can see from the publicly available tax information, there is nothing available until the 2020 990. This is a huge problem because we all know they received money before then.  Influence Watch states: “Organizations that donated to the BLM Global Network Foundation through its former fiscal sponsor Thousand Currents between 2015 and 2019 include the NoVo Foundation ($1,525,000), the W.K. Kellogg Foundation ($900,000) and Borealis Philanthropy ($343,000).” Now it should be clear that we have no clearly identifiable record of funding from 2013 to 2020. If we consider all the nationally publicized police killings and funding drives during this time frame, that is a lot of money. 

Now that we can see the funding for the past 3 years, we still don’t know if they are properly accounting for the money. There have been a wide variety of funders. Corporations, celebrities, foundations, and regular people, all have donated to BLM. Going through this long list of funders, from Microsoft, to the Ford Foundation, to Jordan Peele to “John Doe,” how can we properly account for all of this money without seeing the books? If John Doe gave money at a rally, sent money to a Cashapp or even sent a check, are we trusting an organization that has lied on national television, kept their financial records secret for 7 years and purchased million dollar mansions to be honest about all of the donations received? Another question that is not clear is how did BLM accept the money and how did donors give? For example, the Ford Foundation partnered with Borealis Philanthropy to create the Black-Led Movement Fund. They would then give money to the Movement for Black Lives. That means money could come in anywhere, from Venmo to PayPal to the philanthropic set up fund. Also, the way this money was moved around between the Global Network Foundation and Movement for Black Lives affirms what Tory talked about in the previous article.

All of these questions lead us to the most important question of all: How much money has BLM received? While there are several headlines saying $90 million in one year, we shouldn’t just go with the headline. Do research for yourself. Fyi, there has been some confusion between Black Lives Matter Foundation, led by Ray Barnes and Black Lives Matter Global Network. Check this article out while you are doing your research. 

There is no way to be certain of the exact amount of money they obtained unless BLM comes out and shows us. Show us the books BLM and stop lying on Black dead bodies.