Black Lives Matter said it will soon unveil measures to boost transparency after receiving widespread condemnation for concealing a $6 million mansion it purchased with charitable funds in 2020.
BLM Global Network Foundation said in a lengthy Twitter thread Monday that, despite its past efforts, it “recognizes there is more work to do to increase transparency and ensure transitions in leadership are clear.” The charity also provided a list of its recent accomplishments that, upon closer inspection, exposes that the group has done comparatively little with its millions since early 2021.
“Now that BLM has been exposed for failing to account for their use of some $66 million in donations over the last year and confronted with the purchase of an expensive LA mansion in 2020 used by Cullors and her associates, they are now scrambling to come up with unverified evidence to justify the use of most of those funds,” said Paul Kamenar, a lawyer with ethics watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center. “Their continued refusal to be transparent is alarming.”
It’s unclear what past transparency efforts BLM was referring to in its tweet.
BLM MIDDLEMAN STONEWALLS ON $6M MANSION PURCHASE: ‘I DON’T OWE YOU AN EXPLANATION’
BLM’s lack of financial and leadership transparency led CharityWatch executive Laurie Styron to describe the group to the Washington Examiner in January as a “giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction.”
BLM has yet to publicly announce who has been in charge of the group and its millions since its co-founder Patrisse Cullors resigned in May 2021 amid scrutiny of her personal real estate purchases. Cullors said when she left the charity that two activists would take over as senior executives, but both of the replacement executives quietly announced in September that they never took the jobs because of disagreements with the charity.
Despite past efforts, BLMGNF recognizes that there is more work to do to increase transparency and ensure transitions in leadership are clear.
— Black Lives Matter (@Blklivesmatter) April 11, 2022
News that longtime Clinton ally Minyon Moore had joined BLM’s board and that the law firm run by Democratic lawyer Marc Elias was in control of the group’s books hit the airwaves in February following reporting by the Washington Examiner.
And instead of disclosing what it did with the $90 million it raised in 2020, information that was originally due to the IRS in November, BLM revealed in February that it pulled an accounting maneuver that enabled it to further delay disclosure until May 15.
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BLM’s lack of transparency surrounding its 2020 finances prompted legal threats from California’s attorney general to hold the charity’s leaders personally liable if they don’t fork over information about its finances.
The group said it purchased its luxury $6 million Los Angeles mansion, which it called the “Creator House,” in October 2020 to provide a space for black artists to hone their crafts “as they see fit, under the conditions that best work for them and outside systems of oppression in creative industries.”
BLM provided a list of its recent accomplishments in its Twitter thread Monday, showing that BLM has done little with its millions since early 2021.
For example, BLM claimed Monday to have provided 3,000 microgrants of $1,000 each to black families “over the last several months,” a reference to a program that the charity closed on Feb. 26, 2021, just one day after it launched with fanfare by the Associated Press on Feb. 25, 2021.
BLM also claimed Monday to have granted over $25 million to black-led organizations around the world, a figure just $3.3 million greater than the $21.7 million the group claimed to have doled out to outside groups in a February 2021 report.
It’s not clear if the additional $3.3 million BLM granted after it published its February 2021 report relates to a mansion it helped BLM Canada purchase in Toronto months later in July 2021.
BLM boasted in its Twitter thread Monday that it garnered 60,000 signatures for a March 2022 petition in support of ending qualified immunity for police officers.
The group also claimed to have “worked to build support among policymakers for federal legislation like the BREATHE Act + the People’s Response Act,” and to support the claim BLM linked to a report in Vox that doesn’t identify the charity by name once.
In addition, BLM highlighted that it joined a conference call with other social justice groups in November 2021 to support Missouri Rep. Cori Bush’s People’s Response Act legislation.
The last accomplishment BLM listed in its statement Monday was a concert it hosted in March at the Miracle Theater in Inglewood. The charity partnered with an art firm run by the father of Cullors’s only child, Damon Turner, to put on the concert.
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BLM did not return requests for comment.
