Jeff Bezos, the founder of private space company Blue Origin and Amazon.com, visited the Los Angeles Air Force base, Space and Missile Systems Center, and spoke to the Airmen, Civilians, and Contractors at the Gordon Conference Center, Oct. 25, 2017. Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Air Force Base Space and Missile System Center.
Who could have predicted that giving a bunch of radical Marxist activists who support terrorizing neighborhoods with looting and rioting millions of dollars would be a mistake? Any reasonable person, probably, but sometimes it takes time for reason to kick in. Now, Amazon, which initially supported BLM along with many other large corporations, is pulling back on its donations to the group as its financial inconsistencies are being brought to light. Andrew Kerr reports in The Washington Examiner:
Amazon kicked Black Lives Matter off its charity platform AmazonSmile on Tuesday as the social justice organization faces intense scrutiny from multiple states over the status of its financial windfall from 2020.
The move deprives BLM of a major revenue source that has provided $306 million to U.S. charities and comes less than two years after Amazon itself donated $10 million to BLM and 11 other social justice groups amid the nationwide unrest spurred by George Floyd’s killing.
“Charitable organizations must meet the requirements outlined in our participation agreement to be eligible for AmazonSmile,” an Amazon representative told the Washington Examiner. “Among other eligibility requirements, organizations are required to be in good standing in their state of incorporation and in the states and territories where they are authorized to do business. Organizations that don’t meet the requirements listed in the agreement may have its eligibility suspended or revoked. Charities can request to be reinstated once they are back in good standing.”
BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who resigned from BLM in May, said last Wednesday that the unaccounted millions her group received in 2020 came from “white corporation guilt.”
“People have to know we didn’t go out and solicit the money,” Cullors said. “This is money that came from white guilt, white corporation guilt, and they just poured money in.”
The Amazon spokesperson declined to clarify exactly how much Amazon donated to Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the charity that serves as the face of the national BLM movement, in June 2020. The spokesperson also declined to clarify if the online retail giant has made any effort to verify whether BLM used its contribution for charitable purposes.
Amazon is the most prominent corporation to break from BLM publicly after having financially supported the group during the 2020 riots.
Intel pledged $1 million to a number of social justice groups, including BLM, in late May of 2020, but Intel spokeswoman Patricia Oliverio-Lauderdale told the Washington Examiner last week that the chipmaker ended up not providing any funding to BLM.
Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said his company committed $5 million to BLM and other social justice groups in June 2020, but Cisco never followed through on its leader’s pledge to contribute to BLM, the Washington Post reported.
BLM voluntarily shut down its online fundraising on Feb. 2 after California and Washington issued legal threats to the group for its failure to report what it did with the millions it received during the second half of 2020. BLM published a report in February 2021 claiming to have ended 2020 with $60 million in its coffers.
As of Wednesday afternoon, BLM remains out of compliance in those states, as well as in New Jersey, North Carolina, Connecticut, Colorado, Maryland, Maine, and Virginia.
