BLM co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors is facing a severe backlash after news broke of a real estate “buying binge,” that saw the high-profile racial justice activist “snagging four high-end homes for $3.2 million in the US alone,” just as questions mount about how national Black Lives Matter spent the tens of millions it collected in 2020.
As The Daily Wire reported earlier Sunday, Khan-Cullors splashed out millions on four homes “totalling upwards of $3.2 million.”
“Thirty-seven-year-old Patrisse Khan-Cullors ‘went on a real estate-buying binge, snagging four high-end homes for $3.2 million in the US alone, according to property records,’ the New York Post reported Sunday,” The Daily Wire noted, adding that Khan-Cullors is looking for other real estate opportunities, including buying in a secluded celebrity enclave in the Caribbean.
News of Khan-Cullors’ real estate empire, though, is not sitting well with other racial justice activists who, on Sunday, blasted the Black Lives Matter co-founder for profiting off black Americans’ plight and of being a “fraud.”
“For somebody that claims to love Black people, it’s kinda strange that she chose a place to live that’s practically devoid of Black people,” one Twitter user noted, referring to Khan-Cullors’ purchase of a home in Topanga Canyon near Los Angeles, a predominantly white area.
“She capitalized on that ‘Injustice against Black People’ bag. They’ve been scamming since day 1,” another suggested.
“Vallejo for Social Justice, a movement that describes itself as ‘Abolition + Socialist collective in the struggle for liberation, self-determination, & poor, working-class solidarity,’ said it was an ill-judged flaunting of wealth,” according to the Daily Mail. “‘We’re talking generational wealth off of the deaths & struggle of Black folks here,’ they tweeted.”
“Another Twitter user called Cullors a ‘fraud’ and said her brand of ‘Marxism’ apparently included buying a $1.4 million house,” the outlet added.
Khan-Cullors has her own wealth. She published a best-selling book, “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir,” in 2018, and has inked lucrative deals with entertainment companies like Warner Bros. to produce original programming aimed at moving the ball forward on social and racial justice.
But Black Lives Matter, as a whole, has faced a recent backlash of its own, after revealing, earlier in 2021, that it raked in a shocking $90 million over the course of 2020, following the death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police — an incident that sparked a major, national push for racial justice.
The foundation told The Associated Press, when it revealed its 2020 largesse, that it was in the process of creating “infrastructure” that would help to handle doling out the donations to community organizations and racial justice groups.
“One of our biggest goals this year is taking the dollars we were able to raise in 2020 and building out the institution we’ve been trying to build for the last seven and a half years,” Khan-Cullors told the AP.
“We want to uplift Black joy and liberation, not just Black death,” the group said. “We want to see Black communities thriving, not just surviving.”
But, in recent weeks, the national BLM organization has faced questions about its transparency and its spending.
“A group of 10 chapters, called the #BLM10, rejected the foundation’s funding offer last year and complained publicly about the lack of donor transparency. Foundation leaders say only a few of the 10 chapters are recognized as network affiliates,” the Associated Press reported. “In a letter released Nov. 30, the #BLM10 claimed most chapters have received little to no financial resources from the BLM movement since its launch in 2013. That has had adverse consequences for the scope of their organizing work, local chapter leaders told the AP.”
The family of Mike Brown, whose death in a police-involved shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked a wave of donations to national BLM, revealed in March that their organization received just $500 from the group, and demanded that the organization cut them a $20 million check from their $90 million war chest.