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Mothers criticize BLM activists for profiting off their dead sons

 


Grief-stricken mothers who have accused Black Lives Matter of profiting from the deaths of their sons condemned the group’s embattled co-founder Patrisse Cullors after she announced she was stepping down from the movement.

 

“I don’t believe she is going anywhere,” Samaria Rice, the mother of a 12-year-old boy shot by Cleveland police while playing with a toy gun, told The Post. “It’s all a facade. She’s only saying that to get the heat off her right now.”

 

Lisa Simpson, a Los Angeles-based mother whose son was slain by police in 2016, also blasted Cullors.

 

“Now she doesn’t have to show her accountability,” Simpson, 52, told The Post. “She can just take the money and run.”

 

Cullors, the executive director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, announced on Thursday she was leaving the group a month after The Post reported on her $3.2 million real-estate buying spree and questions about the group’s finances. 

 

Patrisse Cullors is formally stepping down from her role at the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation.

 

Cullors did not respond to a request for comment. She has said her departure had been in the works for a year and was not tied to what she called “right wing attacks that tried to discredit my character.”

 

Rice, 44, told The Post she first sought out Cullors to enlist the group’s help in re-opening a federal investigation into her son’s 2014 death. She said she exchanged a few emails with Cullors over the years, but had never managed a face-to-face meeting.

 

“They are benefiting off the blood of our loved ones, and they won’t even talk to us,” said Rice, who has also blasted activists Shaun King and Tamika Mallory, whose speech at the Grammy Awards in March called on African Americans to “demand the freedom that this land promises.”

 

Ten local BLM groups last year criticized the foundation for what they called a lack of accountability and transparency.James Keivom for New York Post
 

n March Rice joined with Simpson, the mother of Richard Risher, to blast BLM for, as Simpson put it, “raising money in our dead sons’ names and giving us nothing in return.”

 

BLM’s Los Angeles chapter raised $5,000 for her son’s funeral, but Simpson claimed she never received any of it.

 

“We never hired them to be the representatives in the fight for justice for our dead loved ones murdered by the police,” said the statement by Rice and Simpson posted March 16 by activist @Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. “The ‘activists’ have events in our cities and have not given us anything substantial for using our loved ones’ images and names on their flyers. We don’t want or need y’all parading in the streets accumulating donations, platforms, movie deals, etc. off the death of our loved ones, while the families and communities are left clueless and broken.”

 

 

Read More: New York Post

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