After George Floyd was unarmed and shot by Minneapolis police officers in May 2020. Donations poured in to Black Lives Matter (BLM), from those who believed that they were financing racial injustice initiatives and helping to make bad-actor cops responsible for their violence.
Certain donations are appreciated. Did Go towards that. However, $6 million was used to purchase a house of 6,500 feet in Southern California with a pool.
It gets worse: New York Post Report on Black Lives Matter’s Organizational Malfeasances, Facebook censoredThe story. Meta, the owner of Facebook, has declared that the content is “abusive.”
Black Lives Matter raised $66.5million from donors in October 2020. Later that same month, a man named Dyane Pascall—the financial manager for BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors’ consulting firm—bought the $6 million house. Sean Campbell reports that Perkins Coie, the Delaware law firm Perkins Coie, transferred the ownership of the house from Pascall. IntelligencerThe “ensuring that the final identity of property’s new owners was not revealed to the public”
Since then, the house’s raison d’etre has been…somewhat unclear. It serves as a sort of secure location—providing high-ranking members of the organization a place to sleep when they need it—but also a place to record content for posting on social media, both for the BLM account and for Cullors’ own projects (like a peach cobbler cooking video, notes Intelligencer).
Campbell has more:
The house is internally known as Campus. I asked questions to the group on March 30. After I asked the organization questions about Campus, they circulated an intern strategy memo that included possible answers. These responses ranged from “Can it kill this story?” to “Our angle — needs to be to deflate ownership of the property.” The memo includes bullet points explaining that “Campus is part of cultural arm of the org — potentially as an ‘influencer house,’ where abolition+ based content is produced by artists & creatives.” A bullet titled “Accounting/990 Modifications” reads: “First, make sure that it is legal to use as we intend to use it.” A memo describes the property also as a “safehouse”, for those leaders who have been endangered. The two notions — that the house is simultaneously a confidential refuge and a place for broadcasting to the widest possible audience — are somewhat in tension. Note in the memo: “Holes In Security Story: Use in Public YT Videos.”
Although technically, none of these actions are illegal. However, it’s a bad idea if you want donors to trust your money won’t be used for personal gain by the founders. Both these reports can be found here. Intelligencer The New York PostThis is especially concerning given that the organization’s leaders are already being scrutinized for excessive spending. Prior investigation revealed that Cullors had a slew of real estate assets worth at least $3.2million. New York Post Facebook removed the article from its website and made it unreadable.
This is not the first instance of this. Post Facebook’s overlords have been repelled. In February 2020, the publication ran one of the earliest pieces introducing the theory to U.S. audiences that the coronavirus may have been the result of a lab leak—a theory that became popular in May 2021, with The New York Times, The New YorkerPlease see the following: Atlantic It was running articles that took the theory seriously. One that has not been discredit since months later.
Facebook fact-checkers found the Post‘s reporting untrue, but reversed the ban on sharing man-made lab leak information in…May 2021.
In October 2020, the following will be followed by Post Twitter banned Hunter Biden from publishing a report about his laptop. Facebook also took measures to restrict the spread of the report. This happened just last month. The New York Times The initial report was confirmed by the Biden laptop’s own reporter. (Former chief Jack Dorsey said in November 2020 Twitter’s decision was wrong and he reiterated his strong commitment to free expression principles at congressional hearings months later. But, Twitter continues to be the focus of controversy over content moderation.
This is not a matter of principle. It is!It is also the fact that the censors They are often incorrect and uncoordinated. When they try to determine what is true or false. Although private companies such as Twitter or Facebook/Meta are free to set their content moderation policies at will, it is easy to spot patterns in the people and things they decide to ban. Not all information is wrong. It is just embarrassing to political causes, or complicating a dominant narrative.
It is not clear why a 6,500-square foot, $6 million house would be necessary to bring about justice for African Americans and end police brutality. Facebook may not want this information to be hidden from users unless they see its role in obscuring credible journalism that is damning to their political allies.