For the second time in as many weeks, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors is under fire for what many of her comrades see as betraying her avowedly “Marxist” values.
As far back as 2015, when she explained the ideological foundations of her movement to Jared Ball in an interview with anti-capitalist Real News Network, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors has referred to herself as a “trained Marxist”. Though her profession of familiarity and adherence to Marxist dogma was clearly meant to legitimize Cullors’ BLM activism in the eyes of Ball’s audience, it has actually served to discredit her; in the recent months, multiple stories have emerged about Cullors’ partnerships with massive for-profit corporations and acquisition of considerable personal wealth and property—leading her followers and opponents alike to angrily point out that Cullors seems happy to abandon her Marxist principles when it comes to her own ballooning largesse.
We’ve covered several of these stories, including in “Trained Marxist” and BLM Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors Signs Warner Bros. TV Deal and “Trained Marxist” and BLM Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors Reportedly Buys $1.4m Estate.
The Daily Caller recently broke yet another such story. In this one, the conservative news outlet reported that Cullors
raked in upwards of $20,000 a month serving as the chairwoman of a Los Angeles jail reform group in 2019, according to campaign finance records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.Reform LA Jails disbursed a total of $191,000 to Cullors in 2019 through her consulting firm, Janaya and Patrisse Consulting, according to financial records submitted to the California Fair Political Practices Commission. The description for each of the seven reported payments to the Cullors’ firm that year read: “P. Cullors, Principal Officer, Business Owner.”
Years of financial opacity and the recent controversies have reportedly pushed other Black Lives Matter leaders to call for an investigation into the inner workings of Cullors’ behemoth umbrella group, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. Moreover, at least 10 state and local chapters of the organization have publicly split off from the larger group, and published scathing critiques of Cullors. One such critique accuses the BLMGNF of “stealing money from stolen lives”.
Still, Cullors has dismissed much of this criticism as a distraction, engineered by the right-wing, from the quest to end “white supremacy”; she recently posted a statement on Instagram in which she condemned an unspecified article about her collection of luxury homes as “false and defamatory”, an example of “doxxing”, and a well-worn “tactic of terror” often dispatched against “Black activists”.
Cullors also insisted, “I do not receive a salary or benefits from Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. Period.”
Meanwhile, as an article in USA Today reported, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation even sent a cease-and-desist letter to a conservative think-tank, the Legal and National Policy Center, that had published a critical statement about Cullors’ home purchases:
Khan-Cullors said there’s no connection between the home purchases and her BLM role.
“To be abundantly clear, as a registered 501c3, BLMGNF cannot and did not commit any organizational resources toward the purchase of my personal property,” Khan-Cullors said in a prepared statement . “Any insinuation or assertion to the contrary is categorically false.”
In a cease-and-desist letter responding to a press release from the policy center, the BLM foundation responded to demand the National Legal and Policy Center remove the “insinuation” that “funds from the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s funds have been used, directly or indirectly, to purchase real estate.”
…Khan-Cullors said in a prepared statement she has been paid a total of $120,000 from the organization since 2013 for acting as spokesperson and “political education work,” but she has not been paid since 2019.
Interestingly, the BLMGNF is apparently not the only massively influential group running interference for Cullors. Indeed, according to Newsweek, Facebook has blocked its users from sharing the original New York Post piece revealing details of Cullors’ real estate collection:
A Facebook spokesperson told Newsweek, “This content was removed for violating our privacy and personal information policy.” The policy forbids articles that share details that could identify a person’s financial and residential information, thus violating their privacy rights.However, it was possible to post a link to the article on Facebook using the URL-shortening service, TinyURL. Links to a summary of the article published by Fox Business and an opinion column defending Cullors’ right to own such property that ran in The Chicago Tribune were also not blocked.
Samantha Mandeles is Senior Researcher and Outreach Director at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. You can reach her on Twitter at @SRMandeles.
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