‘White guilt’ windfall: BLM
Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors said that when $90 million in “white guilt money” came pouring into the organization’s coffers after the murder of George Floyd, the group had no infrastructure in place to handle the flood of cash — and now the mistakes made are being “weaponized” against her.
“I’m a human being that has made mistakes that want to change, want to challenge those mistakes and want to learn from those mistakes,” Cullors (inset) told the host of MSNBC’s “Into America” podcast Monday. “And I think what’s been hard is feeling like there isn’t room and space for that.”
The beleaguered former executive director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation also addressed allegations that she had personally benefited from the donations by purchasing homes for herself, including a $6 million property in Los Angeles, which included a seven-bedroom mansion.
“This was an investment,” she said. “It’s not my personal real estate. It’s not Patrisse Cullors’ real estate, it’s the organization’s real estate.”
Cullors said the house was to be used as a “media creation space” for BLM and also as a safe house for activists, but she said the organization decided to stay mum about the true purpose of the mansion out of fear that the right-wing media would jeopardize the safety of those associated with the movement.
“The minute we shared the information with the public . . . the right-wing media would do what they always do and they always did,” she said. “Because the right-wing media doesn’t have any sense or care for people’s security or safety.”
Cullors’ interview was uploaded the same day it was reported by The Post that rapper and entrepreneur Damon Turner, the father of her youngest child, was paid almost five times the amount BLM paid to the Trayvon Martin Foundation.
According to the group’s latest filing with the IRS, Cullors paid Turner’s company $969,459 for production, design and media services in fiscal year 2020.
An additional $840,000 went to a security company owned by Cullors’ brother.
Cullors resigned from the organization a month after The Post revealed that she went on a $3.2 million real estate buying spree. Cullors denied that the money used to buy residential properties in Georgia and California came from the charity.
Black Lives Matter was founded by Cullors, Alicia
Garza and Ayo Tometi in 2013 as a charity honoring the memory of Martin, the unarmed black teen who was killed by George Zimmerman in 2012.
After Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin, BLM found itself on the receiving end of millions of dollars in donations.
“It was a major shock,” Cullors said of the sudden influx of cash. “That was a lot of white guilt money. There’s a lot of white folks being like, ‘We just got to put the money.’ ”