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For all its talk of being a street uprising, Black Lives Matter is increasingly awash in cash, raking in pledges of more than $100 million from liberal foundations and others eager to contribute to what has become the grant-making cause du jour.

The Ford Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy recently announced the formation of the Black-Led Movement Fund [BLMF], a six-year pooled donor campaign aimed at raising $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives coalition.

That funding comes in addition to more than $33 million in grants to the Black Lives Matter movement from top Democratic Party donor George Soros through his Open Society Foundations, as well as grant-making from the Center for American Progress.

The BLMF provides grants, movement building resources, and technical assistance to organizations working advance the leadership and vision of young, Black, queer, feminists and immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America, said the Borealis announcement.

In doing so, however, the foundations have aligned themselves with the staunch left-wing platform of the Movement for Black Lives, which unveiled a policy agenda shortly after the fund was announced accusing Israel of being an apartheid state guilty of genocide.

Released Aug. 1, the platform also calls for defunding police departments, race-based reparations, breaking, voting rights for illegal immigrants, fossil-fuel divestment, an end to private education and charter schools, a universal basic income, and free college for blacks.

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As far as critics are concerned, the grab-bag platform combined with the staggering underwriting commitment offer more evidence that Black Lives Matter is being used as a conduit for left-wing politics as usual.

Its about time people woke up to the fact that big money is using people as pawns to stoke racial hatred and further their global agenda, said the Federalist Papers Projects C.E. Dyer.

Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Organizations, said corporations and others may want to think twice about partnering with the Ford Foundation, the fifth-largest U.S. philanthropy with $12.4 billion in assets.

The Ford Foundation has traditionally been leftist, at least since the 1970s, on law-enforcement matters. So its not a huge surprise, but its certainly disappointing, said Mr. Johnson. I guess potential donors may want to look at the [Black Lives Matter] movement and see the damage, destruction and murders that theyve left in their wake.

For Black Lives Matter, the grant-making partnership isnt risk free, lending legitimacy to the movement but also credence to those who say it has strayed from the concerns of black Americans calling for equal treatment at the hands of police.

I think whoevers in charge of vetting a grant like that didnt do their homework, said Mr. Johnson. Or maybe this was already in the works before they realized what exactly they were dealing with before this platform came outbefore it became more apparent that its become todays Velcro for what the leftist-fringe movement desires.

And thats a shame, he said, because instead of having a serious movement that might have been a basis for dialogue and improving relations in communities, especially communities of color, its kind of become in some ways a very violent movement, in some ways a very, very far-left [movement] with an almost statist agenda.

Borealis and Ford did not return requests Wednesday asking for comment, but one of the newly launched funds partners, the Movement Strategy Center in Oakland, California, praised the foundations for bringing resources to this transformative movement.

Ensuring that all Black Lives Matter, in this land and around the world, will require an infusion of assets into Black communities, said the center in an Aug. 8 statement.

In their July 19 announcement, Ford Foundation program officers Brook Kelly-Green and Luna Yasui said that, Now is the time to call for an end to state violence directed at communities of color.

And now is the time to advocate for investment in public servicesincluding but not limited to police reformtogether with education, health, and employment in communities for people that have historically had less opportunity and access to all those things, they said. These are the reasons we support the Movement for Black Lives.

Ford and Borealis are hardly alone: They said the fund will complement the important work of charities including the Hill-Snowden Foundation, Solidaire, the NoVo Foundation, the Association of Black Foundation Executives, the Neighborhood Funders Group, anonymous donors, and others.

In addition to raising $100 million for the Movement for Black Lives, the Black-Led Movement Fund will collaborate with Benedict Consulting on the organizational capacity building needs of a rapidly growing movement.

Ford has locked horns over Israel before: In 2003, the foundation announced after years of criticism that it would not renew its funding for leftist causes through the New Israel Fund, according to Forward.

The Black Lives Matter movement exploded in August 2014 after an officer shot dead unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Since then, police shootings of black men have prompted rioting and protests in dozens of U.S. cities, as well as the deaths of eight officers in separate incidents this year at demonstrations in Baton Rouge and Dallas.

Mr. Johnson confirmed that his organization, an advocacy group for police, has no grant-making alliance with Ford.

We dont receive any funding from Ford. But yeah, thanks very much, he said with a laugh.

Not that he wouldnt take it. Of course it would come in handy look at whats going on across this country with the attacks on police, Mr. Johnson said. Were not looking for a handout from Ford, but it would be nice to see groups like that or George Soros try to give some nuts-and-bolts help for people who are hurting, instead of throwing money around on grand schemes.

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Helm, the so-called cofounder and core organizer of Black Lives Matter Louisville, explained in an article published at Leoweekly.com the things she says need to change.

White people, if you dont have any descendants, will your property to a black or brown family. Preferably one that lives in generational poverty, Helm writes in an article titled White people, here are 10 requests from a Black Lives Matter leader.

White people are asked, Give up the home you own to a black or brown family, pass on anyinherited property to a black or brown family, or re-budget your monthly so you can donate to black funds for land purchasing.

White women, especially, are urged to get a racist fired or get your boss fired cause they racist too, Helms writes.

She concludes, Commit to two things: Fighting white supremacy where and how you can (this doesnt mean taking up knitting, unless youre making scarves for black and brown kids in need), and funding black and brown people and their work.

During a press conference in New York City last Tuesday, President Donald Trumpcondemned the neo-Nazis and white nationalist protesters in Charlottesville.

Ive condemned neo-Nazis. Ive condemned many different groups, Trump said before calling the man who rammed a car intocounter-protesters andkilled a womana disgrace and a horrible murderer.

FollowJerome Hudsonon Twitter@jeromeehudson.

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Do Better is an op-ed column by writer Lincoln Anthony Blades, debunking fallacies regarding the politics of race, culture, and society because if we all knew better, we'd do better.

Patrisse Cullors one of the three original founders of Black Lives Matter was just nine years old when white Los Angeles Police Department officers were acquitted for beating Rodney King despite the clear videotape evidence. Patrisse, a Los Angeles native, watched black people take to the streets to scream the language of the unheard. Where others saw a riot, she saw an uprising.

"I hear stories about folks in New York...coordinating their own protests around Rodney King. I hear stories about people coordinating their own conversations and protests in Canada." She's right: In 1992, I was also nine years old, but I was in Canada, witnessing a black uprising in Toronto on Yonge Street, which took place just several days after the uprising in her home city.

Patrisse's ability to see hope amid chaos is what makes her a brilliant strategist and a courageous activist. She's now an author awaiting the release of her book, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir . As Black Lives Matter celebrates its four-year anniversary, new threats and challenges have appeared on the horizon, but Patrisse is no stranger to overcoming struggles and breaking new ground. She shared her goals, fears, and what's next for the movement with Teen Vogue .

Teen Vogue : What was your life like before activism?

Patrisse Cullors : I've been an activist since I was a teenager. I was always curious about what we would now call social justice. I remember just trying to navigate growing up poor in an overpoliced environment with a single mother and a father who was in and out of prison. I was trying to navigate "What does that mean about my life?" and "What does that mean about the world?"

TV : Black Lives Matter really took off with the Freedom Ride to Ferguson after Michael Brown was killed. What was the biggest immediate challenge you faced as attention to your organization grew?

PC : The first challenge was making sure that people knew who actually were the creators of Black Lives Matter pushing back against our own erasure. I have never felt the grips of patriarchy and its need to erase black women and our labor...so strongly until the creation of Black Lives Matter.

TV : Many people including black people say "Black Lives Matter doesn't do enough to speak about intraracial violence." What do you say to that?

PC : Every community has crime and violence; it's a part of being human. This idea that black communities are more violent than others is just false . But black folks fight the hardest for our communities. Before governments do, before other people do, we're the first ones to show up. We are the first ones to fight for our lives.

TV : BLM has been called a terror group. How did that make you feel?

PC : When I first heard that we were being labeled a terrorist group , I was taken aback. Then I looked back in history: Angela Davis was called a terrorist; Assata Shakur is on America's Most Wanted list. This is what comes with the territory of fighting for our freedom.

TV : Those are people who had to leave everything behind and had to go to Grenada and Cuba, respectively, to get away from their country. You went from one day creating a hashtag to being in that conversation how did that personally impact you?

PC : It's scary. There are many times where I've reconsidered if this country is safe for me and my new family. It's sobering. When I was younger, I had these romantic ideas about the Black Panther Party and what it meant to be a part of the civil rights movement. Then we're here, and it's dangerous. And it's dangerous to say, "Black lives matter."

TV : As we look forward to 2020, are there any mayors, senators, or congresspeople that appear to you to be serious about fighting white supremacy and enacting real reform of America's justice system?

PC : Chokwe Antar Lumumba in Jackson, Mississippi. Stacey Abrams , who will hopefully be the governor of Georgia. Nikkita Oliver didn't make it to be mayor of Seattle, but I followed her campaign closely, and I was really impressed by it.

TV : Would you like to see Black Lives Matter become a political party?

PC : It's premature for us to say that. I think what we do very well is developing new leaders and shifting culture. We created Black Lives Matter in the middle of an Obama presidency, when people didn't want to talk about race because they thought it was over white people in particular. We brought the conversation back up and said, "Actually, no, racism is well and alive. Look." We forced folks to look at the Democratic party as a party that has historically said it's on the side of black people but instead it hasn't been, and the policies have shown that.

TV : Any thoughts on a 2020 run from Senator Kamala Harris of California?

PC : I really appreciate Kamala and the work that she has done in backing Black Lives Matter. She has never strayed away from shoutin' us out and callin' us out in a loving and powerful way. I also think it's premature to put her out as a ticket for 2020.

TV : As Black Lives Matter celebrates its fourth anniversary, what makes you most proud?

PC : I am so proud that BLM has grown into a 40-chapter network across the globe. We have chapters in U.S. and Canada; we have chapters in the United Kingdom. We have people using Black Lives Matter in Australia. We have people using Black Lives Matter in South Africa and Brazil. I'm proud of the work that we've really been able to launch domestically but also globally, and there have been so many victories that we've been able to garner. I think the work of Black Lives Matter is timeless.

TV : What is your relationship with other activists who are in the spotlight?

PC : It's been challenging. It's less about [particular] activists, and more about patriarchy and what it does to our relationships to men, women, trans people. I think we live in a society that supports men and their work more often than it supports women or trans people in their work. It is not my job to fight with other black people; it's my job to fight with the state, and so I choose my battles. But patriarchy has made it really challenging to form relationships with other, male activists.

TV : So what can we expect from your memoir?

PC : I'm talking about what it means to grow up in the middle of the war on drugs and the war on gangs, and what led me personally to end up in this movement. What I tried to do is tell my story and how that story directly relates to the policies that, in a lot of ways, this government is trying to re-create and resurrect, and the impact that has on a young black girl. There aren't many stories of young black girls and our relationships to overpolicing and to overincarceration.

TV : What is the future of activism?

PC : We are tired of voting for people that don't represent us. The future of activism is in building political power, but I don't think we're naive about what that means. Part of what it means to build political power is to build it inside a larger movement, and so I think that's what you're gonna see from folks across our movement. And someone who is doing that really amazingly, who I always want to uplift, is Jessica Byrd from Three Point Strategies . She is a black woman [who has been] doing electoral work, and now that our movement is pivoting and seeing electoral work as another part of our work, she is someone that we've been utilizing as a resource day in and day out for these last several months.

TV : And what is the future for you, Patrisse?

PC : I'm in this work forever. This is where I've been, so I'm not going nowhere. My job, as I get older, is to develop new leaders and make way and space for new voices to help people.

I don't talk about it a lot I'm an artist. I use art and culture to talk about and build resilience bases for black people to talk about the impact the country has had on us. And so continuing to make and build art. I see my book as an art project, as a way to tell a story in an innovative and creative way to get more people involved, to get more people to show up for this moment.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Related: Dear Police, Why Are You Treating White Supremacists Better Than Nonviolent Black Activists?

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Patrisse Cullors of Black Lives Matter Discusses the Movement ... - TeenVogue.com

Calling for justice in the recent, police-involved shooting death of 30-year-old David Jones, a small group of Black Lives Matter protestors marched in the streets in front of the Bustleton home of the police officer who caused Jones untimely death.

The events unfolded at about 7 p.m. on Thursday, when a group of protestors began pasting wanted posters for Philadelphia Police officer Ryan Pownall on telephone poles near his home along Bridle Road in Northeast Philly.

The posters featured a photo of Pownall and claimed the officer was wanted by the people of Philadelphia for the murder of David Jones.

According to the police report on Jones death, he was fatally shot in the back by Pownall on June 8th after there was a scuffle over a gun in Jones' waistband.

Pownall had stopped Jones after seeing him riding a dirt bike near the intersection of Whitaker and Hunting Park Avenues in Juniata Park, notes the report. A witness to the shooting has said that he saw Jones' gun drop to the sidewalk and that Jones ran before Pownall shot the fleeing Jones fatally in the back.

On Thursday, Black Lives Matter organizer, Asa Khalif led a group of about ten protestors in chants of No justice, no peace, no racist police and We demand justice for David Jones, as police vehicles quickly filled the block.

It was mere moments after the protestors placed their first wanted poster before law enforcement officials arrived en masse, creating a line of officers along the sidewalk, separating protestors from the home they had targeted.

We want justice for his kids. We want justice for his family, shouted Khalif. We want justice or else we are going to keep going into your motherf***ing neighborhood.

During the protest, local residents emerged from their homes. Some confronted the protestors, with one man even attempting to throw several signs that read Black Lives Matter into a plastic garbage bag.

He shouted I saw trash and wanted to pick it up, when officers on the scene stopped him and walked the man back towards his home.

Though the event was mostly peaceful, at times protestors clashed with residents in prolonged shouting matches. Police on hand seemed content to monitor the situation and make sure to keep the parties separate.

When asked to discuss the police responce to the protest, officers on scene declined to comment to a Metro reporter.

At one point, someone in the crowd shouted that, if Khalif wanted to have his point heard, he should go directly to the mayors office.

Khalif replied that he had indeed done that.

In fact, he had, in recent weeks, stopped press conferences, marched on City Hall and stormed into the offices of the citys managing director, Michael DiBerardinis, calling for Pownall to be arrested for Jones shooting.

Khalif replied that they had decided to come to Pownalls home in a further effort to seek justice.

[Police] come into our communities and we are flipping the script. We are coming to your neighborhood, he said.

The investigation into Jones death is ongoing and is being handled by the Office of the Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

After about an hour, as the sun began to set, Khalif gathered his small group of activists and left for the evening.

Black lives matter also, said Khalif as he closed the rally. When you kill someone, you should go to jail.

No arrests were made.

Following the display, some locals seemed upset by the protest.

"This is a discgrace. Don't come to our neighborhood!" shounted one neighbor as Khalif's vehicle drove off. The man refused to share his name with a reporter.

Yet, others seemed to believe that it was everyones right to protest if they feel there has been an injustice.

Citing the fact that protestors promised to return to the neighborhood in the coming days, a neighbor of Pownalls asked to remain anonymous, but he said that he could understand the protestors motivations.

We live in a free country, so you should be able to voice your opinion, said the neighbor. But, my father was a cop and you show up at a guys house to express your opinion? I dont know Thats tough.

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Black Lives Matter protestors rally at home of officer involved in fatal shooting - Metro US

SAVANNAH, Ga. After a deadly weekend of violence in Charlottesville, Savannahs Black Lives Matter chapter is currently preparing its response with sights sets on a local and national level.

The group says it is working on a six-week protest to affect change after what it says is injustice to society.

Anthony Smith is an Army veteran and member of BLM Savannah. He said Charlottesville was a turning point for action for himself and BLM.

It just wakes you up. You cant be complacent. You cant wait for good things to happen. You have to be the good things that happen, he said.

Sylvia Wells is a coordinator for the group. She says she is protesting to better her community and to be an example for her family. BLM Savannah, Wells says, is not a hate group but one that is based on understanding, conversation and education.

We dont want any violence, this is something that we stand for is peace, she said. [BLM Savannah] cant control who takes our name and they run with it with the things that they do but we are most certainly arent hateful. We love everybody.

Details are scarce on the protest, including a start date. The groups founder, Pastor Jomo Kenyatta Johnson is currently out-of-town conducting missions work. Johnson and Smith told WSAV there are plans to remove Confederate inspired monuments in Savannah, rename the Talmadge Memorial Bridge, and work towards to removal of President Trump and his cabinet.

The groups desire to remove the Confederate Memorial to the dead in Forsyth Park contradicts Mayor DeLoachs wishes to expand the story of memorial to be more inclusive.

Smith calls the memorial a slap in the face and says the call to preserve the monument is a way to romanticize history of the Civil War and the Confederacy.

BLM Savannah is currently working with other local organizations to organize and prepare for the protest. Smith told WSAV to expect BLM Savannah to be more visible while working peacefully to make a difference in the city and its criminal justice system, including working with law enforcement and elected city leaders.

Our goal is definitely to unify the city and to interface with our government in a way that creates long-lasting change from the top tiers of our government to the lowest individual in our society, he said.

Should law makers decide the statue stays in Forsyth Park, Smith says that while such a decision is not his intent, BLM members are not looking to respond by physically removing the memorial themselves.

Violence is violence. And that type of act enables violence, We cant use the tools of the enemy for our causes and pretend like the end justifies the means, he said.

Smith said anyone is welcome to join and converse with BLM Savannah. Ultimately, he is looking to make Savannah and the country a better place to call home for his children.

If were going to hand it to them in an as is fashion, then we maybe do a little bit more maintenance before the hand off, he said.

To learn more about the chapter, click here.

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It just wakes you up. You can't be complacent. Black Lives Matter Savannah planning protest following violence in ... - WSAV-TV