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Posted: Fri Jul 15, 2016 8:18 pm Post subject: Black Lives Matter: divide and rule tool of George Soros?
Black Lives Matter: Produced By George Soros
Posted on July 13, 2016 by Baxter Dmitry in News, US // 5 Comments
Black Lives Matter is funded by George Soros and the elite for the purpose of inciting terror and furthering their agenda for a civil war in America.
http://yournewswire.com/black-lives-matter-produced-by-george-soros/
Black Lives Matter leader DeRay Mckesson claims to be leading a grassroots revolution for racial and economic justice, but it can be revealed that he has close connections with the privileged and is funded by George Soros and the elite for the purpose of inciting terror and furthering their agenda for a civil war and the disarmament of civilians.
http://yournewswire.com/black-lives-matter-produced-by-george-soros/
DeRay McKesson lives in a house owned by a board member of George Soros’ Open Foundation, and the BLM leader takes home a salary of $165,000 paid for by Baltimore schools district taxpayers.
Soros groups have had several connections to Black Lives Matter organizers and activists. According to Politico, the Soros funded group The Democracy Alliance donated to several race-based movement organizations that ally with the Black Lives Matter movement.
Many of George Soros’s groups have provided funding and guidance to the Black Lives Matter movement and affiliated organisations, with the billionaire investing $33 million in BLM alone.
Internal documents from Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, a group organizing the protests in Ferguson after the death of Michael Brown, showed activists getting paid.
The American Mirror reports that Mckesson lives in a home owned by philanthropists James and Robin Wood in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s the same address he used when declaring his residency on his campaign committee registration form for his failed mayoral run in the city’s Democratic primary earlier this year.
The Woods have owned the home since 1996 and are wealthy donors to George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
Robin Wood is so active that she was made a board member of the Open Society Institute back in 2008, according to the OSI’s website.
The OSI site describes the Williams:
They moved to Baltimore in 1995, when Jimmy had the opportunity to return to his hometown to become director of the orthopedic faculty practice at Sinai Hospital. For the past five years, he has been chief of orthopedics at Harbor Hospital and Robin threw herself into nonprofit work in Baltimore, first with the Community Law Center. She has served on the boards of Associated Black Charities, Safe and Sound, the Baltimore School for the Arts and the Baltimore Community Foundation boards. In 2008, Robin joined the OSI-Baltimore board of directors. She is also now attending the University Of Maryland School of Law.
On Monday, the Balimore Sun reported the 31-year-old agitator Mckesson is making a handsome salary courtesy of Baltimore school district taxpayers.
In his new role, Mckesson is earning a salary of $165,000 as the district’s third chief of human capital in two years, and manage of a budget of $4 million and 56 employees.
After being appointed last month, Mckesson said he was ready to get to work.
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has said assaults on officers at an anti-racism rally were "shocking and completely unacceptable" ahead of more demonstrations planned across the UK on Sunday.
Dame Cressida Dick said 14 officers were injured during clashes with a minority of protesters in central London on Saturday following a peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstration.
A number of arrests have been made and "justice will follow", she added in a statement.
"I am deeply saddened and depressed that a minority of protesters became violent towards officers in central London yesterday evening," Dame Cressida said.
"This led to 14 officers being injured, in addition to 13 hurt in earlier protests this week....
by Baxter Dmitry
Major media outlets in the US have ignored the leak of thousands of emails from billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.
Leaked documents published last week provide insider details of billionaire globalist George Soros using his money to influence elections in Europe, buy out politicians all over the world, underwrite extremist groups, target U.S. citizens who disagree with him, dictate foreign policy, and try to sway a Supreme Court ruling, among other things.
Big news, and compelling stuff, right?
Not if it involves George Soros, the largest single donor to the Clinton campaign, and the man recently exposed issuing directives to her while she was Secretary of State – instructions that she followed to the letter.
In the case of Soros, Clinton’s puppet master, the mainstream media won’t even acknowledge the damning leaks. The New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, CBS News and other major news sites did not even note the existence of these leaked documents, let alone report on what’s in them.
JPost reports:
According to the documents, Soros has given more than $30 million to groups working for Hillary Clinton’s election in November, making him her largest single donor. So it is likely the case that the media’s support for Clinton has played some role in the mainstream media’s bid to bury the story.
It is also likely however, that at least some news editors failed to understand why the leaked documents were worth covering. Most of the information was already public knowledge. Soros’s massive funding of far-left groups in the US and throughout the world has been documented for more than a decade.
But failing to see the significance of the wider story because many of the details were already known is a case of missing the forest for the trees. The DCLeaks document dump is a major story because it exposes the forest of Soros’s funding networks.
The first thing that we see is the megalomaniacal nature of Soros’s philanthropic project. No corner of the globe is unaffected by his efforts. No policy area is left untouched.
On the surface, the vast number of groups and people he supports seem unrelated. After all, what does climate change have to do with illegal African immigration to Israel? What does Occupy Wall Street have to do with Greek immigration policies? But the fact is that Soros-backed projects share basic common attributes.
They all work to weaken the ability of national and local authorities in Western democracies to uphold the laws and values of their nations and communities.
They all work to hinder free markets, whether those markets are financial, ideological, political or scientific. They do so in the name of democracy, human rights, economic, racial and sexual justice and other lofty terms.
In other words, their goal is to subvert Western democracies and make it impossible for governments to maintain order or for societies to retain their unique identities and values.
Black Lives Matter, which has received $650,000 from Soros-controlled groups over the past year, is a classic example of these efforts. Until recently, the police were universally admired in the US as the domestic equivalent of the military. BLM emerged as a social force bent on politicizing support for police.
Its central contention is that in the US, police are not a force for good, enabling society to function by maintaining law and order. Rather, police are a tool of white repression of blacks.
Law enforcement in predominantly African American communities is under assault as inherently racist.
BLM agitation, which has been accused of inspiring the murders of police in several US cities, has brought about two responses from rank and file police. First, they have been demoralized, as they find themselves criminalized for trying to keep their cities safe from criminals.
Second, their willingness to use force in situations that demand the use of force has diminished. Fear of criminal charges on the one hand, and public condemnation as “racists” on the other causes police to prefer inaction even when situations require that they act.
The demoralization and intimidation of police is very likely to cause a steep increase in violent crimes.
Then there are Soros’s actions on behalf of illegal immigration. From the US to Europe to Israel, Soros has implemented a worldwide push to use immigration to undermine the national identity and demographic composition of Western democracies. The leaked emails show that his groups have interfered in European elections to get politicians elected who support open border policies for immigrants from the Arab world and to financially and otherwise support journalists who report sympathetically on immigrants.
Soros’s groups are on the ground enabling illegal immigrants to enter the US and Europe. They have sought to influence US Supreme Court rulings on illegal immigration from Mexico. They have worked with Muslim and other groups to demonize Americans and Europeans who oppose open borders.
In Israel as well, Soros opposes government efforts to end the flow of illegal immigration from Africa through the border with Egypt.
The notion at the heart of the push for the legalization of unfettered immigration is that states should not be able to protect their national identities.
If it is racist for Greeks to protect their national identity by seeking to block the entrance of millions of Syrians to their territory, then it is racist for Greece – or France, Germany, Hungary, Sweden the US or Poland – to exist.
Parallel to these efforts are others geared toward rejecting the right of Western democracies to uphold long-held social norms. Soros-supported groups, for instance, stand behind the push not only for gay marriage but for unisex public bathrooms.
They support not only the right of women to serve in combat units, but efforts to force soldiers to live in unisex barracks. In other words, they support efforts aimed at denying citizens of Western democracies the right to maintain any distance between themselves and Soros’s rejection of their most intimate values – their sexual privacy and identity.
As far as Israel is concerned, Soros-backed groups work to delegitimize every aspect of Israeli society as racist and illegitimate. The Palestinians are focal point of his attacks. He uses them to claim that Israel is a racist state. Soros funds moderate leftist groups, radical leftist groups, Israeli Arab groups and Palestinian groups. In various, complementary ways, these groups tell their target audiences that Israel has no right to defend itself or enforce its laws toward its non-Jewish citizens.
In the US, Soros backed groups from BLM to J Street work to make it socially and politically acceptable to oppose Israel.
The thrust of Soros’s efforts from Ferguson to Berlin to Jerusalem is to induce mayhem and chaos as local authorities, paralyzed by his supported groups, are unable to secure their societies or even argue coherently that they deserve security.
[George Soros Caught Yanking Clinton’s Puppet Strings]
In many ways, Donald Trump’s campaign is a direct response not to Clinton, but to Soros himself.
By calling for the erection of a border wall, supporting Britain’s exit from the EU, supporting Israel, supporting a temporary ban on Muslim immigration and supporting the police against BLM, Trump acts as a direct foil to Soros’s multi-billion dollar efforts.
The DCLeaks exposed the immensity of the Soros-funded Left’s campaign against the foundations of liberal democracies. The “direct democracy” movements that Soros support are nothing less than calls for mob rule.
The peoples of the West need to recognize the common foundations of all Soros’s actions. They need to realize as well that the only response to these premeditated campaigns of subversion is for the people of the West to stand up for their national rights and their individual right to security. They must stand with the national institutions that guarantee that security, in accordance with the rule of the law, and uphold and defend their national values and traditions.
Or What about protesting George Soros and Open Society, with Soros being major contributor to the White Helmets, a CIA covert counterinsurgency group fronting as a paramedic force that worked alongside both AL-Nusra (Al-Quaeda in Syria) and exploited Afhgani Proxi forces the US sent to Syria. They also participated in Organ Trafficking. You'd think they'd think twice before taking money from an organization like this. Also, why in their criticisms of law inforcement have the worst problems i.e. the privatization of police, such as what has happened with the DEA, causing the massive recruitment of informants, the tearing apart of poor communities, the tying of law enforcement to organized crime, and most importantly the law enforcement - asset forfeiture industrial complex - the using of informants to sell drugs, turn the profits to law enforcement, rat out their buyers, then steal their buyers property, where the police turn the profits, which is literally where both the police and the DEA get most of their money. No talk of this whatsoever. Lastly, important that the Ford Foundation is one of the 'Big Three' mentioned in the Church hearings in the late 70s, the big three (Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller foundations) that intelligence uses to launder money into fake social movements for regime change and counterinsurgency operations. These three organizations have been involved in so many racist operations, it is straight racist the BLM would take money from either of their primary funders. Here's a quote about them from a 1976 congressional Church Committee hearing:
"During the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA turned increasingly to covert action in the area of student and labor matters, cultural affairs, and community developments. ... The CIA subsidized, advised, and even helped develop "private" organizations that would compete with the communists around the world. ... [Many] were U.S.-based student, labor, cultural, or philanthropic organizations whose international activities the CIA subsidized. ...
"The philanthropic [CIA] fronts used prior to 1967 funded a seemingly limitless range of covert action programs affecting youth groups, labor unions, universities, publishing houses, and other private institutions in the United States and abroad. ... Support [was provided to, for instance] an international organization of veterans and an international foundation for developing countries [as well as] an organization of journalists and an international women's association. ... Agency funds were used to host foreign visitors [and] provide scholarships to an international cooperative training center at a United States university... The CIA assisted in the establishment in 1951 and the funding for over a decade of a research institute at a major American university. ...
"By 1967, when public disclosure of NSA [National Student Association]'s funding ... caused a major curtailment of these activities, interest in the major covert action efforts in these areas was already waning.
"There appear to be two reasons for this. First, there was considerable skepticism within the CIA as to the effectiveness of this approach. ... Richard Helms [explained], "The clandestine operator ... is trained to believe that you really can't count on the honesty of your agent to do exactly what you want or to report accurately unless you own him body and soul."
"Second, it became increasingly difficult to conceal the CIA funds that supported these activities as the scale of the operations grew. By fiscal year 1967, for example, over $3 million [$22.5 million in 2018] was budgeted for youth and student programs and $6 million [$45 million in 2018] for labor. Most of the funds were transmitted through legitimate or "devised" foundations -- that is, fictitious entities established by the CIA.
"The use of philanthropic organizations was a convenient way to pass funds, in that large amounts could be transferred rapidly, and in a form that need not alert unwitting officers of the recipient organizations to their source. In addition, foundation grants bestowed upon the recipient the apparent "blessing" of the foundation. The funding pattern involved a mixture of bona fide charitable foundations, devised foundations and funds, [CIA] "front men" drawn from a list of America's most prominent citizens, and lawyers representing undisclosed clients.
"The CIA's intrusion into the foundation field in the 1960s can only be described as massive. Excluding grants from the "Big Three" -- Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie -- of the 700 grants over $10,000 given by 164 other foundations during the period 1963-1966, at least 108 involved partial or complete CIA funding. More importantly, CIA funding was involved in nearly half the grants the non-"Big Three" foundations made during this period in the field of international activities. In the same period more than one-third of the grants awarded by non-"Big Three" in the physical, life and social sciences also involved CIA funds.
"Bona fide foundations, rather than those controlled by the CIA, were considered the best and most plausible kind of funding cover for certain kinds of operations. A 1966 CIA study explained the use of legitimate foundations was the most effective way of concealing the CIA's hand as well as reassuring members of funded organizations that the organization was in fact supported by private funds."
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Why Europe Joined US BLM; Former BBC Journalist Explains
Mostafa Afzalzadeh
Former BBC journalist Tony Gosling discusses his doubts about the Black Lives matter and says it is strange that the demonstration has been taking place in his country and Europe.
Why Europe Joined US BLM; Form BBC Journalist Explains 16:03، 2020-06-18
https://parsipolicy.com/en/news/2958
In an Interview with Parsi Policy, former BBC journalist Tony Gosling discusses his doubts about the Black Lives matter and says it is strange that the demonstration has been taking place in his country as they have less police brutality.
Q: Many people of color, have been killed recently in the United States but they did not have the reaction of people like what happened to George Floyd. Why?
You have to draw some parallels with the Black Panthers from the 1960s because although there is a great deal of difference between racism in establishment in the United States in the 1960s and today, it is not the first time this has happened.
Now it's known that there was a lot of manipulation of Black Panthers by the FBI, and I think the same is true today. OK, so you have to examine Black Lives Matter. What is this organization? So Black Lives Matter is deliberately funded. It is a funded organization and those that provide the funds decide who grounds the organization. What it will do is it will basically swamp any grass roots anti-apartheid movement. And any grass roots anti-apartheid movement in this country as has happened in the past, it is likely to start pointing the finger at Israel, because of the racism in Israel.
We have a presidential election coming and this is very much dividing the society along the lines of two main candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. So, there is a potential to use organizations like Black Lives Matter for Political purposes and also to make sure that they do not go down the road of criticizing apartheid Israel.
Q: So from what I understand the protests and the real protests of people is not going to go anywhere in United States. Is that right?
One thing I can tell you, I've never seen so many news channels here in the UK advertising demonstrations. I mean I have organized demonstrations myself and you'll never get the television doing the advertising for you.
Q: When I was the speaking with American friends of mine they said the same thing is happening in the United States, TV is covering everything and doing the same thing actually.
It's not so much covering. The point to make here is advertising the demonstrations three or four days before they happen. I mean I have never seen this on TV here before.
Q: So, why is this happening?
You have good demonstrations, you have bad demonstrations. We had anti-lockdown demonstration in London two weeks or so ago which was covered in a very negative way by the press. This latest demonstration, the last couple of weekends, there has been a lot of advertising and the news for the demonstration beforehand. It seems to me that obviously some people want those demonstrations because it will highlight particular agendas in the road to the US Presidential elections.
Q: What about UK?
The British Police are not armed, a very soft policing generally here but this to me, is very alarming to see a demonstrators chanting something which really is not relevant in this city "Hands up, Don't shoot". That is what they were chanting as they were marching along. So to me there is a certain amount, I think you're going to be quite careful here, there is a certain amount of manipulation of the street demonstrations by those who are funding the organization, Black Lives Matter.
And very importantly, they will be steering it. I have seen some of these people, I have met some of these people. They are not interested in the whole Israel situation; even though we have got a very serious apartheid going on there, and extreme forms of racism. This is a single issue; it seems to be around the police and black people in Britain and America.
Q: I still don't understand why the demonstrations has expanded to European countries, especially Britain, Germany, and France. What do you think the reason is? And why the media are advertising these demonstrations?
First of all, why is the media advertising the demonstrations? It is because they are good demonstrations, a bit like good terrorists or bad terrorists. So you get freedom fighters or terrorists. This fits our agenda or this doesn't fit our agenda.
Second, why are these demonstrations taking place at all, in Brisrol say for example? So in my city, I am amazed to see a demonstration like this as we don't have a problem with police racism. The police have dealt very well with the racists. There is a really problem I don't think with racism in the city so I have no idea why we have these demonstrations.
I think it is more the real problem that needs addressing is poverty. And that is something that is suffered by white and black and every color. But having a Black Lives Matter demonstration actually serves the purpose of being divisive. So it is not about poverty anymore; it is about black versus white. So I think what it is doing it is effectively doing two things. I believe it is an attempt to stop proper anti-apartheid movement because they really are controlling the racist agenda in the city. I think they are also taking a lot of support that might otherwise go to the normal grass roots anti-poverty campaigns, too. But you see, these are the groups the anti-apartheid groups and anti-poverty groups that don't get the funding. Black Lives matter gets the funding. And I think it is really part of US empire agenda so Britain is just part of the US Empire now.
Thank you very much for your time.
Mostafa Afzalzadeh
Mostafa Afzalzadeh is a senior Journalist and documentary filmmaker. He is currently the managing Director of Parsi Policy. _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
From David Livingstone
On February 15, 1965, just six days before he was shot at the same location, Malcolm X revealed the Nation of Islam was funded by JFK conspirator H.L. Hunt and confessed with regret that he had personally led negotiations with the Ku Klux Klan.
More here: https://ordoabchao.ca/volume-four/jfk-assassination
Malcolm X Press Conference Exposing NOI & Elijah Muhammad YouTube
Malcolm X entertains questions from the press after delivering a lecture called “There’s a Worldwide Revolution Going On” at The Audubon Ballroom – the same place where he would blessed with Shahaadah (martyrdom) 6 days later (this lecture took place on February 15, 1965).
Transcripts of the lecture can be found at www.nuruzzamaaninstitute.org and www.masjidalmumin.org _________________ --
'Suppression of truth, human spirit and the holy chord of justice never works long-term. Something the suppressors never get.' David Southwell
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com http://aanirfan.blogspot.com
Martin Van Creveld: Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother."
Martin Van Creveld: I'll quote Henry Kissinger: "In campaigns like this the antiterror forces lose, because they don't win, and the rebels win by not losing."
Natalie Jeffers is described as the 'co-founder' of Black Lives Matter UK
She also runs Matters of the Earth, which claims to 're-imagine' knowledge
Matters of the Earth received £50,000 to send her on conferences
By REBECCA TAYLOR FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 10:29, 11 September 2016 | UPDATED: 01:05, 12 September 2016
Natalie Jeffers, from Brighton, is the 'co-founder' and 'organiser' of Black Lives Matter UK and also runs an organisation called Matters of the Earth +4
Natalie Jeffers, from Brighton, is the 'co-founder' and 'organiser' of Black Lives Matter UK and also runs an organisation called Matters of the Earth
One of the key leaders in the Black Lives Matters group in Britain missed the group's protest at London City airport because she was flying to a conference in Brazil, paid for by a government department.
Natalie Jeffers, from Brighton, is the 'co-founder' and 'organiser' of Black Lives Matter UK and also runs an organisation called Matters of the Earth, in which she tries to bridge 'the gap between the academic and creative worlds'.
According to The Sunday Times, her work with Matters of the Earth has been funded in part by a £50,000 grant from the Department for International Development.
By Professor Inderjeet Parmar and Imran Choudhury, PhD Candidate, from City, University of London's Department of International Politics.
First published Thursday, 23rd July, 2020 • by City Press Office (General enquiries)
US corporations including Walmart, Nike and Sony Music pledged up to US$450 million for social and racial justice causes in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The sudden outbreak of brand activism among major corporations in recent months is likely to be related to surveys which suggest consumers shift spending according to the political and social stands that businesses take. But this raises significant concerns in the wake of a longer pattern of philanthropy through foundations attached to American corporate wealth that has focused on racial equality and civil rights causes.
Black Lives Matter emerged in 2013 but gained national attention from 2016 as the effective face of the Movement for Black Lives. It has expanded to local chapters across the US, Canada and the UK. It has become the leading radical organisation for structural change to eradicate racial injustice and police brutality, reform criminal justice and protect voting rights. It has also led calls to defund the police, which have grown stronger since Floyd’s killing in May.
When grassroots radicalism meets corporate wealth. Michael Reynolds/EPAWhen grassroots radicalism meets corporate wealth. Michael Reynolds/EPA
Among the Black Lives Matter movement’s earliest and most generous benefactors in 2016 was the Ford Foundation, one of America’s largest corporate foundations and the legacy of the industrial titan Henry Ford. Alongside the Ford Foundation – which is a separate entity to the Ford Motor Company – the Black Lives Matter movement received major grants from Borealis Philanthropy and the Open Society Foundations.
But as the historian Karen Ferguson argued in the wake of Ford’s donation, the foundation’s understanding of the roots of police violence differed strikingly from that of Black Lives Matter. She argues that Ford’s communication about its support actually sent a problematic “all lives matter” message.
Civil rights and identity politics
Such grants from foundations established by large corporates fit into a longer history in which radical social movements have been co-opted and channelled into directions more acceptable to the political and economic status quo.
Research has shown that fear among corporate elites of radical organisations during the civil rights and black power movements of the 1960s led to an increase in corporate donations and foundation grants to more moderate black organisations, as well as federal spending on diversity programmes.
Some have argued that these elite-funded programmes actually tend to strengthen the US establishment and dampen radicalism. This happens through a shift from demands for structural reform to more incremental change within the existing political and economic framework. This is a way to bring the outsider into the system, and it limits the extent of change. Such programmes, it’s argued, co-opt some leaders by promoting them in the media, or among established political parties, or provide them with a perch in non-profit organisations. Key minority leaders become institutionalised and so operate from within establishment political structures – rather than from beyond them.
Research has shown how minority groups that integrate and assimilate into dominant, mainstream institutions lose more and more of their minority cultural characteristics and imbibe dominant cultural values and behaviours, limiting their reformist ambitions. This leaves the deeper sources of oppression within American society largely untouched. The reinterpretation of black power into policies backing black capitalism is an excellent example of this process.
Creating a new elite
Philanthropic foundations took an early interest in the “race question” in the years after the second world war. This was mainly due to the imperatives of cold war competition, and the anti-racist and anti-colonial appeal the the Soviet Union and China had for newly independent states in Asia and Africa.
But it was during the 1960s when the Ford Foundation, under the leadership of McGeorge Bundy, former national security adviser to presidents Kennedy and Johnson, addressed key issues affecting the African-American community. The foundation created programmes and donated money to civil rights and black power groups. However, these were seen by scholars and critics to be part of the liberal-elite plan to domesticate the more radical elements or marginalise the radicals by promoting and funding “moderates”.
Painting on Trump’s doorstep: Black Lives Matter is painted onto 5th Avenue, New York in early July. Justin Lane/EPAPainting on Trump’s doorstep: Black Lives Matter is painted onto 5th Avenue, New York in early July. Justin Lane/EPA
Ford and other foundations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation, envisioned racial inequality as resolvable through the creation of a new African American and Latino elite. The plan was that this new elite would assimilate the values and align with the mainstream politics of dominant American liberal and conservative elites. They would then advocate change within the boundaries of a capitalist political economy and mainstream party politics. President Richard Nixon, therefore, promoted black capitalism as part of that broader strategy.
The fatal flaw, however, was that such a strategy would go on to improve the lives of only a small percentage of African Americans, leaving the majority behind. It also helped fuel a politics around blaming poorer African Americans as a way to explain their “failures”.
Shallow foundations
Yet, the assimilationist strategy’s greatest success was the presidency of Barack Obama, a mere half-century after the assassination of Martin Luther King. In a grim reminder of the myth of a “post-racial America”, the Black Lives Matter movement began life during Obama’s second term.
This demonstrated both the successes of the assimilationst strategy and its shallow foundations. It has produced a black elite incorporated into the dominant political order. Yet, it has failed to eliminate the stigma of race, or to break down the political and class structures that still perpetuate racial inequality.
Ford’s backing for Black Lives Matter has drawn flak from the political right, who claim the foundation is funding what they argue is a radical leftist group. Yet, the liberal-capitalist credentials of the current president of the Ford Foundation, Darren Walker, an African-American, could hardly be more stark.
In a 2015 interview with Bloomberg, Walker upheld the need for solving inequality by improving capitalism, rather than challenging corporate power itself with an alternative system of government ownership or regulation. He was recently appointed to the board of a New York-listed payments company and on June 19, rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange to mark the end of slavery in 1865. This indicates an attachment to the type of corporate capitalism that has been the driver of racial and class inequality in America.
The Black Lives Matter movement has certainly caught the public imagination. But history urges us to be cautious about the prospects of deep-seated radical change via movements whose finances are so closely tied up with America’s influential corporate foundations.
Professor Inderjeet Parmar and Imran Choudhury, PhD Candidate, from City, University of London's Department of International Politics.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Leah Hunt-Hendrix speaks at Way to Win’s annual Way Forward event.
LEAH HUNT-HENDRIX SPEAKS AT WAY TO WIN’S ANNUAL WAY FORWARD EVENT.
When Leah Hunt-Hendrix first showed up at Occupy Wall Street, few of her fellow protesters knew about her background. Then in her late 20s, Hunt-Hendrix was a daughter of the far upper crust, born into the privilege of a clan whose combined wealth has been pegged at upwards of $13 billion. Even back then, she felt drawn toward a path of active solidarity with movement organizing. That path has taken her from an Upper East Side childhood to a central role as a donor organizer and infrastructure-builder for social and economic justice.
“Social movements are one of the few ways people who don’t have power can get together and transform history,” Hunt-Hendrix told me. For those born into power and privilege, she said, “solidarity places the focus on the agency of the person you’re standing with,” rather than on yourself.
Hunt-Hendrix co-founded the Solidaire Network in the wake of Occupy Wall Street, in part as an attempt to create a donor organizing vehicle that mirrored the structure of social movements. Solidaire has since become a key player in the growing push to align the donations of wealthy progressives with grassroots activism, and in so doing, interrogate the power imbalances that riddle philanthropic and political funding. Post-2016, Hunt-Hendrix built on that work as a co-founder of Way to Win, one of many progressive platforms that came together in the Trump era to move money and build power.
With a Ph.D. from Princeton in religion, ethics and politics, Hunt-Hendrix brings a philosophical lens to a career saddled with grey areas and contradictions—between family wealth and working class protest, the agency of philanthropy and the solidarity of collective action, the ideals of democracy and the realities of political spending. “One mistake of western philosophy,” she said, “is that it tries so hard to envision us as completely independent, vulnerable, self-sufficient. We’re not. We’re born into families and communities that enable us to live how we live.”
Growing Up in the 1%
Hunt-Hendrix is typical of the philanthropic third generation in that, in many ways, she and her grandfather wouldn’t likely have seen eye-to-eye. H.L. Hunt, who passed away before Hunt-Hendrix was born, once earned praise as a paragon of “extraordinary, independent wealth” from none other than J. Paul Getty. A Republican, he built a mid-century fortune in the billions by parlaying gambling winnings into a Texas oil empire.
The patriarch had 15 children, and living members of the extended Hunt family include oil executives, sports dignitaries, a former U.S. ambassador, and the founder of the black metal band Liturgy. Lyda Hill, a Giving Pledge signatory and the founder of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, is a grandchild of H.L. Hunt.
Leah Hunt-Hendrix is the daughter of H.L. Hunt’s 14th child, Helen LaKelly Hunt. Helen Hunt co-founded some of the nation’s leading women’s funds, including the Dallas Women’s Foundation, the New York Women’s Foundation, the Women’s Funding Network, and Women Moving Millions, where Hunt-Hendrix’s aunt Swanee Hunt (the former ambassador) has also played a leading role.
Hunt-Hendrix’s mother’s place at the forefront of the women’s funding movement provided an early primer on philanthropy and its contradictions. On the one hand, she said, “I was surrounded by women donors who were trying to figure out how to enable their own liberation and the liberation of all women and girls.” But at the same time, the elite spaces and wealthy donors could be cloying to the young Hunt-Hendrix, who felt that “we shouldn’t have this disparity of wealth in the first place.”
Hunt-Hendrix recalls that in her early enthusiasm to tackle wealth inequality, she thought she was rebelling against the glamorous good intentions of elite women’s philanthropy. But in the end, she said, “I really did follow in the footsteps of my mom.” Both women have been serial entrepreneurs of the social sector, standing up a succession of platforms that aim to translate class privilege into movement power, or power for women, as the case may be.
Wrestling to come to terms with her privilege in the years before Occupy, Hunt-Hendrix came across Resource Generation, a key donor organizing platform for young progressives with wealth. She credits Resource Generation with furthering her political education and helping her parse the ramifications of an elite upbringing. That process continued when Hunt-Hendrix put her graduate program on hold to travel to the Middle East, where she observed that international aid programs and bids for dialogue often fail to achieve much. She attributes that to their tendency not to challenge the prevailing economic order in a meaningful way. Doing so, she says, often takes direct action.
Movement Moments
Hunt-Hendrix initially went incognito at Occupy Wall Street, at least as far as her class privilege went. “I didn’t want to be associated with money at the time,” she said. And fresh out of her Ph.D. program and experiences in the Middle East, she said, “I was drawn to Occupy. I’d never seen anything like it in this country.” At first, Hunt-Hendrix spent her time facilitating working groups and orientations, where she enjoyed interacting with fellow protesters and learning the nuts and bolts of movement organizing.
As the protests continued, Hunt-Hendrix began having frank conversations with friends who knew of her background. Several of them suggested that instead of hiding her privilege, she could embrace it as a tool to help organize other wealthy people, some of whom were expressing their support on social media at the time as “one-percenters” in solidarity with the 99%.
Solidaire sprung from the post-Occupy zeitgeist. While Occupy was often panned for failing to achieve policy goals, what it did do was give many of today’s top progressive activists a crash course on intersectional grassroots organizing. The DNA of Occupy can be seen in the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and popular young legislators like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the latest incarnation of the climate movement, and other corners of modern activism. On the philanthropy front, Hunt-Hendrix founded the Solidaire Network in 2013, alongside other young donors and activists like Farhad Ebrahimi, founder of the Chorus Foundation, and Billy Wimsatt, who founded and leads the Movement Voter Project. Hunt-Hendrix served as Solidaire’s first executive director, a role now filled by Vini Bhansali.
From its initial home at the Proteus Fund, Solidaire was one of the first funding organizations to back the Movement for Black Lives following the 2014 unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. Hunt-Hendrix says Solidaire came together in an organic way, building on the post-Occupy realization that during “movement moments,” activist groups need fast, targeted money and cannot wait half a year for grant cycles to roll around. Distributing that money requires infrastructure that centers the needs of movement groups rather than the preferences of elites. And when a movement moment isn’t currently underway, the work must be sustained via behind-the-scenes base-building.
The reckoning around racial justice that kicked off in June of 2020 saw those dynamics at play on the world stage. As we’ve seen, behind-the-scenes infrastructure-building helped lay the foundation for this summer’s historic protests, taking place back when the movement wasn’t in the limelight. Many of M4BL’s backers come from Hunt-Hendrix’s corner of the funding world, via networks like Resource Generation, the Women’s Donor Network and Solidaire itself.
For Hunt-Hendrix, starting Solidaire and building out those networks also helped her reconcile her class background with her political values.
Getting Political
Like many other progressive donors, Hunt-Hendrix found herself reevaluating the landscape after Donald Trump’s upset win in 2016. “Like many people, I assumed Hillary Clinton was going to get elected, and that we’d need outside movements to hold her accountable,” she said. Trump’s victory led her to begin thinking that, for funders, “maybe politics and movement-building shouldn’t be so separate.”
Way to Win, which Hunt-Hendrix founded alongside Jenifer Fernandez Ancona and Tory Gavito after Trump’s election, takes that idea to heart. Way to Win is a donor collaborative structured as an LLC that serves as an “organizational home-base” for three main arms: Way to Rise, a 501(c)(3), the Way to Win Action Fund, a 501(c)(4), and a PAC called Way to Lead. Way to Win is similar to many progressive platforms that arose in the wake of 2016 in that it seeks to pull as many legal levers as possible to further its aims.
In 2018, Way to Win moved $22 million to local movements, following that up with $27 million in 2019. In 2020, the organization has set in motion a broad bid for philanthropic funding to protect elections and drive voter engagement. The campaign calls for $60 million in (c)(3) funding to 70 groups and looks beyond the November elections toward a longer-term effort to engage young people and communities of color in the political process.
Outfits like Way to Win draw on rising interest in advocacy and movement-building from donors, especially on the left. Jolted into action by the Trump presidency and the nonprofit sector’s failure to combat skyrocketing wealth inequality, funders have flocked to places like the Alliance for Justice’s Bolder Advocacy program to learn more about legally funding edgier work. Much of that funding has taken the form of funder collaboration, which gained initial momentum through networks like the Democracy Alliance and now encompasses a much wider range of players including Solidaire and Way to Win.
Still, it’s easy to overstate the trend toward bottom-up movement funding. Support for grassroots groups, especially those led by women and people of color, still makes up only a small fraction of overall funding, even from philanthropies that profess to share their goals. And if they’re not careful, well-intentioned funders can stifle movement activities if they exhibit to their grantees a preference for tamer strategies.
Well aware of those realities, Hunt-Hendrix and other funders in her circle have experimented with ways to upend the typical donor-grantee power dynamic. One such effort is the Emergent Fund, a pooled vehicle founded immediately after 2016 with Trump-era rapid response in mind. It’s a project of Solidaire and the Women Donors Network, with additional support from the Threshold Foundation and the Democracy Alliance. To challenge the “hierarchical” nature of philanthropic funding, the Emergent Fund uses a participatory model in which an advisory council and nominations network of movement leaders (and some funders) collaborate to make funding decisions.
Philanthropy Versus Solidarity
For Hunt-Hendrix, solidarity isn’t a word to be thrown around lightly. In many ways, she has made it her life’s study. Late last year, she co-authored a piece on this multifaceted concept in the New Republic, and she’s in the process of writing a book that digs even deeper. In the article, Hunt-Hendrix and co-author Astra Taylor posit solidarity as an alternative to philanthropy as it’s traditionally understood.
“In contrast to charity and philanthropy,” they write, “[solidarity] isn’t one-sided. It is a form of reciprocity rooted in the acknowledgment that our lives are intertwined.” And unlike identity, solidarity “is something you do—a set of actions taken toward a common goal.” On top of that, solidarity must be understood in the context of economic reciprocity: Those born with privilege owe a kind of debt to those born without.
Hunt-Hendrix seems to have adopted a position of critical pragmatism toward philanthropy, which she embraces for its usefulness but of which she remains skeptical. “It’s not democratic,” she said. “A more democratic system would be to have fair taxation.” She’s open to a wealth tax and expressed support for an increase to the required foundation payout rate. “There’s a lot of room for philanthropy to improve, but it’s a structure we’ve grown up with,” she said. “In an ideal world, I don’t think we’d have huge private foundations.”
Until real reform around money in politics has a chance to proceed, Hunt-Hendrix believes it isn’t necessarily a bad thing “to use the tools that the other side is using.” Conservatives, after all, benefited by embracing values-based advocacy long before liberal funders began to follow suit. “The only option open to us is getting progressive lawmakers elected into roles that have power over [money in politics] decisions,” she said.
Toward that end, she’s been thinking a lot lately about how progressives might hold a Biden administration accountable to movement goals. Donors need to lean in after the election, not just before it, she said. That means resourcing organizations that aren’t afraid to get into intra-party fights, as well as policy efforts that look past the electoral arena and toward actual governance.
The Next Stage
For Hunt-Hendrix, one of the most exciting things about how progressive organizing has shaped up since Occupy is how much better advocates have gotten at “saying what they’re for rather than just what they’re against.” The ongoing racial justice movement, in particular, has transformed young people who weren’t political a year ago into dedicated activists, she said.
As a representative of the rising generation of philanthropic leaders, Hunt-Hendrix is building infrastructure that smooths the path not only for young activists, but also for progressive newcomers to big philanthropy. When MacKenzie Scott revealed herself as pretty much the biggest progressive donor out there right now, her list of grantees included the Movement for Black Lives as well as a number of movement-oriented platforms similar to those mentioned here.
Going forward, Hunt-Hendrix is eager to get behind the “next stage” in the movement for social justice, whatever that may be. She mentioned her ongoing interest in a more global analysis of racial justice, in which wealthy countries must reckon with the legacy and relics of colonialism—which include, in her view, international institutions like the IMF and the World Bank.
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