Michael Brown’s Father Joins in Criticism of Black Lives Matter Finances

Local chapters of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation are training their fire on the national organization, after it was revealed that recently departed co-founder Patrisse Cullorspurchased million-dollar properties in white neighborhoods, raising suspicions about the BLMGNF’s spending practices and the “Marxist” Cullors’s hypocrisy.

Some local BLM chapters have formed a coalition that they call BLM 10 Plus, which are uniting under statements that seek greater accountability from the parent nonprofit.

According to a report from the Daily Mail over the weekend, the father of Michael Brown — who was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. in 2014 — has expressed support for BLM 10 Plus’s goal to get to the bottom of Cullors’s purchases of homes in California and Georgia valued collectively at more than $3 million, as well as the management of BLMGNF’s millions that it has taken in since the death of George Floyd last year.

“The number of chapters that have aligned in support of our statement has nearly doubled,” said a BLM 10 Plus statement issued on Friday, to which Michael Brown Sr. lent his name. “Some of these chapters have made their own statements echoing not only our call to accountability but also our experiences as we sought transparency, democracy, and internal transformation for years.”

“The BLM 10 Plus continues the call for transparency and most importantly, for principled accountability in movement infrastructures…,” the statement continued. “Grassroots movements have been co-opted across the globe and it is our intention to be a part of the collective creating processes based on integrity so that we, nor any other activist or advocate, encounters these avoidable issues in the future.”

From the Daily Mail report:

• “Black Lives Matter took in $90 million in 2020, and was left with a balance sheet of $60 million by January 2021. Around $8 million was spent on expenses, including staffing costs with the other $20 million donated to local chapters and nonprofits.”
• “Those numbers – and news of Cullors’ property portfolio – has led to questions about how BLM is spending its money, and complaints over a lack of transparency from bereaved families previously supported by the group.”
• “Records show some chapters have received multiple rounds of funding in amounts ranging between $800 and $69,000, going back as far as 2016. The #BLM10 said the amounts given have been far from equitable when compared to how much BLM has raised over the years.”
• “Critics of the foundation contend more of that money should have gone to the families of black victims of police brutality who have been unable to access the resources needed to deal with their trauma and loss.”
• “The BLM 10 Plus group noted that chapters which have been critical of how the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has been run had their names stripped from the foundation’s website in November.”

The article notes that Cullors, who in the past has boasted that she is a “trained Marxist,” claims she paid for the homes from the income she earned from speaking engagements and book contracts. She called the revelation of her property purchases “right-wing bullying” and upon her resignation said, “Those were right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character, and I don´t operate off of what the right thinks about me.”

National Legal and Policy Center provided media organizations the information about Cullors’s spending in April.