Black Lives Matter is now doing what it does best: purchasing expensive real estate.
Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation announced Wednesday it will pour$ 1 million into the Black Panther building, a planned$ 80 million complex in Oakland, Calif., that will house 79 subsidized apartment units as well as a grocery store, community garden, and fitness center, all run by former prison inmates. Elaine Brown, a former head of the Black Panther Party, is directing the building’s reconstruction, which occupies a plot of land where Huey P. Newton, cofounder of the Black Panther Party, shot and killed a police officer in October 1967.
BLM is no man to real estate. After raising$ 90 million during the George Floyd protests in 2020, the troubled charity silently began a global real estate purchase binge. The group footed the bill for its Canadian affiliate to purchase another$ 6 million mansion in Toronto in July 2021 after securing a$ 6 million mansion in Los Angeles in October 2020. The team’s director, Patrisse Cullors, got in on the activity in March 2021 when she purchased a$ 1.4 million house in a remote, majority- light Malibu neighborhood.
We recently gave past Black Panther Chairwoman Elaine Brown$ 1 million to help pay for the West Oakland Black Panther tower and the Black-owned companies that will support its expansion. photograph. twitter.com/HdHKfhvTCy
— Black Lives Matter ( @Blklivesmatter ) March 27, 2024
However, Black Lives Matter was severely impacted by those buys and the extreme contracting charges that Cullors paid out through generous donations to her friends and family. The party bled money, suffered burning purchase losses, and saw its revenues plummet by 88 percent in its 2022 income year after the people caught wind of the transactions, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
It’s unclear if Black Lives Matter may keep ownership in the Black Panther tower in return for its commitment, which it calls “investment” in raising materials. By supporting Brown’s group’s for-profit businesses that will operate out of the building, Black Lives Matter claimed in a statement that the funds would support” 100 % affordable housing” and create wealth in Oakland’s black community.
The entire complex, Black Lives Matter says, will help fight” capitalism and white supremacy”.
Brown’s charity, Oakland &, the World Enterprises, aims to sell its businesses to its formerly incarcerated staffers after they start turning a profit. However, the group still has a distant dream for profitability.
Oakland &, the World Enterprises ‘ first company, West Oakland Farms, reported$ 164 in sales during its first year of operation in 2015, according to the group’s tax return that year. Farm revenues plummeted even further the following year, but not for , lack of trying. The charity disclosed nearly$ 174, 000 in “urban farm program expenses” in its 2016 tax return while earning “farm produce sales” of just$ 70—a negative return of 99.96 percent.
West Oakland Farms was little more than a series of loose-knit, raised-bed gardens on the plot of land where the Black Panther Building now stands, according to video footage on the charity’s website. When construction on the building started in 2022, the farm was destroyed.
When construction is finished in May, according to Oakland &, the World Enterprises, the farm would reopen on the second level of the Black Panther building in 2022. However, it is not clear how the group intends to run a useful farm on the second floor of a five-story apartment complex. The apartment complex has no balconies, according to concept photos on the charity’s website.
Oakland &, the World Enterprises did not return a request for comment.
After Newton fled to Havana to avoid being charged with the alleged murder of an Oakland prostitute at the age of 17, Brown served as the chairwoman of the Black Panther Party from 1974 to 1977. Newton, who did not serve prison time for his 1967 cop- killing, was shot and killed by a member of the Black Guerrilla Family gang in 1989. Rep. Barbara Lee ( D., Calif. ) honored Newton’s memory during an October 2021 ceremony.
In the early 2010s, Brown began looking for the location of the Black Panther building despite the City of Oakland still holding the land. Desley Brooks, a former member of the Black Panther Party, said the project was” of no benefit to black people” at a barbecue restaurant in October 2015, causing the two to physically alter.
Brown, who was 72 at the time of the incident, sustained injuries during the confrontation. After discovering that she was the victim of elder abuse and battery, a jury in January 2018 awarded her$ 4 million in damages.
Shortly thereafter, the City of Oakland sold the land to Brown’s charity in 2018 for$ 1, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Since then, the group has received state of California funding for the construction of the Black Panther building, totaling$ 61 million. In October, Brown told the Guardian that she hopes the building will inspire her community to start the communist revolution that former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin had predicted.
The concept of having control over our lives and destinies is something I’m trying to convey. Black people have got to be self- determining—we cannot continue to beg white people for our livelihoods”, Brown said of her taxpayer- funded building. ” If you get something that you need, what now, goddammit”?
” I got breakfast, I want lunch, lunch, I want dinner, dinner, I want a place to live, place to live, I want medical care, medical care, I want education”, Brown added. ” Then, as Lenin said, the moment comes when the oppressor cannot accommodate you. That’s when the people will be ready for revolution”.
A request for comment was not returned by Black Lives Matter.
