Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation co-founder and executive director Patrisse Cullors, a self-identified “trained Marxist,” raked in upwards of $20,000 a month serving as the chairwoman of a Los Angeles jail reform group in 2019, according to campaign finance records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Reform LA Jails disbursed a total of $191,000 to Cullors in 2019 through her consulting firm, Janaya and Patrisse Consulting, according to financial records submitted to the California Fair Political Practices Commission. The description for each of the seven reported payments to the Cullors’s firm that year read: “P. Cullors, Principal Officer, Business Owner.”
“Our movement — powered by Black Lives Matter, community organizations, and grassroots citizens– collected over 247,000 signatures to put a measure on the LA County March 3, 2020, ballot,” the website states under a picture of Cullors.
Reform LA Jails told the DCNF that it paid Cullors through her consulting firm “market rate compensation for serving as the chief executive of a historic and successful $5 million dollar campaign in California, and far below when taking into consideration the fact that Ms. Cullors ran the campaign without a salary at all for all of 2018.”
“It is sexist and racist to expect an executive level Black woman to not be paid for their work,” the statement said.
The website for Janaya and Patrisse Consulting went offline sometime over the weekend amid reports of Cullors’s real estate buying spree, the DCNF previously reported.
On a page titled “how we help you succeed,” the firm said it provided “one on one coaching, anti-bias training, racial and gender justice training, long- and short-term consulting, media strategy and development, strategic planning, organizational development, creative content creation.”
“‘Freedom fighter’ Patrice [sic] Cullors and ‘staunch Afrofuturist’ Janaya Khan exploit their association with Black Lives Matter to monetize themselves…as capitalists,” Nomani tweeted.
“Patrisse has received a total of $120,000 since the organization’s inception in 2013, for duties such as serving as spokesperson and engaging in political education work,” the statement read. “To be abundantly clear, as a registered 501c3, [Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation] cannot and did not commit any organizational resources toward the purchase of personal property by any employee or volunteer. Any insinuation or assertion to the contrary is categorically false.”
It’s unclear if the corporate entity used to purchase the Los Angeles home is Janaya and Patrisse Consulting. Cullors did not return a request for comment.
“The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and [Alicia Garza] in particular are trained organizers,” Khan-Cullors said. “We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think that what we really tried to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many black folk.”
But the DCNF reported in June 2020 that BLM Global Network spent $4.5 million on consultants, travel and compensation for its staff from July 2017 through June 2019 while at the same time providing only $328,000 to outside groups such as the local autonomous BLM chapters.
And ten local BLM chapters accused BLM Global Network in November of providing “little to no financial support” to local chapters since the organization’s launch in 2013.
The local BLM chapters added that there is no acceptable transparency surrounding BLM Global Network’s finances.
“For years there has been inquiry regarding the financial operations of BLMGN and no acceptable process of either public or internal transparency about the unknown millions of dollars donated to BLMGN, which has certainly increased during this time of pandemic and rebellion,” the chapters said.
Cullors’s profile grew further in 2014 following the police-involved deaths of Michael Brown in Missouri, Eric Garner in New York, Tamir Rice in Ohio.
“We never hired them to be the representatives in the fight for justice for our dead loved ones murdered by the police,” Samaria Rice said in a joint statement with Lisa Simpson, the mother of Richard Risher, who was killed by police in Los Angeles in 2016.
“The ‘activists’ have events in our cities and have not given us anything substantial for using our loved ones’ images and names on their flyers,” Rice and Simpson said.
