In 2020, nearly $6 million that had been donated to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation was used to buy a Southern California house. Sean_Kev reports on how allies and critics alike have questioned where the organization’s money has gone
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty On a sunny day late last spring, three leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement — Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Melina Abdullah — sat around a table on the patio of an expensive house in Southern California. The women were recording a YouTube video to mark the first anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, and they discussed their racial-justice work and the difficulties they had faced over the year.
The transaction has not been previously reported, and Black Lives Matter’s leadership had hoped to keep the house’s existence a secret. Documents, emails, and other communications I’ve seen about the luxury property’s purchase and day-to-day operation suggest that it has been handled in ways that blur, or cross, boundaries between the charity and private companies owned by some of its leaders.
Even if everything about the house is above board, the general air of secrecy is out of step with the transparency that is expected of charitable or tax-exempt organizations. The size of the acquisition could expose the group to criticism. “That’s a very legitimate critique,” says Jacob Harold, a former CEO of GuideStar and the co-founder of Candid, an information service that reports on nonprofits.
On the secure-messaging platform Signal, in a text chat named “BLM Security Hub,” around two dozen participants from BLMGNF, Bowers Consulting, Janaya and Patrisse Consulting, and various other organizations and companies commingle. One conversation from June 2021 — after Cullors announced her resignation — concerns her assistant confronting a man who had been found snooping around the premises.
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