How do you feel about BLMs multimillionaire CEO

[ajax18]

I put the last option in their just so I'd be able to participate in the poll, so most of you can feel free to ignore it since it doesn't apply to your political beliefs. But I am genuinely interested to know how those of you on the left, especially those who donated and marched, feel about this money going to make Patrice Cullors a millionaire, at least under the table.

[Kukulkan]

I think most everyone will agree the misuse of any funds is not a good thing. I am curious to know ajax, what are your thoughts on the illegal use of funds by the Trump Foundation?

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/j ... foundation

NEW YORK — A New York judge ordered President Donald Trump to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit alleging he misused his charitable foundation to further his political and business interests.

[ajax18]

I think most everyone will agree the misuse of any funds is not a good thing.

Well let's see what the survey says. Would ypu define what Patrice Cullors is doing as misuse?

I am curious to know ajax, what are your thoughts on the illegal use of funds by the Trump Foundation?

Is the Trump foundation a not for profit tax exempt organization?

[Binger]

I think most everyone will agree the misuse of any funds is not a good thing. I am curious to know ajax, what are your thoughts on the illegal use of funds by the Trump Foundation?

Thank you for mentioning this, Kukulkan. Perhaps we could have a poll on this so all of us can vote on what about what Trump did which pretty much makes the OP not liberally or literally relevant. Thanks for looking out for us.

[Kukulkan]

Well let's see what the survey says. Would ypu define what Patrice Cullors is doing as misuse?

Absolutely. People donated with the assumption the funds would go to combating racism, injustice, etc. What Patrice Cullors did with the money donated to the BLM org was most definitely misuse of the funds.

Is the Trump foundation a not for profit tax exempt organization?

Not sure the relevance of what type of org it is. The point I am making is that you seem to very honed in on the misuse of funds on one side of the aisle. Will you acknowledge and call out the misuse of funds no matter the political aisle it may fall on?

[Kukulkan]

Thank you for mentioning this, Kukulkan. Perhaps we could have a poll on this so all of us can vote on what about what Trump did which pretty much makes the OP not liberally or literally relevant. Thanks for looking out for us.

No problem buddy

[ajax18]

It seems like there is one standard for Republicans in the IRS, Justice Department, and pretty much the entire deep state and a different one for Democrats. Let's compare what happens with Cullors to Tea Party donors under Lois Lerner.

I couldn't write my Trump donations off on my taxes. Can you write BLM donations off on ypur taxes?

But no I'd give money to Steve Bannon tomorrow if I thought it might help get the border wall built. And I seriously doubt Cullors will go to jail over it like Bannon, Michael Flynn, or D'Nesh Dsouza.

[K Graham]

So one woman who was one of three co-founders of the first BLM, is somehow engaged in legal shenanigans? The only double standard I see here is with people like ajax, who only care about this issue because it is a black woman making the money and not one of their preferred white con artists (i.e. Trump).

But just like they do with Hunter Biden, they jump to conclusions without proof because the only thing that matters to them is the conclusion that gives them warm fuzzies by reinforcing their racist stereotyping of black people always stealing or getting money for doing no work. The fact that this black woman works hard and makes more money than ajax just pisses him off the same way it pisses off all those Marlboro smoking hicks who whine about Mexicans taking their drywall jobs.

Let's see what a legit news outlet has to say about all this:

Earlier this month, Los Angeles native Patrisse Cullors, one of three activists who cofounded Black Lives Matter in 2013, became the unlikely subject of a profile on the celeb-centric real estate news website Dirt.com. Alongside photo-heavy—and envy-inducing—articles about Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s “lavish Encino mansion” and Awkwafina’s “slick Bel-Air contemporary,” was a piece about the activist-artist-professor’s “Topanga Canyon compound,” which she reportedly purchased for $1.4 million.

The article spawned outrage in the right wing meme-osphere, where people began claiming without evidence that she was siphoning BLM donations to fund her extravagant lifestyle (not that $1.4 million exactly buys extravagance in L.A. anymore).

The scrutiny intensified on April 10, when the New York Post ran a story detailing several properties Cullors owns with her spouse, BLM Canada cofounder Janaya Khan. The piece chronicles what it calls a “real estate buying binge” that includes four homes purchased over the course of five years: a three-bed, one-and-a-half-bath Inglewood home for $510,000 in 2016; a four-bedroom residence in South L.A. for $590,000 in 2018; a three-bed home on several acres in the Atlanta suburb of Conyers for $415,000 in 2020; and, most recently, the Topanga “compound” that was the subject of the Dirt.com story.

The Post‘s article questioned how much Cullors was making from the activist organization she cofounded—Black Lives Matter Global Network later disclosed that she’s made $120,000 for her work since 2013—but the movement certainly isn’t her only source of income. In 2018, Cullors published the best-selling book, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, and just last fall she signed an overall production deal with Warner Bros. Television Group. As an associate faculty of social environmental arts practice at Arizona’s Prescott College, Cullors also earns money as a speaker and panelist.

Cullors’s compensation for her memoir and the Warner Bros. deal are also unknown. But, according to Bookscan, the company that tracks book sales figures, the paperback alone of When They Call You a Terrorist has sold 27,878 copies. Since that figure represents only about 60 percent of total sales, the actual number of books sold is closer to 50,000.

Publishing insiders described Cullors’s 2016 book deal with St. Martin’s Press as “major,” which one top literary agent tells Los Angeles is industry code for an advance of “anywhere from $500,000 to $1 million.” Likewise, while the Warner Bros. payday was undisclosed, the agent estimates it also brought in $500,000 to seven figures, which doesn’t include any projects Janaya Kahn—who signed with CAA in July—may be working on.

“All in all, it certainly seems reasonable that she’d have income from these deals of at least a million the last couple years,” the agent says. “And as anyone who has ever bought a house knows, you generally only have to put down ten percent. So while BLM could be generating tons of money for her, based on this information it could be generating zero and she’d still have the money to do what she’s done.”

On Instagram this week, Cullors dismissed the coverage as a white supremacist effort to discredit her and the BLM movement, even to put her in harm’s way by revealing where she lives. In an opinion piece in Cullors’s defense, fellow activist and Los Angeles contributor Jasmyne Cannick wrote, “Nowhere is it written that if you care about and fight for Black lives that you have to live in squalor and poverty. That you are not allowed to get educated and move up in the world.”

She added, “In all of the chatter about what Patrisse is doing, what’s not being talked about is the fact that she actually works. That she has jobs. Jobs that pay her and just like you or me would do, she’s investing her money and taking care of her family.”

Still, Cullors has continued to field questions about her socialist bona fides. In an April 15 interview with Black News Tonight, reporter Marc Lamont Hill asked if the homes represent “a contradiction between your expressed politics and your lived practice.” Cullors called the critique “wanting,” and said her investment in her family is in line with her investment in Black people.

“The way that I live my life is in direct support to Black people, including my Black family members, first and foremost,” she told Hill. “And, for so many Black folks who are able to invest in themselves and their community, they choose to invest in their families, and that’s what I have chosen to do. I have a child, I have a brother with severe mental illness that I take care of, I support my mother, and I support many other family members of mine. And so I see my money as not my own, I see it as my family’s money as well.”

[deleted, FR2, RI]

[Kukulkan]

It seems like there is one standard for Republicans in the IRS, Justice Department, and pretty much the entire deep state and a different one for Democrats. Let's compare what happens with Cullors to Tea Party donors under Lois Lerner.

I couldn't write my Trump donations off on my taxes. Can you write BLM donations off on ypur taxes?

You seem to want to go into specifics. Can we have a big picture discussion? I am not necessarily concerned on the specifics of the type of organization that BLM is or the Trump Foundation. What I am concerned with is the misuse of funds when they are donated.

I think we have both established that the actions of Cullors would constitute misuse of funds. The Trump Foundation was ordered to pay 2 million dollars because it was found they misused funds as well. In order to have a productive discussion, we need to establish that you are discussing in good faith. I need to see from you that you truly are concerned with combating the misuse of funds no matter the organization it may occur in. If I cannot establish that base line with you, I don't think you can expect to have productive discussions.

But no I'd give money to Steve Bannon tomorrow if I thought it might help get the border wall built. And I seriously doubt Cullors will go to jail over it like Bannon, Michael Flynn, or D'Nesh Dsouza.

So you do think the Trump Foundation misused funds but you would still donate or you don't think they misused funds at all?

[K Graham]

In a statement sent to Snopes by email, BLMGNF directly denied the allegation that Cullors had used donation money to buy the Topanga Canyon home, or any other personal property:

"To be abundantly clear, as a registered 501c3, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation cannot and did not commit any organizational resources toward the purchase of personal property by any employee or volunteer. Any insinuation or assertion to the contrary is categorically false."

Ajax's three choices appear to be idiot driven and loaded questions.