Americans Deserve to Know Who Funded BLM Riots

Most Americans have happily moved on from the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM)-driven ransacking of some 200 American cities, which resulted in as much as $2 billion in property damage and at least 25 deaths. But that time must be remembered for more than rioting and destruction. The BLM pressure campaigns, harassment, and moral blackmail also amounted to possibly the most lucrative shakedown of corporate America in its history.

Today the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life published the most comprehensive database to date tracking corporate contributions and pledges to the Black Lives Matter movement and related causes from 2020 to the present. Companies and corporations pledged or contributed an astonishing $82.9 billion to the BLM movement and related causes. This includes more than $123 million to the BLM parent organizations directly. These figures, while shocking, likely underrepresent the true magnitude of the shakedown as some companies failed to make known their contributions, and many BLM organizations remain unknown.

As a point of reference, $82.9 billion is more than the GDP of 46 African countries. In 2022, the Ford Motor Company’s profits were $23 billion.

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How is BLM using the money? It is difficult to track, but some examples are likely demonstrative. The Global Network is investing tens of millions of dollars to support future operations, purchasing luxury real estate, engaging in nepotism, disbursing grants to dozens of BLM chapters and revolutionary organizations, and operating a PAC to “elect progressive community leaders, activists, and working-class candidates fighting for Black liberation.”

Local BLM chapters are spending millions on activism and initiatives to defund police departments. BLM At School is indoctrinating children around the country in critical race theory and queer theory, teaching them to hate themselves, their peers, and their country. And left-wing nonprofits are effecting wholescale societal change too radical for normal legislative avenues, constituting a form of shadow governance.

Meanwhile, banks are issuing billions of dollars in subprime loans “to help end systemic racism,” and corporations are funding leftist bail funds that release violent rioters and criminals onto our streets and collaborating to create racialized, anti-meritocratic hiring schemes.

A couple of examples are JPMorgan Chase—whose $30 billion “Racial Equity Commitment” includes billions in targeted investments to “close the racial wealth gap”—and Microsoft—whose $244 million in pledges includes a $250,000 contribution to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a bail fund for BLM rioters.

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{snip} You can access the database here.