Black Lives Matters, the Ford Foundation, and the Black Movement Oligarchy Part One: The Black Movement Oligarchy and the Tactical Riot

William Walter Kay

Racists presume the Black Movement must be the puppet of some non-Black eminence. Ignoramuses blame Black Movement activism on foreign powers or on diablos like Antifa or Soros. No, the Black Movement is as American as baseball. A more fruitful hypothesis might be that the Black Movement seems to be perfecting, and profiting from, the incitement of riots.    

“Black Movement” is not the sum of all politico-cultural activity undertaken by America’s 40 million Blacks.

The Black Movement is a solidarity community of people emphatically proclaiming Black identity whilst engaging in political activity specifically directed at advancing the interests of Black people. The Movement’s radical wing self-defines as: Black Separatist, Black Nationalist or Black Liberationist. All Movement members deploy modern civil/human rights rhetoric. Many participate in Affirmative Action, Environmental Justice and/or Health Equity initiatives.

Black Movement organizations range from exclusive cabals to open associations. Duly incorporated, formally-structured, professionally-staffed non-profit societies have supplanted the all-volunteer bootstrap affairs of yesteryear. A flotilla of Black-orientated non-profits rafts down a $250-million-per-year philanthropic river.

Some Movement orgs have grown ivy. 

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which sprang from the 1908 Springfield Riot, boasts 500,000 members across 2,200 Chapters. CEO Derrick Johnson earns $318,000 a year overseeing NAACP’s $35 million budget. NAACP Chair Leon Russell is a former top Affirmative Action enforcement official. NAACP membership overlaps with memberships of multiple Black professional, business and religious associations. 

Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) began as the Montgomery branch of an Atlanta-based prisoners’ rights law firm that was neither Black-led nor Black-focussed. EJI gradually re-focussed onto the legal and economic plight of Blacks after its independence (1995).

Long the darling of philanthropists, EJI attracted great beneficence at the dawn of the Black Lives Matter era. Between 2013 and 2016 annual donations rose from $3.2 million to $38 million. In 2018 EJI opened two Black history museums with funding from Google, Ford Foundation and Jon Stryker. EJI owns over $85 million in assets.

NAACP and EJI soar above thousands of aspiring Black Movement enterprises. In this ecosystem resource scarcity equals inactivity equals death. Failure to secure financial backing results in a venture disbanding with its core activists moving to other projects.

Thus, Black Movement orgs embrace multi-level marketing. Cookie-cutter websites sport prominent “donate” boxes. Internet fundraising prevails but mail-outs and phone banks are still deployed. Most orgs sell logo-laden t-shirts, hats and mugs. Other fundraising options include documentary film showings and cause-focussed artistic performances etc.

Enduring success hinges on foundation grants. Hundreds of Black Movement non-profits receive annual grants in the $50,000 to $500,000 range. Grants pay for rent, equipment and salaries – including those of the ubiquitous fundraising staff. (EJI spends $350,000 a year fundraising.) Groups can earn extra dollars working on foundation-funded “Get out the (Democratic) Vote” campaigns.

To mobilise resources struggling Movement orgs produce spectacles fashioned from time-honoured symbolic and tactical repertoires. One 1960s New Left scholar whimsically recounts his movement’s repertoire thusly:

“…petitioning, rock-throwing, canvassing, letter-writing, vigils, sit-ins, freedom rides, lobbying, arson, draft resistance, assault, hair growing, non-violent civil disobedience, operating a free store, rioting, confrontations with cops, consciousness raising, screaming obscenities, singing, hurling shit, marching, raising a clenched fist, bodily assault, tax refusal, guerrilla theatre, campaigning, looting, sniping, living theatre, rallies, smoking pot, destroying draft records, blowing up ROTC buildings, court trials, murder, immolation, strikes and writing various manifestos or platforms.” (1)

 Black Movement non-profit staffers endure daily meetings aimed at building support for changing this or that law or decision. They contact officials and journalists. They stuff envelopes, send tweets, hang posters, chauffeur volunteers, and staff tables where Movement literature is displayed. They organise demonstrations, sit-ins, marches and occupations. The amount of cash available to frontline orgs determines the speed and scale of their protest mobilization.

Movement oligarchs step on the accelerator; protestors pour onto the streets.

A well-woven coven of a few dozen Black Movement Oligarchs control hundreds of non-profits (cumulative workforce: 2,500ish). Oligarchs sculpt Movement ideology. They select and frame grievances. They forge coalitions with internal and external elites. They garner money, goodwill and symbolic gestures from parties, businesses and philanthropies. They articulate Black people’s interests in speeches and debates before key audiences; and, they negotiate directly with media bosses.

This Oligarchy fights a two-front war.

In the boardrooms they jostle with Environmentalists, the Arts Community et al – agencies seeking access to the same philanthropic purses.

In the streets they struggle to maintain creds in the face of rival Black Movement mobilizations led by:

Not Fucking Around Coalition, New Black Panther Party (NBPP), NBPP-Self-Defense, Revolutionary BPP, Black Women’s Self Defense, Black O.P.T.s/BLM-NYC, Black Riders Liberation Party, Mass Action For Black Liberation, Socialist Rifle Association, Hands Up Don’t Shoot, the 73-mosque Nation of Islam, and 137 Black Israelite congregations.

Oligarchs lure marginalised Blacks back from the brink; a service appreciated in the boardrooms.

Movement leaders interact with government officials and address their demands to government. They demand greater control over government. “Defund Police” is an effort to transfer portions of City Police budgets to Movement-controlled “Community Policing” groups. 

Sections of the Black Movement operate inside government. Variously-labeled “Black Studies” faculties grace 75 government-funded universities and colleges. A revolving door separates Profs in these faculties from the academic legion employed by Black-led foundations. This campus milieu mingles furtively with Movement non-profit staff. Black Student Unions are great conference organisers and deliver needed protest fodder.  

The selective championing of simmering grievances provides capacity-building opportunities. Non-profits are tailored to suit distinct collective action arenas. The “Health Equity” sub-movement agitates around the ways in which Blacks are discriminated against and/or underserved by the medical system. “Environmental Justice” explores how environmental policies inflict inordinate toxicity onto Black neighborhoods. “Racial Justice” is a nation-wide sub-movement deploying scores of localised criminal justice reform groups.

Within the Racial Justice sub-movement a further subset specialize in politicizing specific allegations of excessive force used by white cops on Blacks. Groups active, in whole or in part, within this specialised police-abuse protest subsidiary include the likes of:

Race Forward, Color of Change, Assata’s Daughters, Colorlines, Reclaim the Block, Campaign Zero, Black Futures Lab, Organization for Black Struggle, L.A. Community Action Network, BLD PWR, One Love Global, New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice, Justice Teams Network, We the People of Detroit, Still She Rises Tulsa, Forward Together/Echoing Ida, Sister Song Inc, Detention Watch Network, and Power Coalition et al.

Despite radical veneers such groups receive millions of dollars in foundation grants. Between July 2013 and January 2020 funding to this police-abuse protest subsidiary increased tenfold.

The “grassroots-radical” and “funded-moderate” wings of the frontline Black Movement march arm-in-arm at demonstrations. Some non-profit staff secretly belong to insurrectionary groups. Radical sympathisers lurk within the Oligarchy; …details unknown.

Both Movement wings facilitate the same riots.

Both Movement wings have chapters, cells and offices scattered across the same two dozen cities, which like cities everywhere, are bedevilled with: shoplifting, smash-and-grabs, truck-and-chains, second-story jobs i.e. stealing from stores.

Every city has a thieves’ market. Dealers accepting loot for payment soon hook-up with used-goods store-owners. A thousand micro-mafias spirit purloined merchandise from city to city through invisible chains of pawn-shops and second-hand stores. This goes around in every town with many a mastermind morphing into a jailbird.

Foundation-funded Racial Justice groups stalk poor neighborhoods; their Target Cohort: Blacks entangled in the criminal justice system; many of whom have been convicted of shoplifting and other forms of stealing from stores.

Racial Justice staff routinely interact with their Target Cohort. They gather them unto catered meetings. They file applications on their behalf. They counsel them. They politicise them. They publish academic papers about them.

When Racial Justice groups heed a Black Lives Matters call to rally troops for a demo they are, at the same time, amassing plenty of people convicted of stealing from stores.

BLM’s May 2020 venue switch, from highways to uptown, brought protestors within a stones-throw of ill-fortified shops with valuable merchandise dangling inside.

Standard Anarchist ‘Booze-up-and-Riot’ Recipe:

1. Early evening: picketers block downtown street;  
2. Provocative speakers harangue cops and trapped motorists;
3. As night falls, and protestors numbers swell: distribute masks, whiskey and missiles; then: 
4. Deface monuments: light fires, break windows and steal from stores.       

Every social movement is a shadow dance of formal and informal organization. Black Movement Oligarchs hold countless meetings; on-record and off. Oligarchs are in daily formal and informal contact with the Brainiac’s inside the sit-rooms at their “flow-throughs” (intermediaries); and with their frontline non-profit managers. Non-profit staff socialise freely with their street-involved clientele. Orders to incite riots grapevine from Head Office to sidewalk without hitting a keystroke. 

The Movement’s B-side consists of militants with legit roots in the hoods. They need no intros to their local underworlds. They too put out the word. Whether or not they capitalize on these looting bonanzas to mobilize significant resources posits a beckoning question.

Footnote

Snow, David (Ed.). The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements; Blackwell Publishing, 2007, page 264. (Emphasis added to tactics currently used by the Black Movement.) For a condensed version of this groundbreaking textbook click here.