It is important to acknowledge the fact that Black Lives Matter the concept and Black Lives Matter the organization are two very different things. Without question, every human being should support the concept that black lives matter. We have seen incredible tensions build over this issue since early 2020 and much of it is due to the fact that these two separate and distinct things have been conflated. Supporting the concept is easy; supporting the formal organization is not. The melding of the two has led to criticism of those who don’t support the organization for not supporting the concept. This article focuses on BLM, the organization and the double standards that are being applied to other organizations.
There is much focus on routing out and exposing domestic terror groups lately. The event at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 still leaves a lot of unanswered questions and the FBI is hunting people down and pressing charges against those who entered the building.
This is not the first time that violence has occurred in the Capitol building. There have been over a half dozen violent incidents at the Capitol since 1915, not to mention protestors taking over the halls of the building on numerous occasions in 2017. One of the most violent instances was on November 7, 1983 when the all-female domestic terror group M19 detonated a bomb in the north wing, leaving at 15-foot hole in the wall, causing $1 million in damage. The details of M19, their history, and story can be found in an article written by Smithsonian Magazine.
One of M19’s central members was Susan Rosenberg. She was involved in the Capitol bombing as well as bombings at an FBI field office in Staten Island and the Navy Yard Officers’ Club in Washington, DC.
Rosenberg was listed on the 2019 Annual Report as serving on the board of directors of Thousand Currents, a fundraising arm for Black Lives Matter. As of this year, they have made a decision to “sunset” their partnership with Thousand Currents and are formalizing a relationship with TIDES which is described as “a philanthropic partner and nonprofit accelerator dedicated to shared prosperity and social justice.” BLM does not have 501(c) 3 status and must use these fundraising organizations, who then filter the funds to them. It seems the reason for the switch is Thousand Currents was going to lose their tax exempt status due to lack of accountability for millions of dollars taken in.
Rosenberg was arrested in 1984, convicted in 1985, and given a 58-year sentence. According to Wikipedia, “Rosenberg’s sentence was commuted by President Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001, his last day in office, to the more than 16 years’ time served. Her commutation produced a wave of criticism by police and New York elected officials.”
Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors, two of BLM’s founders have stated that they are trained Marxists. Garza has stated that Joanne Chesimard, a convicted cop-killer, is one of her heroes, and Cullors was a protégé of Eric Mann, former agitator of the Weather Underground, a domestic terror organization.
A Politifact article from July 2020 explains that because some of its organizers are Marxists, it does not mean that the organization as a whole is. “I am fairly convinced these are mostly attempts to smear anti-racist activists. I think in some media, ‘Marxist’ is dog-whistle for something horrible, like ‘Nazi’, and thus enables to delegitimize/dehumanize them,” Miriyam Aouragh, a lecturer at the London-based Westminster School of Media and Communication, told PolitiFact.”
“Black Lives Matter “is not an organization, but a fluid movement; it doesn’t actually matter if one of its founders was a liberal, Marxist, socialist or capitalist.” While this is most likely true, the organizers play a large part in the culture of an organization and one has to wonder if such allowances would be made if the backgrounds of the organizers of right-leaning groups had similar histories.
The effort to designate domestic terror groups that is currently taking place is a highly politicized and unbalanced one. The Proud Boys are being persecuted and are being called a “white supremacist” far-right terror group even though their members are diverse and their president is Latino. They have not committed any violent acts, while groups like Antifa have terrorized many cities across the nation, most notably Portland, Oregon. The media and politicians have never condemned Antifa while maintaining that they are an idea, or philosophy, and a loose collection of individuals, not an organization.
The double standards being applied today are very dangerous. Canada has formally declared the Proud Boys a terror group, and our politicians are calling for the same while looking the other way at groups who are truly doing both physical and cultural damage to our country.
Originally published on Citizen Stringer February 7, 2021