Washington Examiner: BLM charity has no office and no known director

Recently, Marxist Black Lives Matter co-founded Patrisse Cullors claimed that backlash over her home-buying spree last year was an actual attempt to get her assassinated. Cullors subsequently stepped down from leadership of the organization, in part for her own mental health. At the time she named two other activists who would be taking over as directors of the group.

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However, the Washington Examiner reports today that neither of those individuals ever started with BLM. As of September of last year, they both refused the position over unspecified disagreements. Months later, it’s not clear anyone is leading BLM.

“Like a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction,” CharityWatch Executive Director Laurie Styron said of BLM.

BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors appointed two activists to serve as the group’s senior directors following her resignation in May amid scrutiny over her personal finances. But both quietly announced in September that they never took the jobs due to disagreements with BLM. They told the Washington Examiner they don’t know who now leads the nation’s most influential social justice organization.

Paul Kamenar, counsel for conservative watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center, said a full audit and investigation into Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the legal entity that represents the national BLM movement, is warranted.

“This is grossly irregular and improper for a nonprofit with $60 million in its coffers,” Kamenar said.

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What the group does have, in addition to $60 million dollars, are two remaining board members. But one of them wouldn’t speak to the Washington Examiner and the other appeared to be hiding his connections to the group online.

Usually, information about a tax-exempt organization’s finances are made public each year when it fills out its 990 form. BLM’s 990 form to 2020 should have been submitted to the IRS by November 15, 2021. But the Washington Examiner wasn’t able to get a copy, not even when it went to the Los Angeles address listed on their 2019 form.

“Oh, they don’t have an office here,” said a security guard at the two-story cobalt blue building near downtown Los Angeles. “We get a lot of packages being dropped off for them, and we say to take the packages back because there is no Black Lives Matter here.”

The photo above is a Google street view image of the building where BLM allegedly had their office. According to a website for the building, it does have a mix of restaurants, shops and non-profit space but a page about those non-profits apparently hasn’t been updated since 2016. If BLM ever did have an office in the building, it never got advertised. A day after the Examiner attempted to find the office, they received an email:

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“In response to your request for a copy of Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s 2020 Form 990, we wish to inform you that at this time we do not maintain a permanent office,” the spokesperson wrote, offering to send the form by mail instead.

So no office, no director, and two board members who seem to be avoiding reporters. I wonder how much money BLM is still taking in every month as the charitable equivalent of a ghost ship. Maybe one of the networks or cable news outlets that helped BLM raise millions of dollars with hours of sympathetic coverage could bestir themselves to look into this?

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