News/Commentary

BLM barrels toward insolvency, but still blew millions amid massive losses

May 24, 2023 | | Print Article

The official group behind Black Lives Matter is reportedly teetering toward insolvency after having lost oodles of money in 2022, though its top members and former members continue to reap a whirlwind of personal profit.

Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation ran a deficit of $8.5 million last year, according to financial disclosures reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. In addition to running a deficit, the group’s investment accounts hemorrhaged nearly $10 million.

“The group logged a $961,000 loss on a securities sale of $172,000, suggesting the charity weathered a staggering 85 percent loss on the transaction,” the Beacon notes.

Even its fundraising was down as more people became aware of the organization’s scammy nature.

“BLM raised just $9.3 million in its 2022 fiscal year, down 88 percent from its haul the year prior. Black Lives Matter was forced to shut off its online fundraising streams in February 2022 due to compliance and transparency issues in several liberal states. The group has blown through two-thirds of the $90 million it raised in the wake of George Floyd’s death in the summer of 2020,” according to the Beacon.

Despite these losses, BLM reportedly kept “doling out seven-figure contracts to friends and family of its former executive director Patrisse Cullors, who once said charity financial disclosures were ‘triggering’ and ‘deeply unsafe.'”

Of the total $90 million or so that it raised, roughly $12 million reportedly went toward luxury homes in the Los Angeles and Toronto areas.

In 2022 meanwhile, $10.5 million was reportedly spent on contractors, most of which were companies owned by Cullors and her friends/family.

“Cullors’s brother, Paul Cullors, made out especially well. A graffiti artist with no prior experience as a bodyguard, Paul Cullors and his two companies raked in $1.6 million providing ‘professional security services’ for Black Lives Matter in 2022. Paul Cullors was also one of BLM’s only two paid employees during the year, collecting a $126,000 salary as ‘head of security’ on top of his consulting fees,” the Beacon notes.

“Black Lives Matter disclosed last May it had paid Paul Cullors a comparatively meager $841,000 to protect the charity’s swanky $6 million Los Angeles mansion in its 2021 tax year, which Patrisse Cullors used to film herself baking peach cobblers. The charity told the Associated Press it could not entrust its security to the former police officers that staff typical private protection firms,” according to the Beacon.

Speaking with the conservative outlet, Paul Kamenar of the National Legal and Policy Center watchdog group said, “While Patrisse Cullors was forced to resign due to charges of using BLM’s funds for her personal use, it looks like she’s still keeping it all in the family.”

Cullors’ successor, Shalomyah Bowers, also benefitted mightily last year, reportedly earning himself $1.7 million for his management and consulting services company, Bowers Consulting.

His fellow BLMers haven’t been happy with his leadership. Black Lives Matter Grassroots, a former sister organization, even sued him, accusing him of having “blazing a path of irreparable harm to BLM” by treating BLM like his bank account.

“His actions have led [Black Lives Matter] into multiple investigations by the Internal Revenue Service and various state attorney generals. Instead of using the donations for its intended purposes, Mr. Bowers diverted these donations to his own coffers and intentionally took calculated steps to prevent those same resources from being used by BLM for on-the-ground movement work,” the suit reportedly reads.

Separately, Danielle Edwards, the sister of former Black Lives Matter board member Raymond Howard, also raked in the cash last year, earning $1.1 million for her consulting firm, New Impact Partners.

BLM reportedly also agreed to pay an additional $600,000 to an unnamed former board member’s consulting firm “in connection with a contract dispute,” according to additional records reviewed by the Beacon.

There is one major anomaly, though.

“Notably absent from Black Lives Matter’s 2022 tax return is any mention of Trap Heals, the art firm run by the father of Cullors’s only child, Damon Turner. BLM paid $969,000 to Trap Heals in 2021, and the two companies were identified as partners in press reports well into BLM’s 2022 tax year. Charities are only required to disclose the names of their five highest compensated independent contractors,” according to the Beacon.

“It’s unclear if Black Lives Matter paid out lucrative contracting fees to Cullors’s friends and family past June 2022. The charity brought on a new board of directors last summer led by nonprofit adviser Cicley Gay, who has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy three times since 2005,” the Beacon notes.

According to members of the public, the latest revelations about BLM’s finances only further prove that the organization is nothing but a scam:

Vivek Saxena
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