Black Lives Matter Co-Founder, Patrisse Cullors Sits Down With Jason Lee

Last night, activist, artist, and author Patrisse Marie Khan-Cullors Brignac joined FOX SOUL’s Hollywood Unlocked with Jason Lee Uncensored to discuss her involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement. Creator of the BlackLivesMatter hashtag, Patrisse, discussed how and why she started the social and political movement, and the challenges she faced in the process. She also touches on recent reports that she had purchased several homes during a five-year period using BLM donations.

Patrisse talks about the allegations of abusing donations:

“One of the critiques was that I bought a house, and I was so shocked Jason that, that was like a thing. I bought a house in Los Angeles, and it was 1.4 million dollars and that’s actually like a steal in Los Angeles. The first sort of undercurrent was you all have all this money, and this really was coming from certain folks you know you all have this money it needs to go to certain people. Not necessarily people that I knew, some folks I did know but not necessarily people who are like the organizers but more like every day black people being like ‘wait a second you got all this money like where’s it going?’ So that was like the first kind of conversation.

BlackLivesMatter creator spoke about how the money was spent from all the donations:

“What people don’t know is that we’ve had tons of conversations with people, we’ve sat with lots of families, we’ve sat with lots of organizations, we’ve done our due diligence and in fact we’re always in fact the commitment once that money came in was always to re grant a lot of it and to hold on to a lot of it too so that finally the global movement that we created the global network can be resourced. I think part of the issue I’ll just say for me is I wish that I would have more conversations on the front, and I assumed people knew me well enough that they would trust me.”

She continues on by talking about the push back she received from the media:

“I was doxed, I’ve been doxed so many times but in 2021 when right winged media specifically went after me, they doxed me. They released my information and I have a six-year-old and it was really beyond scary. It was like and I felt like many people were calling me they’re like, I had someone come up to me the other day and they’re like I’d never met them and they’re like ‘Sis I just wanna say that I’m really glad you’re alive,’ cause what happened this last year scared the shit out of me, cause we have a collective memory of what happens to our leaders, they don’t survive. They way that the right-winged media painted it, the way that we picked it up was you know they said ‘Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Goes on Shopping Spree, on house shopping spree and her portfolio is like $3.2 million.’ So, they know what they’re doing, and they know what’s going to ignite people.”

Patrisse spoke about the reaction from black community and movement:

“I think black people bought into it because the right winged messaging went viral and you know fold like the Shade Room picked it up, like a lot of people didn’t know about it until the Shade Room picked it up the first time, and I’ve had my conversations with folks of the Shade Room about that you know and they did a whole retraction, they came through for the situation and once they heard more about it and I think at the end of the day the virality of social media is hard to contain and once a certain message has gone out there. The fact that first messaging was you know she has all these homes she went on a shopping spree. I mean at the height of it the New York Post had me on the cover and that’s when I started to realize oh I’m a target now. The question under ‘Did the Black Lives Matter movement fail to protect me?’ I don’t want to place blame, I think that’s too harsh, I just don’t think we know how to protect each other.”

Watch the full interview here.

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Quincy Thomas

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