The artist formerly known as Kanye West has endured sustained criticism ever since debuting his “White Lives Matter” t-shirt design at his YZY SZN 9 presentation in Paris earlier this month, not only outfitting his models with the garment but posing with the design with noted conservative firebrand Candace Owens. In response to the initial backlash over his sartorial decisions, Ye took to Instagram Stories to address the backlash, posting: “Everyone knows that Black Lives Matter was a scam. Now It’s Over. You’re Welcome.”
What Ye is referring to is the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation – which, according to its original three founders (Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garza) began with a Facebook post and digital presence, building the framework for a radical, anti-capitalist, leaderless platform that would begin to mobilize and expand after Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson, Missouri.
Reeling from the viral videos circulating throughout multimedia platforms of the militarized police force confronting St. Louis organizers, Patrisse Cullors and Darnell Moore collaborated on the Black Lives Matter Freedom Ride, bringing over 600 people on 18-hour charter bus trips. BLM would go on to operationalize over 30 chapters across the country, a network unified by a common cause yet empowered to organize for matters specific to their locale.
Fast forward to 2020, and “Black Lives Matter” became comprehensive phrasing for any and all organizing work in respect to the fight for any part of Black liberation, whether it be reformist or radical or not in any way associated with the efforts of BLMGNF. It was a mantra and rallying cry at protests, and it became a shorthand for media packages in the midst of the uprising after George Floyd’s murder.
The fury of young organizers in Minneapolis, which expanded nationally (and then globally), became attributed to the “Black Lives Matter Movement” – a distinction that would be useful if it were applied in practice. The corporate support in the months after Floyd’s murder poured into BLMGNF: in 2020, tax filings report the organization received over $90 million. The organization formally became an independent nonprofit that year, with Cullors announcing that she would be stepping into an executive director position in July.
The individual chapters of BLM and other affiliates, however, had long been ringing alarm bells. Notably, Ferguson and the greater St. Louis area, which was touted as the birthplace of the BLM movement, was never part of that network. “I think about all the people in St. Louis who were outside who don’t have any of the access to any of those resources,” Johnetta Elzie, a notable organizer and native to the St. Louis area, points out. “So there’s like, all these opportunities that came to be for the professionals who have hopped on that bus and came to St. Louis and never did anything to like, share.”
On Nov. 30, 2020, a highly publicized statement went out criticizing the umbrella organization, signed by 10 individual chapters. “Despite years of effort, no acceptable internal process of accountability has ever been produced by BLMGN and these recent events have undermined the efforts of chapters seeking to democratize its processes and resources. In the spirit of transparency, accountability, and responsibility to our community, we believe public accountability has become necessary,” the statement read. “As we collectively determine next steps, we encourage our supporters to donate directly to chapters, who represent the frontline of Black Lives Matter.”
Later, mothers of slain victims of police violence Samaria Rice and Lisa Simpson would put out a statement listing the BLM Global Network and Cullors alongside the list of leaders they would like to “stop monopolizing and capitalizing our fight for justice and human rights.”
It would be disingenuous to imply that there were no allies whatsoever during this time period for the organization. Trayvon Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, honored the trio in 2020 for the Time 100. Writer Adrienne Maree Brown published a statement on her blog in support of Cullors after the BLM10 letter, and a bevy of other influential activists and scholars in the world of police violence and abolition signed a public statement, both within and outside of the BLM apparatus.
However, more chapters resigned and publicized their reasons for doing so without much mainstream coverage. Black Lives Matter IE, representing California’s Inland Empire, stepped forward in February 2021, stating that they were departing after being approached to join the network in 2015. They alleged that “the Los Angeles Chapter along with the Global Network have consistently tried to strong-arm other groups and have worked to undermine a grassroots movement by capitalizing on unpaid labor, suppressing any internal attempt at democracy, commodifying Black death, and profiting from the same pain and suffering inflicted on Black communities that we’re fighting to end.”
A second and lesser-known letter from the BLM10 – with a few more chapter signees – was published on June 2021, titled “Tell No Lies,” after Cullors’ resignation. In it, the critiques are more detailed and pointed, elaborating that the argument is beyond any individual actor, but that BLM has come to represent the nonprofit industrial complex it originally purported to subvert. “Because BLMGN was not engaged in direct organizing,” part of it reads, “it had resources available to do other things, such as engage with media, foundations and power brokers of the systems we are fighting against to present our local work as their own.”
People were unwilling to believe or embrace the most marginalized and principled voices within the apparatus until the crisis became too big to ignore, and it became easy for the right-wing media to exploit that fracture.
The response from BLMGN to these accusations continue to be opaque. In a January 2022 interview with the LA Times, Cullors’ tone is markedly reticent, centering her personal fear and victimization over the discontent of the organization she was accountable for. “Nobody really understands the role of a movement leader, especially when it’s a Black woman or women in leadership — the level of vitriol we receive, the level of criticism,” she says, while recounting her in-patient treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. “This idea that we have to give and give and give and give until we can no longer give.”
In Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, Robin D.G. Kelley writes, “Without new visions we don’t know what to build, only what to knock down. We not only end up confused, rudderless, and cynical but we forget that making a revolution is not a series of clever maneuvers and tactics but a process that can and must transform us.” The phrase Black Lives Matter gave many Black people a maxim by which they could easily affirm their humanity in a world that was fighting to deny us such basic dignities, and that impact shouldn’t be understated; absent intentional work, however, there doesn’t seem to be much infrastructure in place to prevent a rapidly growing movement to become lopsided, remaining turgid at the top while the on-the-ground resources await updates and resources.
Tragically, BLMGNF the organization became a corporate, leviathan business used to engage in racial capitalism post-Floyd’s murder as a substitute for accountability, equity and reparation. Still, it is but one organization in the mass movement fighting for Black lives; the call for our liberation, however it is phrased, cannot be dismissed by the Candace Owens and Kanye Wests of the world. The smaller chapters were always focused on building locally, with on-the-ground, grassroots organizing, even when they were left with limited resources.
And the fight for Black lives remains relevant. Now that enough time has passed and Trump is out of office, companies have abandoned their pro-BLM rhetoric, pro-police narratives are just as aggressive as ever, and conversations over basic civil rights must now be countenanced. Significant and sustained sociopolitical change is a daunting task that requires immense rigor. The only scam is believing that you can have a radical revolution funded by your oppressor.
