What ? Yes……the founders of Black Lives Matter, the national organization, are Marxists. They even say so in there own words! It all started in 2013 after Trevon Martin’s death and George Zimmerman’s acquittal. That was when Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi, started the hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter, and founded the national Black Lives Matter organization. Over the subsequent years the organization grew and more “chapters” developed.
So who are these three? Well, Patrisse Cullors outwardly says “We actually do have an ideological frame[work]. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories.” Oh really? Cullors was the protege of Eric Mann, the former agitator of the Weather Underground domestic terror organization, and she admittedly spent years absorbing the Marxist-Leninist ideology that shaped her worldview. Mann has a 50 year long “career” including working with groups like the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) which later became the Weather Underground, The Black Panther Party, and other labor organizations. He was arrested in September 1969 for participation in a direct action against the Harvard Center for International Affairs and sentenced to two years in prison on charges of conspiracy to commit murder after two bullets were fired through a window of the Cambridge police headquarters in 1969. Mann at that time believed that “violent direct action should be used as a tactic to dismantle the group’s perceived power centers of “US imperialism”. Very nice Patricia. You can hear what she has to say in her own words here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEp1kxg58kE&t=142s
So what exactly IS Marxism? The core ideas are that the world is divided into classes, the workers and the richer capitalists who exploit the workers. Marxism believes that there should be a “class conflict” in which there would end up a dictatorship of the proletariat (workers own means of production) and then communism ( a stateless, classless society). The Marxist theory wants to make capitalism GO AWAY. Capitalism is the basis of the U.S. economy in which laborers are paid a wage and a product is sold at a profit. Marxists view the laborers as being exploited because of that. They would believe all profits should be split equally among the laborers. It’s more complicated than that but you get the idea.
So what about Alicia Garza? She is an activist, organizer, writer, and speaker. She founded Black Futures Lab to make Black communities powerful in politics. In 2013 she used the phrase “Black Lives Matter” in a Facebook post after the George Zimmerman acquittal. She has partnered with a left-wing San Francisco group, the Chinese Progressive Association-San Francisco which fiscally supports Garza’s Black Futures Lab. The CPA-SF is a left-wing group that from the beginning has been a supporter of China’s communist revolution and whose members want revolution here in America.
And who is Opal Tometi? She is a human rights activist, writer, strategist, and community organizer. Her biography is actually very impressive. You can read more here: https://www.opaltometi.org/biography/ She primarily developed the social media presence of BLM and had this to say: “From the beginning when I built BlackLivesMatter.com, I went to the website and wrote: ‘Black queer lives matter, black immigrants matter, black disabled folks matter …. This movement is about all of us and recognizing that black people aren’t a monolith.” She should have a talk with Joe Biden. While running for President he said, “What you all know but most people don’t know, unlike the African-American community with notable exceptions, the Latino community is an incredibly diverse community with incredibly different attitudes about different things,” She denies that BLM is a “Marxist” organization and claims that those stories are primarily right wing efforts to discredit the movement. Well Opal….there are photos of you with the socialist Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Venezuela an “authoritarian regime” in 2020, having the lowest score among countries in the Americas. You also wrote a lengthy letter of support for him and the socialist revolution he leads. You have praised the work of Cuban doctors (who are trafficked by the Cuban regime) and did condemn the “defamation of late President Hugo Chavez [by] labeling him a dictator.” By the way….Chavez was the leader of the Venezuelan Socialist Party.
So come to your own conclusion. It’s pretty clear that the agenda of BLM lies much deeper than simple demonstrations. Take a look at Seattle, Portland and Milwaukee. I’m sure this post will get lots of criticism for criticizing the movement that’s become untouchable. The number of large capitalistic corporations that have donated millions to BLM is amazing. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google just to name a few. Do they realize the 3 founders would like to see them taken over by the workers??
We are living in some crazy times……