When Patrisse Cullors dropped the BLM piggy bank in Shalomyah Bowers’ hands, he allegedly “siphoned” more than $10 million from donors. The “grassroots arm” of Black Lives Matter is suing him and his Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, along with a bunch of placeholder names. They’ll fill in the blanks when they find out who helped him rip off the Black community.
BLM was hijacked from within
The lawsuit just filed by Grassroots notes that Shalomyah Bowers was “hired by BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors in 2020 to help run the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation.” They call GNF, “an extension of the Black Lives Matter grassroots organization.” Bowers denies any wrongdoing.
Grassroots went public with their suit in a news conference just before the Labor Day weekend. The defendant responded in a statement posted on his group’s website that the accusations are “harmful, divisive, and false.”
Before Patrisse Cullors became a real estate mogul, she created GNF as “an administrative organization to raise funds to provide financial support for local-level community efforts of BLM Grassroots.”
— Filip (@Filip_Pavic_) September 5, 2022
While the grassroots organization did the work, Cullors bought houses. When that scandal came to light in May 2021, she “decided she could no longer lead GNF and that it should wind down and transition the entire organization” back to the Grassroots group.
That same month, “Cullors notified Bowers and Melina Abdullah of a ‘formal transition plan’ of GNF’s leadership, along with other internal leaders.” The suit notes that Abdullah is a co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter.
Bowers agrees that there was a statement, but the way he remembers it, he was to keep the money. “BLMGR and Melina Abdullah read a press statement claiming that Patrisse Cullors created a transition plan giving all of BLMGNF’s assets to BLM Grassroots. That is absolutely false.”
Keep the piggy bank
As described in the complaint, “Mr. Bowers and the GNF Leadership Council agreed to execute the transition plan set forth by Ms. Cullors.”
“However, Mr. Bowers, who made $2,167,894 dollars from GNF in less than eight months, decided he wanted to keep the ‘piggy bank‘ that GNF had become to him and his company.” He had agreed to turn over “certain financial and organizing information” to other group leaders but “refused” to so. BLM Grassroots doesn’t like that.
“Within months, Bowers had run these well-respected advocates out of the organization. Through a series of misrepresentations and unauthorized backroom dealings, Mr. Bowers managed to steal control over GNF as the sole Board member and officer.”
That’s about when “Bowers changed social media account passwords for the grassroots organization.” What he did was intentional. Bowers actually tried to “to register the trademark of BLM Grassroots using the logo and design of BLM Grassroots leader Angela Waters, in what appears to be an attempt to ‘steal‘ the logo or prevent BLM Grassroots from utilizing it.”
He’s allegedly been shaking that piggy bank pretty hard ever since. “Mr. Bowers continues to fraudulently raise money from unsuspecting donors passing himself off as the organization that is doing the work of BLM, padding his own pockets at that of his associates at the cost of BLM’s reputation.”
Haters keep on hatin’ Bowers whines. “BLMGR ignored or refused our offers. To the contrary, they would rather take the same steps of our white oppressors and utilize the criminal legal system which is propped up by white supremacy.“
