The fund raised just over $9 million in fiscal 2022, up from more than $80 million a year earlier, according to Fox News. Money flowed into the fund amid aggressive Black Lives Matter (BLM) activism that swept America three years ago following the death of black George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer on May 25 2020 of the year.
The reasons for such a reduction in funding from the fund are not named, but in general this is not surprising. The problems of the BLM movement were created both by the leaders of the foundation of the same name, who abused finances on a large scale, and by the controversial results of activism.
The problems of the BLM movement were created both by the leaders of the foundation of the same name, who misused finances on a large scale, and by the controversial results of activism
It turned out that the leaders of this fund (by the way, all black) were enterprisingly chic at the expense of generous donations sent by Americans who believed in the slogans of the fight against racial discrimination. The Free Beacon news resource, which conducted a journalistic investigation into the case, found that the BLM movement was using this “tailwind for personal enrichment and the purchase of real estate”.
For example, the movement’s founder, Patrice Cullors, acquired four properties at a time worth a total of $3.2 million in a matter of months, scattered across America – from the state of Georgia on the Atlantic to the State of California on the Pacific. Additionally, Kallors, who said she doesn’t trust police and security companies where former law enforcement officers work, hired her brother as a security guard, who, despite the lack of experience in this matter, paid 840 thousand dollars for the year .
Other members of the Cullors family also received six-figure payments for various services. Another board member of the BLM fund withdrew millions of dollars there under the guise of paying for the services of his own law firm. In addition, the fund acquired two luxury mansions for $12 million – one near Los Angeles, California, and the other in Toronto, Canada. All under cover of a grant for “education and support in black population areas”. As the New York Times calculated, all of this took up almost half of the money raised in the fund’s first year. After all of these simple financial tricks became public knowledge, several states even banned BLM fund contributions in their jurisdictions.
But the personal machinations of BLM leaders pale in comparison to its public legacy. The good goal of combating racial discrimination, which does exist in the United States, has become the victim of political games. After the events of 2020, authorities in some liberal states and cities, flirting with the riot activists who kept the whole country in fear, continued their demands for the reduction or complete disbandment of local police departments. Law enforcement officers have been accused of excessive cruelty and bias against black people. Everywhere and publicly, police – sometimes willingly, sometimes forcefully – knelt before black people in repentance. As a result, the once prestigious profession of policing in the United States has rapidly lost its appeal. As The New York Times pointed out today, many police departments across the country still cannot make up for the loss of personnel that occurred after 2020.
The leadership of the BLM movement has lived on a large scale thanks to donations: the foundation bought this mansion in Los Angeles for 6 million dollars. Photo: Social networks
But against this background, in America over the past two years, a sharp increase in crime has been recorded, mainly with the use of firearms. The MSNBC television network states that mass shootings (as in the United States they call cases of shootings in public places with 4 or more victims) “have become the new normal”. To confirm, the TV channel quoted media headlines from different regions late last week: three such crimes were recorded across the country on Thursday, one Friday, six on Saturday and four more on Sunday. And these are just mass incidents, and the number of incidents with fewer casualties is even higher. Suddenly, according to sociologists from MSNBC, Americans now call the country’s main problem precisely violence with a gunshot, which even bypassed covid and oncology in the opinion poll.
One evil irony about those Democratic Party politicians following the lead of activists who criticized the police was an incident in October last year. The house of Nancy Pelosi, who was then the third person in the hierarchy of the American state – the speaker of the House of Representatives, was attacked by criminals. Pelosi turned his back on the cops and cheered on anti-discrimination activists in 2020 for political points. Today, these slogans in the ranks of the Democratic Party are trying to be forgotten.
Read the Latest Science and Technology News Today on The Eastern Herald.
