BLM foundation executive director is leaving
A co-founder of Black Lives Matter announced Thursday that she is stepping down as executive director of the movement’s foundation.
She decried what she called a smear campaign, but said neither that nor recent criticism from other Black organizers influenced her departure.
Patrisse Cullors, who has been at the helm of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation for nearly six years, said she is leaving to focus on other projects, including the upcoming release of her second book and a multi-year TV development deal with Warner Bros. Her last day with the foundation is Friday.
“I’ve created the infrastructure and the support, and the necessary bones and foundation, so that I can leave,” Cullors said. “It feels like the time is right.”
Cullors’ departure comes on the heels of controversy over the foundation’s finances and over Cullors’ personal wealth.
The 37-year-old activist said her resignation has been in the works for more than a year and has nothing to do with any dissension within the movement.
“Those were right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character, and I don’t operate off of what the right thinks about me,” Cullors said.
As she departs, the foundation is bringing aboard two new interim senior executives to help steer it in the immediate future: Monifa Bandele, a longtime BLM organizer and founder of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in New York City, and Makani Themba, an early backer of the BLM movement and chief strategist at Higher Ground Change Strategies in Jackson, Mississippi.
The BLM foundation revealed to the AP in February that it took in just over $90 million last year. The foundation said it ended 2020 with a balance of more than $60 million.
Critics of the foundation contend more of that money should have gone to the families of Black victims of police brutality who have been unable to access the resources needed to deal with their trauma and loss.