- Moe Factz with Adam Curry for July 20th 2020, Episode number 43
- Executive Producers:
- Sir H" from San Francisco
- Mad Mike of the Traveling Spaders
- Associate Executive Producers:
- Sir Daddy-O of the Seven Wonders
- Description
- Adam and Moe deconstruct the roots of BLM Politics and the Movement
- ShowNotes
- Honoring an Unsung LGBTQ Hero: Bayard Rustin - Family Equality
- Bayard Rustin was one of the most influential activists and organizers of the 20th century, and yet many people don't know his name. Among many things, Bayard Rustin was the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, and an influential guide to Dr. Martin Luther King's vision. Rustin was a conscientious objector, nonviolent activist, labor organizer, LGBTQ activist, and international peace advocate who was an openly gay man.
- Rustin, who died in 1987, was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2013. In awarding the medal, President Obama said, ''For decades, this great leader, often at Dr. King's side, was denied his rightful place in history because he was openly gay.''
- In 1912, Bayard Taylor Rustin was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He was primarily raised by his Quaker grandparents, Janifer and Julia Rustin. He shared often how he was shaped by their Quaker values. He grew up having an active childhood, being a member of the school football team, and writing poems. According to legend, organized a sit in at a restaurant that would serve his white teammates, but not him. Rustin attended a handful of universities, Wilberforce University, Cheney State Teachers College, and City College in New York City, where he sang, performed in musicals, and also joined the Young Communist League. As a gay man coming of age in the 1930's and 40s, Rustin was open about his sexuality long before it was safer to do so. He claimed his Quaker grandmother's affirmative support helped him live without shame or guilt.
- Rustin eventually left the Young Communist Party and focused on protesting racial segregation in the U.S. armed forces. He traveled the country speaking out after the launch of the Congress of Racial Equality in 1942. Years later, he was arrested for refusing to appear before the draft board as a conscientious objector, serving 26 months in prison. Even within jail, he angered authorities with desegregation protests and open homosexuality.
- A few years later, Rustin traveled to India in 1948 to deepen his commitment to nonviolent protest by attending a world pacifist conference, months after Mahatma Gandhi had been assassinated. The teachings of Gandhi hit Rustin in profound ways, and upon his return to the states, he wrote that ''We need in every community a group of angelic troublemakers.''
- Rustin continued his advocacy into the 1950s, when in 1953 after delivering a speech in Pasadena California, Rustin was arrested for ''lewd conduct,'' a sexual act involving men. This arrest provided fuel for the FBI's growing file on Bayard Rustin, and also created a wedge between Rustin and other activists that did not want him affiliated with their movement.
- Involvement in the Civil Rights Movement
- In the mid 1950s, Rustin went to Alabama to support Dr. King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. He stayed out of the spotlight, but introduced King to Gandhi's teachings while organizing carpools and writing materials. He also helped to organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1956 and 1957.
- Despite his successes, Rustin was threatened and criticized by other leaders, such as Rep Adam Clayton Powell, who threatened King that he would tell the press that he and Rustin were gay lovers if he continued to organize with him. This strategy to malign Rustin was used in 1960, when King and Rustin were planning a march by the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.
- In 1962, A. Philip Randolph, a labor and civil rights organizer, recruited Rustin to help with the March on Washington, wanting to ensure that economic issues, as well as civil rights, were part of the platform. Rustin traveled back to Alabama to meet with King and began organizing with other coalitions and movements such as the National Urban League, the NAACP, and Southern Christian Leadership Conference. However, Rustin's sexuality came into play again, when Roy Wilkins of the NAACP refused to allow Rustin to be the front man. It was decided that Randolph would serve as the March's director and Rustin would be his deputy. The 1963 March on Washington would go on to be hailed as one of the most monumental nonviolent protests in history, and no title change could take away Rustin's contributions to it.
- As a gay man in the Civil Rights Movement, Rustin was forced to be in the shadows. Despite all attempts to silence him, he is recognized as being the key organizer behind the March on Washington. Rustin's influence on other civil leaders, such as Martin Luther King, has made its mark on history, and Bayard Rustin is a name we should hold dear and remember.
- There is much more about his life and work that still needs to be shared. We suggest that you look up these additional resources on Bayard Rustin:
- Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin
- Brother Outsider: The Life Of Bayard Rustin (Film)
- I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters
- The Lost Prophet: Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
- Who Designed the March on Washington? By Henry Louis Gates
- Hawk Newsome: The biggest threat to black Lives isn't what you think | Hawk Newsome | TEDxFultonStreet | TED Talk
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- Hawk Newsome - Wikipedia
- Hawk Newsome is an American political activist who has been described as having co-founded the Greater New York chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM), as a cast member on Cop Watch America on Black Entertainment Television (BET), and as a chairperson of BLM Greater NY, which is said to be an action coalition that assists, builds, and empowers black communities in Greater New York.[1] In a statement released on June 25, 2020, Kailee Scales, described as the Managing Director of BLM Global Network, said:
- Hawk Newsome has no relation to the Black Lives Matter Global Network (''BLM'') founded by Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi '-- and is not the ''president'' of BLM or any of its chapters.[2]
- William L. Patterson - Wikipedia
- William Lorenzo Patterson (August 27, 1891 '' March 5, 1980) was an African-American leader in the Communist Party USA and head of the International Labor Defense, a group that offered legal representation to communists, trade unionists, and African Americans in cases involving issues of political or racial persecution.
- Biography [ edit ] Early years [ edit ] William Lorenzo Patterson was born August 27, 1891 in San Francisco, California.[1] His father, James Edward Patterson, originally hailed from the island of St. Vincent in the British West Indies.[1] His mother, Mary Galt Patterson, had been born a slave in the state of Virginia and was the daughter of the organizer of a volunteer regiment of black soldiers who fought with the Union army during the American Civil War.[1]
- Patterson's father was a Seventh-day Adventist missionary to Tahiti and he spent extensive time there, with the rest of the family moving between the California cities of Oakland and Mill Valley, where William attended public schools.[1]
- In 1911 Patterson was the first African-American graduate of Tamalpais High School, in Mill Valley, California. In the yearbook, his stated ambition was "to be a second Booker T. Washington."[2] After graduation Patterson supported himself working as a laborer in railroad dining cars and on boats which worked the Pacific coast.[1] He saved up enough money to enter the University of California, Berkeley but was expelled during the years of World War I due to his refusal to participate in compulsory military training.[1]
- Deciding to set his sights on becoming a lawyer, Patterson entered the Hastings College of Law, from which he graduated in 1919.[3] He failed the California State Bar Examination, however, and decided to pursue emigration to Liberia, taking a job as a cook on a mail ship to England as a means to this end.[3] Patterson found his inquiries about Liberian emigration put off in England due to his lack of construction or practical craft skills, and he determined to return to the United States, landing in New York and gaining employment as a longshoreman.[3]
- Patterson was able to put his college degree to use, finding employment as a clerk in a law office, helping to write briefs and studying to take the New York State Bar Examination, which he passed in 1924.[3] During this time he married his first wife, the former Minnie Summer, and made numerous personal acquaintances associated with the booming Harlem Renaissance.[3]
- Political activism [ edit ] Among Patterson's New York friends was radical political activist Richard B. Moore, who persuaded Patterson to put his legal skills to work in the effort to prevent the execution of the Italian immigrant anarchist Sacco and Vanzetti, convicted of murder in a controversial and highly politicized Massachusetts trial.[3]
- Patterson joined the Workers (Communist) Party and became head of the International Labor Defense, a communist legal advocacy organization.
- On August 22, 1927, he was among the 156 persons arrested for protesting the execution of immigrants Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were anarchists.[4]
- Patterson was active in the Civil Rights Congress, which succeeded the ILD. In 1951 he presented the document, We Charge Genocide, to the United Nations, charging the U.S. federal government with complicity in genocide for failing to pass legislation or prosecute persons responsible for lynching in the United States, of which most of the victims were black men.
- He married Louise Thompson on September 3, 1940.[5] A writer, she had a long association with the poet Langston Hughes, and they collaborated on a proposal for a documentary about Harlem culture.
- Death and legacy [ edit ] Patterson died in 1980 at Union Hospital in the Bronx following a prolonged illness.[6] He was 88 years old at the time of his death.
- Patterson's papers are housed at Howard University.[7]
- [ edit ] ^ a b c d e f Staff, "Biography," Finding Aid to the William Patterson Papers, Manuscript Division, Howard University, 2015; pg. 2. ^ Tamalpais Graduate, 1911, Tamalpais Union High School, Mill Valley, California ^ a b c d e f "Biography," Finding Aid to the William Patterson Papers, pg. 3. ^ "Sacco Aftermath". Time Magazine. September 5, 1927 . Retrieved October 12, 2008 . For "sauntering and loitering" in front of the State House in Boston, 156 men and women were arraigned, found guilty. All but six were fined $5 and paid the fine. The others'-- Edna St. Vincent Millay, poet; Ellen Hayes, retired Wellesley College professor; John Howard Lawson, playwright; William Patterson, Negro lawyer; Ela Reeve Bloor and Catherine Huntington, liberal gentlewomen'--were fined $10. ^ Gilyard _Louise Thompson Patterson_, 143 ^ Les Ledbetter, "William Patterson, Lawyer, Dead at 89. Activist Fought for Black Causes. Joined With Paul Robeson in Accusing U.S. at U.N. Opened Harlem Law Office," New York Times, March 7, 1980. ^ Finding Aid to the William Patterson Papers, Manuscript Division, Howard University, Oct. 1, 2015. Works [ edit ] The Communist Position on the Negro Question. Contributor. New York: New Century Publishers, 1947.We Demand Freedom. New York: Civil Rights Congress, 1951.A People's Alternative to Mayor Wagner's Tax Program. New York: 1963.Negro Liberation: A Goal for All Americans. New York: New Currents Publishers, 1964.Ben Davis: Crusader for Negro Freedom and Socialism. New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1967.In Honor of Paul Robeson: Excerpts of a Speech by William L. Patterson. New York: Communist Party USA, n.d. [1969].Some Aspects of the Black Liberation Struggle: Two Lectures. With Claude Lightfoot. New York: Black Liberation Commission, CPUSA, n.d. [1969].We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of the United States Government against the Negro People. Editor. New York: International Publishers, 1970.Four Score Years in Freedom's Fight: A Tribute to William L. Patterson on the Occasion of his 80th Birthday, Chicago, Illinois, October 22, 1971. Contributor, with Claude Lightfoot. New York: New Outlook Publishers, 1972.The Man Who Cried Genocide: An Autobiography. New York: International Publishers, 1971.Further reading [ edit ] Walter T. Howard, We Shall Be Free!: Black Communist Protests in Seven Voices. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2013.External links [ edit ] Works by or about William L. Patterson at Internet Archive
- Inside the female-run communist terror group hell-bent on destruction
- The handcuffed woman glowered as federal investigators swarmed the Cherry Hill, New Jersey, storage unit where her ''combat materials'' were stashed. But not even a hardened homegrown terrorist like 29-year-old Susan Rosenberg was ready to die this November night in 1984.
- ''Put out the f''king cigarette,'' she growled at an officer who had unwisely lit up.
- Rosenberg knew that the unit was stuffed with 740 pounds of leaking explosives. The nitroglycerine oozing from her poorly maintained cache of dynamite '-- stolen from a Texas construction firm four years earlier '-- was dangerous and highly unstable.
- Rosenberg and an accomplice, Tim Blunk, were hauled off to the local police station as the feds delicately dismantled their arsenal and ferried it in small batches across the Delaware River to a bomb-disposal unit in Philadelphia.
- The bust marked the beginning of the end of the May 19th Communist Organization, the nation's only woman-run terror group, William Rosenau recounts in ''Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol'' (Atria), out Tuesday.
- M19's two-year bombing campaign in New York City and Washington, DC, aimed to cast a cloud over what President Ronald Reagan's re-election campaign was promising: a sunny, prosperous ''Morning in America.''
- Reagan's election in 1980 told the remnants of America's radical left that the country had rejected their call to revolution.
- But M19's core of five women and two men pushed back with a series of seven explosions that they intended to be ''percussive wake-up calls'' for the nation, Rosenau writes '-- ''proof that an underground army was still at work.''
- Most of M19's women were lesbians who claimed their orientation fueled their politics. The men had to prove their worth with initiation tasks: Alan Berkman donated his sperm so that founding member Judy Clark could get pregnant without having to endure conventional sex.
- M19 bombed the Officers Club at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC, on April 20, 1984, the day that the Navy launched military exercises in the Caribbean.Middle-class and college-educated, M19's members shared a disdain for their own whiteness. To prove they weren't merely ''mouthing revolution,'' they allied with the Black Liberation Army to break cop-killer Joanne Chesimard (aka Assata Shakur) out of prison in 1979. Two years later they assisted in the notorious Brink's robbery of 1981, which killed two Nyack police officers and a bank guard.
- Clark's arrest in the Brink's debacle sent the rest of M19 underground. There they plotted to shake up American society with their bombs.
- The first target was an FBI field office in Staten Island, located above a US Post Office one block from the Staten Island Ferry terminal. The women planted a timer-controlled bomb in an unguarded restroom on Jan. 28, 1983, setting the detonator to go off after hours.
- No one was killed or seriously hurt in this or any of their bombings. But the charge did extensive damage '-- ''You'd never know it was once a ladies' room,'' NYPD Capt. Tosano Simonetti told the Staten Island Advance '-- and flooded the post office with three inches of water.
- Later that year, on Nov. 7, M19 members blended in with the tourists and staffers who swarmed the US Capitol. They stashed a Puma-branded duffel bag under a bench just outside the Senate chamber, an area no longer open to the public.
- The blast that night punched a 15-foot crater in a brick wall, shattered chandeliers and shredded a portrait of 19th-century Sen. John C. Calhoun, the slavery-defending South Carolina Democrat.
- After each explosion, the group called a news outlet and claimed responsibility in the name of a fictitious organization '-- the Armed Resistance Unit, the Revolutionary Fighting Group, Red Guerrilla Resistance '-- creating the illusion of a vast militant network poised to overthrow the system.
- But the FBI spotted similarities in the structure of each device and the phrasing of their messages. When the storage manager in Cherry Hill saw suspicious discrepancies in the rental application of a wig-wearing woman, he notified police.
- After Rosenberg's bust, it took the FBI six months to roll up the rest of M19 in ones and twos, hiding in safe houses throughout the Northeast.
- All of them were indicted for the bombings in 1988. But they never went to trial, opting for plea deals instead '-- except for Betty Ann Duke, who skipped bail in 1985 and remains a federal fugitive.
- The rest served lengthy sentences before release or parole. Bill Clinton granted Rosenberg a presidential pardon on his last day in office in 2001, after she had served 16 years. Now 64, she teaches women's studies at CUNY's Hunter College in Manhattan.
- But it was Clark who remained behind bars the longest. Convicted of second-degree murder for her role in the Brink's robbery, she was jailed for 37 years, until Gov. Cuomo commuted her sentence and she won parole in 2019. Her daughter Harriet '-- ''raised by the collective'' as a baby and by her grandparents while her mother was behind bars '-- was there to greet her on her release. Parole officials said Clark moved to Manhattan and took a job with Hour Children, a nonprofit dedicated to incarcerated women.
- Susan Rosenberg - Wikipedia
- Susan Lisa Rosenberg (born 5 October 1955)[1] is an American activist, writer, and advocate for social justice and prisoners' rights. From the late 1970s into the mid-1980s, Rosenberg was active in the far-left revolutionary terrorist May 19th Communist Organization ("M19CO"), which according to a contemporaneous FBI report "openly advocate[d] the overthrow of the U.S. Government through armed struggle and the use of violence".[2] M19CO provided support to an offshoot of the Black Liberation Army, including in armored truck robberies, and later engaged in bombings of government buildings.[3]
- After living as a fugitive for two years, Rosenberg was arrested in 1984 while in possession of a large cache of explosives and firearms. She had also been sought as an accomplice in the 1979 prison escape of Assata Shakur and in the 1981 Brink's robbery that resulted in the deaths of two police and a guard[4], although she was never charged in either case.
- Rosenberg was sentenced to 58 years' imprisonment on the weapons and explosives charges. She spent 16 years in prison, during which she became a poet, author, and AIDS activist. Her sentence was commuted to time served by President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001,[5] his final day in office.[6][7]
- Early life Rosenberg was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Manhattan. Her father was a dentist and her mother a theatrical producer. She attended the progressive Walden School and later went to Barnard College.[8] She left Barnard and became a drug counselor at Lincoln Hospital in The Bronx, eventually becoming licensed in the practice of Chinese medicine and acupuncture.[8] She also worked as an anti-drug counselor and acupuncturist at health centers in Harlem, including the Black Acupuncture Advisory of North America.[9]
- Activism and imprisonment In an interview with the radio show Democracy Now, Rosenberg said that she was "totally and profoundly influenced by the revolutionary movements of the '60s and '70s." She became active in feminist causes, and worked in support of the Puerto Rican independence movement and the fight against the FBI's COINTELPRO program.[6][10] She also joined the May 19th Communist Organization, which worked in support of the Black Liberation Army and its offshoots (including assistance in armored truck robberies), the Weather Underground and other revolutionary organizations.[11]Rosenberg was charged with a role in the 1983 bombing of the United States Capitol Building, the U.S. National War College and the New York Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, but the charges were dropped as part of a plea deal by other members of her group.[7][12]
- Arrested for explosives possession in November 1984 after two years underground, she was convicted by a jury in March 1985, and given a 58-year-sentence. Supporters said this was sixteen times the national average for such offenses.[13] Her lawyers contend that, had the case not been politically charged, Rosenberg would have received a five-year sentence.[6]
- Rosenberg was one of the first two inmates of the High Security Unit (HSU), a high-security isolation unit in the basement of the Federal Correctional Institution (currently the Federal Medical Center) in Lexington, Kentucky.[14][15][16] Allegations were made that the unit was an experimental underground political prison that practiced isolation and sensory deprivation .[17] The women were subject to 24-hour camera surveillance and constant strip searches, and were given only limited access to visitors or to exercise.[18] After touring the unit, the American Civil Liberties Union denounced it as a "living tomb," and Amnesty International called it "deliberately and gratuitously oppressive."[19] After a lawsuit was brought by the ACLU and other organizations, the unit was ordered closed by a federal judge in 1988 and the prisoners transferred to regular cells.[14]
- Rosenberg was transferred to various prisons around the country, in Florida, California and, finally, in Danbury, Connecticut. While in prison, she devoted herself to writing and to activism around AIDS, and obtained a master's degree from Antioch University.[9] Speaking at a 2007 forum, Rosenberg said that writing "became the mechanism by which to save my own sanity." She added that she began writing partly because the intense isolation of prison was threatening to cut her off completely from the real world and that she did not want to lose her connection to that world.[20]
- Release Rosenberg's sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001, his last day in office, to the more than 16 years' time served. Her commutation produced a wave of criticism by police and New York elected officials.[21]
- After her release, Rosenberg became the communications director for the American Jewish World Service, an international development and human rights organization, based in New York City. She also continued her work as an anti-prison activist, and taught literature at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. After teaching for four semesters there as an adjunct instructor, the CUNY administration, responding to political pressure, forced John Jay College to end its association with Rosenberg, and her contract with the school was allowed to expire without her being rehired.[22]
- In 2004 Hamilton College offered her a position to teach a for-credit month-long seminar, "Resistance Memoirs: Writing, Identity and Change." Some professors, alumni and parents of students objected and as a result of the ongoing protests, she declined the offer.[23]
- As of 2020, Rosenberg serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Thousand Currents, a non-profit foundation that sponsors the fundraising and does administrative work for the Black Lives Matter Global Network, among other clients.[24]
- Writing In 2011, Rosenberg published a memoir of her time in prison called, An American Radical: A Political Prisoner In My Own Country. Kirkus Reviews said of the book, "Articulate and clear-eyed, Rosenberg's memoir memorably records the struggles of a woman determined to be the agent of her own life".[25]
- Rosenberg, Susan (2011). An American Radical: A Political Prisoner In My Own Country . New York: Kensington Publishing Corp. ISBN 978-0806533049. See also Bill Clinton pardons controversyBrinks Robbery (1981)Weather Underground OrganizationMay 19th Communist OrganizationPrison abolition movementList of people pardoned or granted clemency by the president of the United StatesReferences ^ Rosenau, William. "Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol". Amazon.com. Amazon.com, Inc . Retrieved 11 July 2020 . ^ US Department of Justice National Institute of Justice: FBI Analysis of Terrorist incidents and Terrorist related activities in the United States (1984)https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/120257NCJRS.pdf ^ Rosenau, William (April 3, 2020). "The Dark History of America's First Female Terrorist Group". ^ Raab, Selwyn (1984-12-01). "Radical fugitive in brink's robbery arrested". The New York Times . Retrieved 2008-04-19 . A Weather Underground fugitive who had been sought for two years in the $1.6 million Brink's robbery and murder case has been arrested in New Jersey by a police officer who became suspicious of her ill-fitting wig. ^ "Clinton Pardon's List". The Washington Post. Associated Press. January 20, 2001 . Retrieved July 23, 2017 . ^ a b c "An Exclusive Interview with Susan Rosenberg After President Clinton Granted Her Executive clemency". Democracy Now!. 2001-01-23 . Retrieved 2013-05-03 . ^ a b Christopher, Tommy (April 16, 2008). "Clinton has Bigger Weather Underground Problem". Political Machine. AOL News. [dead link ] ^ a b "vol13, 1989: America's Most Dangerous Woman? by Merle Hoffman". On The Issues Magazine . Retrieved 2013-05-03 . ^ a b [1] Archived August 7, 2007, at the Wayback Machine ^ Berger, Dan. Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. p. 328. ^ "Full text of "The Way The Wind Blew: A History Of The Weather Underground " ". Archive.org . Retrieved 2013-05-03 . ^ "3 Radicals Agree to Plead Guilty in Bombing Case". The New York Times. 1990-09-06 . Retrieved 2008-11-03 . Three radicals will plead guilty to setting off bombs at the nation's Capitol and seven other sites in the early 1980s. The Government has agreed to drop charges against three other people. ^ The New Abolitionists: (Neo)slave Narratives And Contemporary Prison Writings - Google Boeken. Books.google.com . Retrieved 2013-05-03 . ^ a b "Judge Bars U.S. From Isolating Prisoners for Political Beliefs", The New York Times, July 17, 1988. Accessed 19 October 2008 ^ Susie Day more on US Politics/Economy. "Day, Susie. "Cruel But Not Unusual: The Punishment of Women in U.S. Prisons, An Interview with Marilyn Buck and Laura Whitehorn." ''Monthly Review,''August, 2001. Accessed 19 October 2008". Monthlyreview.org . Retrieved 2013-05-03 . ^ "Reuben, William A.; Norman, Carlos. "Brainwashing in America? The women of Lexington Prison". ''The Nation'', 1987. Accessed 19 October 2008". Questia Online Library . Retrieved 2013-05-03 . ^ Rodriguez, Dylan. Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime. U of Minnesota Press, 2006.ISBN 0-8166-4560-4. P.189 ^ New York Magazine, June 25, 1990 ^ Warhol-Down, Robyn & Herndl, Diane Price (2009). Feminisms Redux: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism. Rutgers University Press. p. 338. ^ [2] Archived October 4, 2012, at the Wayback Machine ^ Lipton, Eric (January 22, 2001). "Officials Criticize Clinton's Pardon of an Ex-Terrorist". New York Times. ^ Post Jobs (2013-04-29). "Ever Vulnerable Adjuncts". Inside Higher Ed . Retrieved 2013-05-03 . ^ Kimball, Roger (December 3, 2004). "Meet the Newest Member of the Faculty - Clinton pardons a terrorist, and now she's teaching in Clinton, N.Y. - Wall Street Journal". Opinionjournal.com. ^ url=https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/770071852/201901359349307325/full ^ "Home | Prison Memoir: An American Radical | Political Prisoner in My Own Country". An American Radical. 2011-07-11 . Retrieved 2013-05-03 .
- The story behind Thousand Currents, the charity that doles out the millions of dollars Black Lives Matter generates in donations
- (C) Thousand Currents A screenshot from Thousand Currents' website. Thousand Currents The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is a non-profit organization '-- but it is not tax exempt. But organizations can borrow another non-profit's tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) status while raising money or building out its structure, better known as a fiscal sponsorship.So Black Lives Matter has a fiscal sponsorship set up with the 501(c)(3) non-profit organization Thousand Currents.A fiscal sponsor receives donation money on the non-profit's behalf, and decides how and where the money is spent, according to Internal Revenue Service requirements.Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.In recent weeks, following the police killing of George Floyd, millions of dollars in donations have flooded into bail funds for protesters, Black-owned businesses, and the Black Lives Matter movement itself.
- The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the organization's official name, is a non-profit '-- but it is not tax exempt. In the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service, such an organization is treated as any normal corporation, and still has to pay income tax.
- But organizations like Black Lives Matter can team up with and borrow another non-profit's tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) status, known as a fiscal sponsorship, while building out its own structure. Fiscal sponsorships are typically between two organizations that share a similar mission statement '-- and that's where Thousand Currents comes in.
- What is Thousand Currents?Thousand Currents is a 501(3)(c) non-profit that provides grants to organizations that are led by women, youth, and Indigenous people focused on building food sustainability, fighting climate change, and developing alternative economic models for their communities across the world, according to its website.
- Executive Director Solome Lemma said the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation approached Thousand Currents in 2016 to create a fiscal sponsorship agreement and provide "the legal and administrative support to enable BLM to fulfill its mission."
- (C) Alain Pitton/NurPhoto via Getty Images Several organizations and collectives called for a gathering to pay tribute to Georges Floyd killed by police in Minneapolis. Alain Pitton/NurPhoto via Getty Images Thousand Currents essentially acts as a quasi-manager for Black Lives Matter: It provides "administrative and back office support, including finance, accounting, grants management, insurance, human resources, legal and compliance," Lemma said.
- Fiscal sponsorships are not common, but also not "rare", tax attorney Kelly Phillips Erb told Insider. This type of tax arrangement is typically used by newer non-profits on a project basis while they fundraise and apply for their own tax-exempt status. The fiscal sponsor also takes an administrative fee.
- In this case, Black Lives Matter agreed to make a donation to grassroots efforts led by Thousand Currents.
- Charity Navigator, a non-profit organization that rates charities on their transparency and financial health, gave Thousand Currents four out of four stars, noting that 79% of their finances go toward program expenses.
- Where do donations to Black Lives Matter go?Any and all donations made to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation go to it '-- but not entirely directly.
- Under IRS requirements, any charitable funds donated to a non-profit using a fiscal sponsor are first given to the fiscal sponsor, which then doles out the money in the form of grants to the non-profit.
- For example, when you donate to the Black Lives Matter movement, you are directed to its fundraising partner ActBlue. Then, ActBlue distributes the money raised to Thousand Currents, which is then granted to Black Lives Matter.
- Though, there is one caveat: Phillips Erb said one of the main rules of being a fiscal sponsor per the IRS is directing where charitable funds go within the non-profit it is supporting.
- "The one who is borrowing status cannot direct where the money goes," Phillips Erb said.
- (C) Carlos Barria/Reuters Demonstrators gather at the Lincoln Memorial during a protest against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Washington, DC, on June 6, 2020. Carlos Barria/Reuters Because Black Lives Matter does not have its own tax-exempt status, donations filter through various channels before resources are dispensed across BLM's 16 chapters. And where and how that money is allocated, is up to Thousand Currents, and likely agreed upon beforehand.
- In an emailed statement to Insider, Lemma said, "Donations to BLM are restricted donations to support the activities of BLM." Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation did not respond to Insider's requests for comment about whether or not it plans to apply for tax-exempt status.
- Some have desired more budgetary transparency from Black Lives Matter in the past. In 2018, one of its New York City chapters left the organization citing its need for more monetary autonomy.
- With a resurgence of donations, corresponding with nationwide protests and calls to end police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement is seeing millions of dollars flooding in on behalf of its mission.
- It's unclear how much money Black Lives Matter has received in the last four weeks, but it's likely in the multi-millions (for example, they announced a $12 million grant fund last week).
- Thousand Currents' 2019 financials show that the organization brought in $6.8 million, which included the money earned through the fiscal sponsorship of Black Lives Matter. Both organizations could end up seeing their highest donations ever by the end of this fiscal year.
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