The other day in Port Townsend as the Black Lives Matter march passed through Uptown. I saw many people I know, good people, thoughtful people, marching with this group.  I wondered to myself why these people would show their support for an organization whose name leads us to believe that lives matter, but then openly uses violence and intimidation that often destroys the communities they say they support.

It’s in the name really. No decent person could oppose the concept that Black Lives Matter. I can’t. But there is that pesky voice in my head. What is really going on here? What does Black Lives Matter really want? Who is behind this organization?

The story is complex and convoluted to say the least. I cannot do it justice here. Yet understanding the origins of an organization can lead to clearer view of what the heck is going on. I leave it up to the reader to make their own conclusions.

From the Black Lives Matter website:

Black Lives Matter was founded in 2013 in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer. Black Lives Matter Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the U.S., U.K. and Canada whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted in Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy we are winning immediate improvements in our lives.

Patrisse Khan-Cullors founded Black Lives Matters with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi in 2013.

In 2015, while being interviewed on Real News Networks, Ms. Khan-Cullors stated, “We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.”

Here is a brief definition of Marxism from dictionary.com: “The state throughout history has been a device for the exploitation of the masses by the dominant class and that the capitalist system, containing from the first the seeds of its own decay, will inevitably, after a period of dictatorship of the proletariat, be superseded by a socialist order and classless society.”

According to Brietbart News, Cullors is also the protégé of Eric Mann, an accomplished California based community organizer specializing in Black militant groups, and a former agitator for the Weather Underground domestic terror organization who spent 18 months in prison for an attack on a police headquarters in New York State in November of 1969.

In North America, Black Lives Matters is physically represented by fifteen chapters in the U.S. and two in Canada. Black Lives Matter does not have a central office or 501(c)(3) designation, but is incorporated. They describe their organization as a decentralized network of activists with no formal hierarchy. Black Lives Matter explains their situation is not unusual for an organization that is applying for non-profit status, but has yet to receive that designation.

I have not been able to confirm if they are actually applying for non-profit status. I have not been able to determine why an organization founded in 2013 has yet to receive non-profit status.

Black Lives Matters currently “borrows” the non-profit status of another organization whose name is Thousand Currents. It seems this is allowed under IRS regulations. Thousand Currents is self-described as providing grants to organizations led by women, youth and indigenous people.

If you donate to Black Lives Matters, the money is initially processed through another non-profit named Act Blue. Act Blue is self described as “an online fundraising platform available to democratic candidates and committees, progressive organizations and non-profits that share our values for no cost other than a 3.95% processing fee on donations.”

Once collected, Act Blue transfers the donations, minus their fee, to Thousand Currents. Thousand Currents, according to IRS rules, designates where the Black Lives Matters funds are directed.

When I visited The Thousand Currents website recently, I could find very little information on the organization. Yet thanks to an article written for the Daily Caller  by Andrew Kerr on June 25, 2020 we have recently learned that the Vice-chair of Thousand Currents, one of the main people in charge of distributing Black Lives Matters funds, is convicted terrorist Susan Rosenberg.

“Rosenberg’s involvement with the May 19th Communist Organization, which carried out its bombing campaign to create a contrast to former President Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign promise, earned her a spot on the FBI’s most wanted list, according to The Washington Examiner. She was arrested in New Jersey in 1984 while unloading 740 pounds of stolen explosives and a sub-machine gun from a truck.

Rosenberg was released from prison in 2001 after having her sentence commuted by President Bill Clinton on his last day in office. She served 16 years of a 58-year prison sentence.

U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White lobbied aggressively against Rosenberg’s commutation at the time noting that she had allegedly been one of the getaway drivers in the 1981 Brink’s robbery, which resulted in the deaths of two police officers and one security guard.”

Let me be clear. I am not judging. I am not story-telling. I am repeating facts revealed through research I did for myself to better understand what the Black Lives Matter Movement is all about. I share this with the hope that the good people, the thoughtful people I know here in Port Townsend might gain a better understanding of what it might mean to be involved with Black Lives Matter.

I leave you with a couple of quotes from an article titled, The Complex Funding and Ideology of Black Lives Matter, written by John Howard for Brietbart News, June 2020.

“Many people think, “Black Lives Matter” is a slogan, an ideal, or a grassroots movement, not a political organization with eight figures of funding and a hardcore left wing agenda….Many of BLM’s donors are signing on to a new social contract with a great deal of fine print they should read more carefully.”

[Editor’s Note: The author of this article, fearing retaliation for raising questions about Black Lives Matter, requested that it be published as authored by A Concerned Citizen of Port Townsend.]