Media news outlets are ablaze with allegations that the leadership of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) social movement have gone on a spending spree, amassing multiple luxury properties worth millions of dollars.
These allegations go back at least as far as 2016 when BLM cofounder Patrisse Khan-Cullors bought a half-million dollar house in Inglewood. Subsequent purchases include a $415,000 property outside Atlanta, Ga., and a four bedroom house in South Los Angeles.
Khan-Cullors, an avowed Marxist, acknowledged these purchases, but denied funds from the nonprofit organization were used in the transactions. She stepped down from her post as executive director in May of 2021, possibly due to controversy over the finances of BLM, which reportedly received some $90 million in donations in 2020.
News of these acquisitions generated criticism from a variety of sources, especially from conservative and right-wing forces intent on undermining high profile progressive groups and individuals opposing them on the political spectrum.
The most lavish of these dwellings is a Studio City mansion, purchased in Oct. of 2020 for nearly $6 million. The British tabloid, The Daily Mail recently published a photo layout of the 6,785 square foot home, complete with film studio and sound stage.
The properties include a $1.4 million home in Topanga Canyon just south of Malibu, bought in April of 2021 (purchased through an entity called “Abolitionist Entertainment, LLC”).
Conservative factions have developed a pattern of disparaging their liberal counterparts by accusing them of pursuing hypocritical lifestyles at odds with their avowed mission of elevating civilization for the masses. Labeling their targets “bourgeois bohemians” practicing “champagne socialism,” reactionary elements have hammered this point by publishing photos of Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) sitting in a first class seat on an airliner.
A favorite target is media darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), or simply “AOC.” As Time Magazine noted in its Mar. 21, 2019 edition, “…She’s replaced Hillary Clinton as the preferred punching bag of Fox News pundits and Republican lawmakers.”
A focal point of these attacks is her attractiveness and the stylist wardrobe (much of it donated) she wears. Pundits like Tucker Carlson have insinuated that her penchant for luxury-label outfits and Manolo Blahnik pumps are camouflage for an ineffective civil servant with average intelligence.
Cullors herself recently spoke out on the intense scrutiny that she, Ocasio-Cortez and others endure might be a calculated effort to undermine their effectiveness. Referring to criticism directed specifically at her, she declared it was “…not just a character assassination campaign, but a campaign to actually get me assassinated.”
