Black Lives Matter Continues To Harm America, Money Problems Aside

COMMENTARY Progressivism

Black Lives Matter Continues To Harm America, Money Problems Aside

Feb 7, 2022 2 min read
COMMENTARY BY
Mike Gonzalez

Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow

Mike is the Angeles T. Arredondo E Pluribus Unum Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
It's unknown who controls the $60 million in BLM's coffers after BLM co-founder, Patrisse Cullors, pictured here on January 28, 2019 in Park City, Utah, stepped down. Ilya S. Savenok / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

We now know the main Black Lives Matter organization remains leaderless and refuses to account for more than $60 million.

The push to reprogram children with Marxist dogma is unlikely to end the recent reports, as they are unlikely to get much media attention.

This BLM legacy may not convince the media to look at what is happening with BLM GNF, but perhaps our leaders should sit up and take note.

Thanks to stellar reporting by the Washington Examiner, we now know the main Black Lives Matter organization remains leaderless and refuses to account for more than $60 million. Yet, in many ways, the group has never had more impact. For example, its educational partner began its annual Week of Action on Monday.

Unfortunately, thousands of people continue to suffer from the mayhem BLM has created. Indeed, the United States has changed in deep ways since the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, BLM’s mother ship, helped traumatize cities and suburbs with riots in 2020. The leftist indoctrination that followed at schools nationwide by groups such as BLM GNF’s educational associate, BLM at Schools, troubled parents so much that it galvanized them to start pushing back.

>>> More COVID School Closures Spell the End of Teachers Unions Empire

The push to reprogram children with Marxist dogma is unlikely to end the recent reports, as they are unlikely to get much media attention. You can read the details here .

Still, the challenge is real.

The Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action is a case in point.

Children in school districts nationwide are being introduced to BLM’s race- and sex-based creed. That indoctrination takes place year-round, but it is most intensive this week. The BLM At School’s website says, innocently enough, that it is "organizing for social justice in education." But then it starts with a quote from BLM lodestar Assata Shakur, the communist police killer on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Shakur is holed up in Havana. The quote by Shakur, also known by her birth name Joanne Chesimard, ends with the line, "We have nothing to lose but our chains," which comes straight from the Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848.

BLM At School’s 13 Guiding Principles includes "Globalism" and being "Queer Affirming" and "Trans Affirming." It also keeps BLM’s commitment "to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure," another principle borrowed from Marx’s Manifesto. Chapters of BLM GNF took down this principle after Andrew Olivastro and I drew attention to it in 2020—the Los Angeles chapter , for example, only has 12 principles—but the educational branch maintains it with pride.

Then there's BLM's impact on the streets.

>>> Parents Have Every Right to Be Involved in Their Children’s Education

Two recent studies, one published in the February issue of the Journal of Public Economics and another in December by a researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California, found that police reduced proactive practices in cities hit by BLM violence. This is known as the "Ferguson Effect" because it tracks rises in criminality in cities hit with BLM violence after the police killing of Michael Brown in 2014.

This BLM legacy may not convince the media to look at what is happening with BLM GNF, but perhaps our leaders should sit up and take note.

This piece originally appeared in the Washington Examiner