Black Lives Matter needs to get its (real expensive) house in order

Ever since Black Lives Matter became a rallying cry in 2014, Black people knew that the movement could not afford to slip up. Eight years and more than $90 million in donations later, BLM’s national leadership has made a $6 million stumble.

Sean Campbell, writing last week in New York magazine’s online Intelligencer, reported that in 2020, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation secretly purchased a $6 million, 6,500-square-foot mansion near Malibu, Calif., using donated funds. According to memos quoted in the report, the foundation’s leaders settled on a tactic of describing the mansion as both a “safehouse” and a place providing “recording resources and dedicated space for Black creatives to launch content online and in real life focused on abolition, healing justice, urban agriculture and food justice, pop culture, activism, and politics.” Huh?

As the Intelligencer report noted, little content had been produced since the house was procured in October 2020, save a few videos that Patrisse Cullors, former executive director of the foundation, filmed there.

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