A prominent figure in the Black Lives Matter movement that expanded across the United States after George Floyd’s death in May 2020 has been sued by BLMGR. According to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Thursday, Shalomyah Bowers, the board member of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, has been accused of misusing group funds as a “personal piggy bank.”
In 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement received more than $90 million in donations. Although there isn’t much information regarding how Bowers allegedly embezzled money from the organization, the lawsuit does show how the Black Lives Matter movement is fracturing among its own members and organizations.
In response to the lawsuit, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation denied the allegations against Bowers, calling them “harmful, divisive, and false.” The organization even turned the focus back on the grassroots organization, which stated that it had been taking “$10,000 monthly stipends” rather than using those funds in local areas where they operate.
Black Lives Matter is a multi-faceted organization. The BLMGNF, or Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, is the fundraising group for the organization. When people donate to support the Black Lives Movement, the BLMGNF receives that money and then distributes it through Black Lives Matter Grassroots. This latter group operates chapters across America.
For some time now, Black Lives Matter’s (BLM) leaders have been under fire for their misuse of donated funds to purchase a $6 million property in Los Angeles and another expensive one in Toronto, Canada. The second property alone cost $6.3 million and has over 10 thousand square feet of living space!
In 2020, Bowers, the board member named in the legal complaint, was hired to assist raise cash for the group. He was also in charge of managing how those funds were dispersed. The lawsuit claims that Bowers is a “rogue administrator (and) a middleman turned usurper.” His own business consultancy was paid $2 million by BLMGNF in 2020.
“While BLM leaders and movement workers were on the street risking their lives, Mr. Bowers remained in his cushy offices devising a scheme of fraud and misrepresentation to break the implied-in-fact contract between donors and BLM,” the lawsuit reads.
After the lawsuit was made public, BLMGR leader Melina Abdullah slammed BLMGNF and claimed that they had forgotten their original intent to help Black people.
“Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has been taken away from the people who built it,” she stated. “Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is now led by a highly paid consultant who paid himself upward of $2 million in a single year.”
BLMGR responded with an announcement that said Abdullah and BLMGR “would rather take the same steps of our white oppressors and utilize the criminal legal system which is propped up by white supremacy (the same system they say they want to dismantle) to solve movement disputes.”
What are your thoughts on the recent fractures within the Black Lives Matter movement?
