It was curious, to put it charitably, that Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, was making news lately more for her million-dollar properties than for her political activism. This is why her resignation this week came as no surprise.
USA Today reported on her “golden parachute” from the front lines of the ongoing fight for racial justice on May 28. Here is an excerpt:
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Patrisse Cullors, who has been at the helm of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation for nearly six years, said she is leaving to focus on other projects, including the upcoming release of her second book and a multi-year TV development deal with Warner Bros. …
The BLM foundation revealed to the AP in February that it took in just over $90 million last year, following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. … The foundation said it ended 2020 with a balance of more than $60 million, after spending nearly a quarter of its assets on operating expenses, grants to Black-led organizations and other charitable giving.
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Unsurprisingly, right-wing commentators are accusing her not just of misappropriating funds for personal use, but of abandoning the BLM cause to go Hollywood. I suspect, because Shonda Rhimes has made it look so easy, Cullors probably thinks she can make it big there too. But it’s hard to imagine either MLK or Malcolm X leaving the struggle for Black civil rights to sign a deal to provide content (of any kind) for a white entertainment studio.
Whatever the case, forget those right-wing naysayers – all of whom Cullors can fairly claim are nothing more than political opportunists. Because here is what mothers who, in fact, lost Black lives are saying about her resignation – courtesy of The New York Post, May 29, 2021:
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Grief-stricken mothers who have accused Black Lives Matter of profiting from the deaths of their sons condemned the group’s embattled co-founder Patrisse Cullors after she announced she was stepping down from the movement.
‘I don’t believe she is going anywhere,’ Samaria Rice, the mother of a 12-year-old boy shot by Cleveland police while playing with a toy gun, told The Post. ‘It’s all a facade. She’s only saying that to get the heat off her right now.’
Lisa Simpson, a Los Angeles-based mother whose son was slain by police in 2016, also blasted Cullors. ‘Now she doesn’t have to show her accountability,’ Simpson, 52, told The Post. ‘She can just take the money and run.’
Cullors, the executive director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, announced on Thursday she was leaving the group a month after The Post reported on her $3.2 million real-estate buying spree and questions about the group’s finances.
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Frankly, I don’t think any political activist has been so publicly damned since the daughter of chokehold victim Eric Garner famously damned Rev. Al Sharpton in February 2015 for just being “all about the Benjamins.”
Of course, if you are shocked and dismayed, you are probably that proverbial bumpkin who just fell off the turnip truck. Because media reports abound about CEOs of charitable/non-profit organizations who seem to think the proverb “charity begins at home…” means they’re the ones who should benefit first and most from charitable donations.
Hell, according ABC News, the former CEO of Make-A-Wish Iowa pleaded guilty just yesterday on charges of embezzling tens of thousands of dollars that were donated to brighten the lives of sick children and their families.
Only that perversion of charity/non-profit explains former President Donald J. Trump doing this – courtesy of The New York Times, April 17, 2021:
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Former President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party leveraged false claims of voter fraud and promises to overturn the election to raise more than a quarter-billion dollars in November and December as hundreds of thousands of trusting supporters listened and opened their wallets.
But the Trump campaign spent only a tiny fraction of its haul on lawyers and other legal bills related to those claims. Instead, Mr. Trump and the G.O.P. stored away much of the money — $175 million or so — even as they continued to issue breathless, aggressive and often misleading appeals for cash that promised it would help with recounts, the rooting out of election fraud and even the Republican candidates’ chances in the two Senate runoff races in Georgia.
What fraction of the money Mr. Trump did spend after the election was plowed mostly into a public-relations campaign and to keep his perpetual fund-raising machine whirring, with nearly $50 million going toward online advertising, text-message outreach and a small television ad campaign.
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And if you think Trump is ever going to use any of that money for anything but his personal use, he has some swamp land in Florida he’d like to sell you too.
Of course, his alleged high crimes and misdemeanors are such that grand juries in New York and Georgia could make him the first president in US history to be arrested and indicted on a battery of criminal offenses; that is, if there’s a God.
Only that perversion/non-profit explains NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre doing this – courtesy of NBC News, August 6, 2020 :
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On Thursday, LaPierre’s position as CEO and executive vice president of the most dominant gun lobby in the United States became more precarious after New York Attorney General Letitia James sued him and three other high-ranking current or former NRA executives, alleging that they have undercut the nonprofit organization’s charitable mission by engaging in illegal financial conduct.
That includes diverting tens of millions of dollars for personal trips and expenditures, lucrative no-show contracts to buy people’s silence and other improper spending, according to the lawsuit.
‘The NRA was serving as a personal piggy bank [with LaPierre even fleecing it to pay ] for private planes … custom suits … NASCAR events, country music shows and medical visits … hair and makeup.’
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No doubt you recall the way NRA spokesman Charlton Heston challenged liberals with the famous slogan:
I’ll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
But who knew that, behind Heston’s macho sloganeering, a dandified LaPierre was using NRA donations to buy bespoke suits and other designer duds. Ha! Apropos of laughter, NRA executives filed for bankruptcy protection in Texas to avoid having to account in New York for his egregious financial abuses. The judge laughed them out of court.
Incidentally, this means the NRA will have to face the same New York attorney general’s office that forced Trump to pay $25 million to reimburse students he scammed through his defunct Trump University. It’s also the one that forced him to shut down his family’s charitable foundation for using it as little more than a “checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s businesses and political interests.”
Adding insult to that order to shut down his foundation, Trump had to pay $2 million in restitution and has to subject himself to strict oversight if he ever forms a new charity or even joins one.
Only that perversion of charity/non-profit explains supermodel Naomi Campbell doing this – courtesy of the Daily Mail May 29, 2021:
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Naomi Campbell’s charity is facing calls to improve its governance after accounts revealed it spent more than [$2.3 million] on a spectacular fundraising gala in Cannes – yet gave only [$7,000] to good causes over the same period.
Fashion For Relief, a charity set up by the 50-year-old supermodel, hosted the glitzy event in May 2018 to raise money for Time’s Up, an organisation established after the MeToo movement to support women in the workplace.
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This has nothing to do with governance, of course. Because the heads of Time’s Up and MeToo probably enjoyed A-list revelry in Cannes for that fundraiser on their behalf. And they were probably then too hungover the morning after to even remember why they attended.
The point is that the vast majority of fundraising events and donation drives are a friggin’ racket. This is why I urge you to limit your charitable donations and efforts to local charities as much as practicable. For example,
- instead of donating to presidential campaigns, donate to people running for city councils and state legislatures;
- instead of donating to the Red Cross, donate blood to your local blood bank; and
- instead of donating to international relief organizations, donate to local food pantries and homeless shelters (or to local churches and other organizations that you know are affiliated with international relief efforts).
In the interest of full disclosure, two of my trusted local charities are S.O.M.E. (So Others Might Eat), which combats homelessness, hunger, poverty in the DC area, and AFAC (Arlington Food Assistance Center), which provides supplemental groceries to poor residents in Northern Arlington.
Related commentaries:
Black Lives Matter… Eric Garner… Trump grand jury…