New York magazine reports on the latest financial scandal involving Black Lives Matter:
By Sean Campbell
APR. 4, 2022
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.
“For me, the hardest moments have been the right-wing-media machine just leveraging literally all its weight against me, against our movement, against BLM the organization,” Cullors said. “I’m some weeks out now from a lot of the noise, so I have more perspective, right? While I was in it, I was in survival mode.” She was referring to an April 2021 article in the New York Post that revealed her purchase of four homes for nearly $3 million. The disclosures had contributed to the idea that there is a disturbing gap between the fortunes of the movement’s most visible figures and on-the-ground activists across the country, and Cullors resigned as executive director of Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation on May 27, within a few days of the patio chat.
“I think they’ve attempted to cancel us, but they have not been successful in canceling us,” Abdullah said at another point in the conversation. “They’ve attempted to say — and I’m just gonna say it — ‘She bought some damn houses. We gonna cancel her.’” Garza cut in with a comment seemingly addressed to critics: “Y’all don’t know shit about what it takes to live in a box here.”
None of the women acknowledged the house behind them. It’s far from a box, with more than 6,500 square feet, more than half a dozen bedrooms and bathrooms, several fireplaces, a soundstage, a pool and bungalow, and parking for more than 20 cars, according to real-estate listings. The California property was purchased for nearly $6 million in cash in October 2020 with money that had been donated to BLMGNF.
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. It creates the impression that money donated to the cause of racial justice has been spent in ways that benefit the leaders of Black Lives Matter personally.
I’m pretty sure I’ve been to this BLM house on the San Fernando Valley–side of Laurel Canyon Blvd. to drop somebody off for a birthday party many years ago. If it’s the house I’m thinking of, it used to be rented out for kids’ birthday parties. It has a big parking lot out front where most houses would have a lawn.
I walked past it on the other side of Laurel Canyon a couple of weekends ago after hiking up to Mulholland Drive and back down Fryman Canyon. The Valley side of Laurel Canyon is a less terrible street to live on than the famous West Hollywood side of music and conspiracy theory legend, where many residents have to risk their lives every morning backing out of their garages onto the jammed winding road.
The BLM lady who buys all these houses, Patrisse Cullors, is a Valley Girl from Van Nuys. She attended Millikan Junior High, where I went for summer school. That’s why she bought a house in bucolic Topanga Canyon: that’s what a Valley Girl/Guy who suddenly comes into a windfall of unearned cash might do.
On March 30, I asked the organization questions about the house, which is known internally as “Campus.” Afterward, leaders circulated an internal strategy memo with possible responses, ranging from “Can we kill the story?” to “Our angle — needs to be to deflate ownership of the property.” The memo includes bullet points explaining that “Campus is part of cultural arm of the org — potentially as an ‘influencer house,’ where abolition+ based content is produced by artists & creatives.” Another bullet is headed “Accounting/990 modifications” and reads in part: “need to first make sure it’s legally okay to use as we plan to use it.” The memo also describes the property as a “safehouse” for leaders whose safety has been threatened. The two notions — that the house is simultaneously a confidential refuge and a place for broadcasting to the widest possible audience — are somewhat in tension. The memo notes: “Holes in security story: Use in public YT videos.”
Black people just really love luxury and showing off their enjoyment of luxury. That’s perfectly natural, but it does conflict with being oppressed.
From the New York Post:
The house was [first] purchased by Dyane Pascall, a real estate developer who worked for Janaya and Patrisse Consulting, a for-profit firm run by BLMGNF co-founder Patrisse Cullors and her partner Janaya Khan.
On October 21, 2020, property records show that Pascall bought the mansion from televangelists Shawn and Cherie Bolz. The sale price for both parcels of land was $3.1 million, Shawn Bolz told The Post Tuesday.
Pascall purchased the property two weeks after the California Attorney General approved a $65 million transfer from Thousand Currents, the charity which collected donations on behalf of BLMGNF. The group has delayed its reporting to the IRS, and not yet disclosed where that money has gone.
Two days after the purchase, on October 23, lawyers for the Democratic law firm Perkins Coie incorporated a limited liability company (LLC) in Delaware named for the mansion’s address. Four days later — on October 27 — the home was transferred to the company for $5.8 million, records show.
Well, that’s interesting.
On the other hand, the market is ridiculous. Zillow says the house is currently worth $5.6 million. Zillow says it was listed for sale on 9/16/2020 for $5,888,000, then it sold on 9/29/2020 for $3,130,000 (presumably to Cullors’ underling), then it resold on 10/27/2020 for $5,888,800 (to BLM). That sounds weird.
So, I wouldn’t be too confident that the NY Post got every detail right.
Keep in mind that the BLM organization aren’t masterminds the way that, say, Morris Dees built the SPLC step by step via his junk mail genius. They are just three ladies who, amongst them, managed to come up with the #blacklivesmatter hashtag. And ever since, especially after the Racial Reckoning was declared following 5/25/20, the Establishment has been raining vast amounts of cash on them.
