{"id":19156,"date":"2021-03-10T22:05:58","date_gmt":"2021-03-10T22:05:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theoklahomaeagle.net\/?p=19156"},"modified":"2021-03-10T22:05:58","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T22:05:58","slug":"mike-browns-father-ferguson-organizers-request-20m-from-blm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/2021\/03\/10\/mike-browns-father-ferguson-organizers-request-20m-from-blm\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Brown\u2019s Father, Ferguson Organizers Request $20M From BLM"},"content":{"rendered":"

www.thegrio.com<\/a>
\nBy DiMicia Inman<\/a>
\n 
\nMike Brown Sr.\u00a0<\/strong>and local community organizer\u00a0Tony Russell\u00a0<\/strong>have demanded the\u00a0<\/strong>Black Lives Matter organization provide $20M to continue their work in Ferguson, Missouri.
\nRead More:\u00a0Ferguson elects Ella Jones as its first Black mayor<\/a><\/strong>
\nRussell, who co-founded the\u00a0International Black Freedom Alliance<\/a>\u00a0appeared next to Brown Sr. in a video expanding on their official statement. The IBFA released a series of images and videos via Twitter that clarifies their mission and their reasoning for asking BLM to provide the money.
\nAccording to the Twitter thread, Brown Sr. has only received $500 from any BLM affiliated group since his son\u2019s 2014 killing, despite being a community figure who organizes and supports other families in healing and empowerment.
\nThe demand is in response to news of BLM receiving over $90M in response to the uprisings launched after the deaths of\u00a0George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor,\u00a0<\/strong>and others.
\n\u201cOn behalf of many activists in the St. Louis area, I\u2019m joined by Mike Brown Sr., the father of\u00a0Mike Brown Jr.<\/strong>\u00a0Today, we hold Black Lives Matter accountable,\u201d Russell announced in the video.
\nAs\u00a0theGrio<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>reported, Black Lives Matter ended the year 2020 with a balance of more than $60M, opening up about their finances for the first time. BLM co-founder\u00a0Patrisse Cullors<\/strong>\u00a0said their goal is to reinvest the money.
\n\u201cOne of our biggest goals this year is taking the dollars we were able to raise in 2020 and building out the institution we\u2019ve been trying to build for the last seven and a half years,\u201d she said, according to the report.
\nSeveral chapters of BLM across the country have expressed their desire for transparency regarding fundraising in the organization. Cullors responded that things behind-the-scenes are not what people may assume.
\n\u201cBecause the BLM movement was larger than life \u2014 and it is larger than life \u2014 people made very huge assumptions about what our actual finances looked like,\u201d Cullors said according to\u00a0theGrio<\/em>. \u201cWe were often scraping for money, and this year was the first year where we were resourced in the way we deserved to be.\u201d
\nRead More:\u00a0Black Lives Matter receives Nobel Peace Prize nomination<\/a><\/strong>
\nAccording to statements revealed in the Twitter thread, organizers and activists have questioned the allocation of funds raised by BLM prior to the news reports of their financial assets.
\nRussell, Brown Sr. and others hope to use the money for the\u00a0Chosen For Change Foundation<\/a>, the Mike Brown Community Center, organizing grants for Ferguson protests and activists, various programs and services in the Black community, and the annual Aug. 9 commemorations of Brown\u2019s death.
\n\u201cEven before the article, \u201d the tweet stated, \u201cMike Brown Sr. and many Black community members have had questions about the money\u00a0#BlackLivesMatter<\/a>\u00a0was raising.\u201d
\nAfter the news revealed the substantial donations, Black Lives Matter launched a Survival Fund for people to apply for 3,000 microgrants of $1K. Applicants who gained approval would see the funds in their chosen method of payment with no-strings-attached\u00a0theGrio<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>reported.
\n\u201cThis came from a collective conversation with BLM leadership that Black folks are being hurt the most financially during the pandemic,\u201d Cullors said, according to the report. \u201cI believe that when you have resources, to hoard them is a disservice to the people who deserve them,\u201d she said.
\nAs of Feb.25, 2021, at least 300 people had been approved for grants. According to the report, one Survival Fund recipient,\u00a0Kusema Thomas<\/strong>, was able to obtain the funds quickly.
\n\u201c\u201cIt reinforces some of the things that have just been natural to us as a community,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cIt\u2019s a point of pride, that\u2019s connected to our history of being able to support each other. It\u2019s how we show love.\u201d
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

www.thegrio.com By DiMicia Inman   Mike Brown Sr.\u00a0and local community organizer\u00a0Tony Russell\u00a0have demanded the\u00a0Black Lives Matter organization provide $20M to continue their work in Ferguson, Missouri. Read More:\u00a0Ferguson elects Ella Jones as its first Black mayor Russell, who co-founded the\u00a0International Black Freedom Alliance\u00a0appeared next to Brown Sr. in a video expanding on their official statement.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19158,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,105],"tags":[],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-19156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19156"},{"taxonomy":"thb-sponsors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.willoughbyavenue.com\/eagle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thb-sponsors?post=19156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}