The Black American Party advances the producer class of the Black American community — through ownership, enterprise, constitutional principle, and economic solidarity. What is good for Black Americans is good for all Americans.
The statement is a fact. The organization has political and financial interests disconnected from the political interests of Black Americans.
Black Lives Matter is a statement of fact. The Black American Party affirms it without qualification and without the reformulations that have been used to change the subject.
The organization is a separate question. It has particular political and financial or economic concerns that are disconnected from the political interests of Black Americans. Those two sentences are not in tension, and the deliberate collapsing of them - by supporters and by opponents alike - is how a phrase belonging to an entire people became the property of a corporate entity.
Three words stating that our lives have value should not have been controversial and the reaction to them told us something. The phrase belongs to Black Americans. It was not invented by a nonprofit and it is not diminished by anything a nonprofit subsequently did.
This party will not surrender the sentence because an organization mismanaged the moment. That is the trade our opponents want and it is a bad one.
This is the part usually left out, and it matters, because it means the party is not borrowing anyone else's politics here. The demand for accountability came from inside the movement.
In July 2020, ten local chapters wrote an open letter to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation's board objecting to the opacity of its funding decisions and stating that local organizing had been disrespected and disregarded. In November 2020, ten chapters again publicly called for financial transparency.
The foundation received on the order of ninety million dollars in donations after the 2020 protests. In April 2022 New York magazine reported that donor funds had been used to purchase a seven-bedroom property in Studio City, California, for more than five point eight million dollars.
The organizers on the ground, the ones who were actually in the street, were asking where the money went before anybody hostile to us was.
The point is not one house. The point is a design in which an unprecedented wave of Black American political energy was converted into a donor-accountable nonprofit rather than a member-accountable political organization.
A nonprofit answers to the people who fund it. A political party answers to the people who join it. When ninety million dollars arrives from outside a community, the entity holding it is responsive to outside, and the local chapters discovered exactly that when they wrote their letters and were not answered.
This platform's chapter on charismatic versus structural leadership describes the same failure in a different costume. We keep producing moments and not machinery.
A membership organization with a roll, dues, a written platform, elected officers, published accounts and candidates on ballots. Every one of those is a mechanism by which a Black American can remove a leader who is not serving them.
That is the difference between a movement and an institution, and it is the entire reason this party exists in the form it does.
That Black Lives Matter is a statement of fact, affirmed without qualification, while the organization has political and financial interests disconnected from the political interests of Black Americans.
No. It came from inside the movement. In July 2020 ten local chapters wrote to the foundation's board about opaque funding decisions, and in November 2020 chapters again publicly demanded financial transparency.
The foundation received roughly 90 million dollars in donations after the 2020 protests, and in April 2022 New York magazine reported donor funds had bought a Studio City property for more than 5.8 million dollars.
That Black American political energy was converted into a donor-accountable nonprofit rather than a member-accountable political organization. A nonprofit answers to its funders; a party answers to its members.
No. The phrase belongs to Black Americans, was not invented by a nonprofit, and is not diminished by anything a nonprofit later did.
There is a deliberate campaign to divide the sexes. The party rejects it, and states what it asks of Black American men.
The same campaign, the other half. What this party asks of Black American women, stated with the same directness and no more.
The party is committed to addressing the specific needs of Black American men on a focused basis rather than inside a general agenda.
The party is committed to addressing the specific needs of Black American women on a focused basis rather than inside a general agenda.
The party is committed to combating racism in all its forms, wherever it is found - and to the specific remedies rather than the general condemnation.
The deliberate defamation of Black American culture and character by legacy media since minstrelsy is a social crisis, not a grievance.
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