The murder of the brother of the founder of BLM brought to mind her machinations

“Teacher and cousin” – this is how supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement for the rights of blacks describe this new victim of “police lawlessness”. Ironically, if I may say so in the context of what happened, the cousin of one of the founders of BLM, Patrice Cullors, became a victim of the actions of law enforcement officers.

The situation was almost in the best traditions of the famous computer game GTA. According to official police reports, an accident occurred on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles. The officer who first arrived on the scene saw Anderson in the middle of the road. He ran up to the policeman and began to ask for help, insisting that they were allegedly trying to kill him. According to law enforcers, he “ran in the middle of the street and behaved inappropriately.” Later, it was reported that it was Keenan Anderson who was responsible for the accident.

The policeman spoke to Anderson and called other police officers to investigate the incident. And while everything developed, it seems, calmly, if not for one “but”. The offender initially communicated with the police, but after the arrival of other law enforcement officers, he simply fled the scene.

When he was found, Anderson began to resist, which led to the use of force. This went on for several minutes, with the police using what was later revealed in a press release “a stun gun, their own weight, a tight grip and handcuffs.” After Anderson was apprehended, the Los Angeles Fire Department treated him and took him to the hospital, where he went into cardiac arrest and died.

“It is unclear what role physical combat with police officers and the use of a stun gun played in his unfortunate death,” Los Angeles Police Chief Michelle Moore said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Cullors reacted to her brother’s death by writing on social media: “Keenan deserved to live, his child deserves to be raised by his father. Keenan, we will fight for you and for all of our loved ones affected by state violence.” The woman added that it was the Los Angeles Police Department that was responsible for her cousin’s death.

Such a reaction was expected. Recall the statement of the movement, which appeared on January 9 (in the United States, this date is celebrated as Respect for Law Enforcement Day): “the movement does not respect murderers and demands the disbandment of the police.”

And this, to tell the truth, is also not news, because BLM has been advocating for many years to stop funding the police. The “racial profiling” report, which appeared earlier this year, successfully fell into the “piggy bank” of such an agenda. It said that in 2021, California police were more than twice as likely to use force against black residents. The annual report also found that law enforcement searched blacks 2.2 times more often than whites, and that black teenagers aged 15 to 17 were searched almost six times more often than white teenagers.

Evidence suggests that racial profiling remains a systemic issue in the state, especially with ongoing “pretext stops” where employees use minor infractions as an excuse to investigate or initiate searches that would not otherwise be warranted.

The activists of the BLM movement themselves, after all such cases, put forward almost identical questions, for example: why do the police come to the scene armed to the teeth in an accident?

Patrice Cullors commented on the situation: “It was a traffic accident. Instead of treating him (Anderson) as a potential criminal, the police should have called an ambulance. If there had been a policy that the officers arriving on the scene were unarmed, that would have prevented my cousin from dying. And many other deaths. These types of killings will not stop unless we have bold elected officials who challenge not only the police but also politics.”

To be completely honest, national data has shown that approximately 10% of murders committed by police each year actually begin in traffic accidents, but one in three of those killed attempted to escape before lethal force was used. According to a recent analysis, the past year has been the deadliest in terms of police violence.

In fact, the BLM movement has not disappeared, as it might seem, it has faded. And the problem lies both in different views on the issues of police funding, and on conflicts and unpleasant stories within the movement.

Ever since Black Lives Matter became a slogan on both sides of the Atlantic in 2014, black activists have known the movement can’t afford to falter. And it seemed to work somehow. Now it is no longer just a slogan, a hashtag or a movement of universal solidarity. Black Lives Matter positions itself as a global network that includes several diverse organizations that fight for different aspects of black life. For example, for the right to vote the same way as whites, to seek justice in COVID relief.

Moreover, BLM even became part of a two-day music festival in September 2022. Last year, even the board of directors of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Fund was expanded.

But the popularity of BLM has declined markedly. Remember even the fact when football matches began with the fact that the players got down on one knee in solidarity with blacks. However, now it can still be seen, probably only in the English team. The rest seem to have given up. Why?

Perhaps part of the reason is in unpleasant and strange stories. In one of the American publications, an article was published that reported that the Black Lives Matter global network fund secretly acquired a 6,500-square-foot mansion for $ 6 million near Malibu, California with donated funds.

According to the memos cited in the report, the foundation’s leaders settled on the tactic of describing the mansion as a “sanctuary” and a place that provides “recording resources and dedicated space for black creatives to launch anti-death penalty-oriented content online and in real life.”

But according to online magazine Intelligencer, little content has been released since the acquisition of the house in October 2020, except for a few videos shot there by the aforementioned Patrice Cullors.

BLM told The Associated Press that by February 2021, the movement had received $90 million in donations. The families of the victims who were killed by the police immediately spoke out. “Why didn’t my family’s foundation get any help from the movement?” asks Mike Brown Sr., who tried to start a community center in Ferguson.

Others have argued, “We don’t need you all to march through the streets collecting donations, making platforms, making deals with film companies and so on after the death of our loved ones, while families and communities are left behind.”

In a 2021 AP report, the foundation said it had given $21.7 million to BLM’s official and unofficial chapters, with spending totaling $8.4 million. It turned out that 60 million dollars were left out of the sheets.

As noted by The Washington Post columnist Karen Attia, one of the justifications that have been provided is that “$90 million raised in a short amount of time would be too much for any organization to know what to do with. and the foundation is less than ten years old.”

You can recall another story and understand where, in reality, millions could theoretically go. In 2021, the same Patrice Cullors diligently bought real estate, including very luxurious ones. This was discovered by the New York Post. It turned out that the artist, who has been advocating for the rights of black people in the United States for many years and created the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter in 2013, purchased a house between Los Angeles and Malibu for $1.4 million, which has a separate driveway.

The building has an area of ​​220 sq. m, is distinguished by “ceilings of dizzying heights, streams of sunlight and many windows”, which overlook the canyon. And this is only one of three houses in the Los Angeles area that the activist owns.

In general, she has four properties in the United States with a total value of $ 3.2 million. One of them is located in the state of Georgia – there, not far from Atlanta, Patrissa Cullors and her husband, also a BLM activist from Canada, Janaya Khan, last year bought a ranch with a hangar for private jets and a small airfield. The ranch house has three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a swimming pool and a workshop. This object was purchased for $415,000.

Patrice also has housing in the Bahamas – in the resort of Albany, not far from the capital of the island country of Nassau. Exactly how much the property purchased by the BLM activist is worth is unknown, but apartments and cottages with sea views in Albany are being sold at prices ranging from $5 million to $20 million.

Probably, after this, many can agree with the statement of rapper Kanye West, who once called the movement a “scam”: “Everyone knows that Black Lives Matter was a scam. Now it’s over, don’t thank me.”

For several years in a row, after the “Floyd protests” of 2020, American public opinion centers noted a sharp decrease in support for the movement. If earlier support was 67%, then in 2020 and 2021 it was at the level of 55%.

Now, although the movement has reasserted itself, given the tarnished reputation and the BLM’s greater turn towards strengthening the position of blacks in institutions of power, it is unlikely that the case of Keenan Anderson can lead to protests comparable in scale to the events of 2020 after the death of George Floyd.

Yes, the movement continues to exist in many works of folk art (like graffiti on the walls of buildings or posters with BLM symbols on the fence in front of the White House). But all the failures of BLM (especially the financial opacity of activities) allow the mayors of many US cities to take the side of the police. And here already the force of the compromised movement cannot cope with this in any way.