Miranda Devine: Time running out for Black Lives Matter movement

Closer scrutiny of movements such as Black Lives Matter is revealing a trail of misused funds and may lead to some accountability for those involved, writes Miranda Devine.

After all the riots, all the death and destruction across America in 2020, at last Black Lives Matter is starting to get its comeuppance.

Of course, all the woke corporates that sunk millions of dollars in protection money into the neo-Marxist outfit will never admit their reckless stupidity helped fuel the racial unrest.

But at least now BLM is being exposed for what it was from the start, a cynical grift.

The non-profit is coming under fire from various US state governments for still not having filed taxes for 2020, when it raked in almost $US100 million, cashing in on the death of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of police in Minneapolis.

Co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement Patrisse Cullors-Khan. Picture: AAP Image/Joel Carrett

BLM’s co-founder, Patrisse Cullors-Khan, went on a personal real estate buying spree last year, buying several lavish properties in Georgia and Los Angeles worth more than $3 million, as the New York Post reported.

Millions more of BLM funds were sent to Canadian non-profit M4BJ, which conveniently is run by Cullors-Khan’s spouse.

Cullors-Khan resigned from BLM in May 2021, soon after the Post story, leaving the organisation with no one in charge of all the remaining money, believed to be $60 million. As for the other $30 million, no one knows for sure where it went.

In an article titled “The BLM Mystery: where did the money go?” New York magazine quotes activists who complain BLM gave very little financial support to their organisations or to the families of black people killed by police.

Illustration: Terry Pontikos

The situation is so bad the states of Indiana, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia have all revoked the charitable registration of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation.

California’s Department of Justice issued a warned to BLM leadership, not that anyone is left, that they will be held “personally liable” for any fines.

The state of Washington ordered BLM to stop soliciting funds until it provides information about its 2020 finances.

“It appears that the house of cards may be falling, and this happens eventually with nearly every scam, scheme, or illegal enterprise,” Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita said of BLM last week, promising to “get to the bottom of it one way or the other’’.

“A lot of this money is from woke corporations. You know, they get what they deserve. But even those woke corporations have shareholders … and they’ve got to be focused on making a return for us, and not this social gobbledygook that leads us nowhere.”

A protester stands in front of a burning building set on fire during a demonstration in Minnesota over the death of George Floyd. Picture: Chandan Khanna/AFP

America’s two-tiered justice system is never so obvious than when you compare the treatment of BLM/Antifa rioters who went so far as to set a police station on fire, to the January 6 rioters at the Capitol, many of whom are not charged with violent offences, but still languish in jail without trial, more than a year later.

BLM Rioter Mohamed Hussein Abdi, for instance, who tried to set fire to a high school in Minneapolis during the 2020 riots, has just been sentenced to probation.

BLM rioter Montez Terriel Lee was sentenced last week to 10 years in jail for burning down a pawn shop in Minneapolis and killing a 30-year-old man inside.

The lenient sentence raised concerns that participation in a riot is cause for a reduced sentence for violent crime.

Meantime, the after-effects of the riots sparked by BLM and exacerbated by Antifa continue to drive soaring homicide rates, crime and disorder and the demonisation and demoralisation of cops across the country.

The United States murder rate is now almost the highest it has been in 25 years,

Six NYPD officers were shot in the first five weeks of this year, a catastrophe that is the inevitable consequence of the orchestrated nationwide anti-cop riots of 2020. Two cops, Wilbert Mora, 27, and Jason Rivera, 22, were fatally shot.

“How many Wilberts? How many Jasons?” Mora’s sister Karina asked the congregation gathered at St Patrick’s Cathedral during the funeral for her brother, attended by thousands of police officers who filled Fifth Avenue for ten blocks outside.

“How many officers must lose their lives so that this system changes? How many more lives of those who protect us will be taken by violence and crime? How many mothers? How many mothers, how many sons will have to lose their families, to go through this trauma and this type of tragedy?”

Yes, how many?

New York police officers gather for the funeral of NYPD officer Wilbert Mora. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP

BLM activists seized on community concern over Floyd’s death to press a sinister race-baiting, anti-law enforcement agenda.

Democrats, right up to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, pandered to the activists for base political advantage at the 2020 election.

President Biden flew into New York to offer new Mayor Eric Adams solutions to the law-and-order crisis in the Big Apple last week but it’s a crisis he helped create.

By indulging the Defund Police/Abolish Prisons/Open Border bully fringe of his party, he helped create a climate hostile to policing, in which criminals rampage with impunity, brave cops like Mora and Rivera are sacrificed and the poorest neighborhoods are left unprotected.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki summed up the breezy attitude of the administration toward Americans worried about skyrocketing crime.

“Soft on crime... what does that even mean?” she laughed in an interview, mocking Fox News for reporting on crime, unlike, she said, CNN and MSNBC which are focused on the administration’s favoured narratives.

“There’s an alternate universe… what’s scary about that is a lot of people watch that”.

Tell that to the thousands of extra victims of crime and their grieving families who would have been spared if not for the insanity whipped up by a group of alleged scam artists.

Miranda Devine is in New York to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph