‘Slavery Is Over’: Hired Ferguson Protesters Demand Pay

“Black Lives Matter” protesters who were apparently hired to cause a ruckus in Ferguson, Missouri, are angry because, they say, they haven’t been paid for their hard work.

So they’ve launched a #CutTheCheck hashtag on Twitter and held a sit-in at the offices of Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, or MORE–the successor group to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, in Missouri.

The protesters have received as much as $5,000 a month to generate civil unrest in the troubled suburb of St. Louis, according to FrontPage Mag’s Matthew Vadum.

“MORE is the re-branded Missouri branch of ACORN, which filed for bankruptcy in late 2010,” Vadum reported. “MORE and other groups supporting the Black Lives Matter movement have received millions of dollars from billionaire financier George Soros.”

The angry agitators held a sit-in outside MORE’s offices on May 14 to demand their money, Weasel Zippers reported. The site posted a video of several black individuals shouting at a white man, who Weasel Zippers identifies as Jeff Ordower, founder of MORE and a longtime leftist activist who previously worked as a union organizer for SEIU in Texas and former Midwest director of ACORN.

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MORE’s website, OrganizeMO.org, posted a memo on March 30 that announces a “support fund” offering “travel funding for individuals and grassroots groups that are working to advocate for police accountability and Black lives.”

“A fixed sum of $20,000 has been set aside for this initiative,” the memo states. “… Travel funding is available for Individuals ($300), Groups of 3+ ppl ($1000), and Large Collaborations of 6+ ($2000) to take trips that directly help attendees advocate for police accountability and Black lives.”

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A group called Millennial Activists United posted a letter insisting MORE should “cut the checks” to the protesters.

“Early in the movement, non-profit organization MORE, formerly known as the St. Louis chapter of ACORN, and local St. Louis organization Organization for Black Struggle created a joint account in which national donors from all over the world have donated over $150,000 to sustain the movement,” the letter states. “Since then, the poor black [sic] of this movement who served as cash generators to bring money into St. Louis have seen little to none of that money.

“Questions have been raised as to how the movement is to sustain when white non-profits are hoarding monies collected of off [sic] black bodies? When we will [sic] hold the industry of black suffering accountable? The people of the community are fed up and the accountability begins here and now.

The statement continued, “We NEED to be thinking about justice for black people. This means white people must renounce their loyalty to the social normalcy that maintains white power and control. If black lives really matter, justice and self-determination for black people would mean the black community would control [its] own political and economic resources. Moving forward, we are building a board of accountability within this movement. We must funnel economic [sic] into this movement through the hands of black people who are fighting with and for black life. More on this board will be discussed as we develop.”

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