WHEN MORE IS LESS FOR MAU

Following is a statement issued by MillenialAU (MAU), a Black activist organization.

In it, MAU accuses Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE), a successor to ACORN (though there is a good argument that, in reality, it is just ACORN under a different name), of promising to pay poor Black people to “protest” in Ferguson, Missouri and other places, then stiffing them.

Yes you read that correctly.  Here is the entire statement – and please note that it was issued five days ago; more than enough time to be picked up by mainstream news venues and discussed on the Sunday morning shows:

On May 14, 2015 many individuals and organizations of the protest movement that began in Ferguson, Missouri organized a sit-in in the office of Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE). The demand was simple: Cut the checks.

Early in the movement, non-profit organization MORE, formerly known as the St. Louis chapter of ACORN, and local St. Louis organization Organization for Black Struggle created a joint account in which national donors from all over the world have donated over $150,000 to sustain the movement. Since then, the poor black of this movement who served as cash generators to bring money into St. Louis have seen little to none of that money. Furthermore, since the influx of funding has started, poor black people continue to take to the streets all the while losing their homes, vehicles, ability to feed themselves and their families, and suffering from trauma and mental illness with no ability to afford quality mental health services. Questions have been raised as to how the movement is to sustain when white non-profits are hoarding monies collected of off black bodies? When we will hold the industry of black suffering accountable? The people of the community are fed up and the accountability begins here and now.

This isn’t about MORE. This is about black lives in the Black Lives Matter movement who are literally broke and starving. There is an insidious strand of racism and white supremacy that exists in this movement and it is called the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. As a by-product, it provides decent salaries and comfort to many people who are not affected by the disparities that they are trying to address. This money is typically in the hands of white people who oversee the types of services that the non-profit provides, while having select token black people to spearhead the conversations within and to the community.

We NEED to be thinking about justice for black people. This means white people must renounce their loyalty to the social normalcy that maintains white power and control. If black lives really matter, justice and self-determination for black people would mean the black community would control it\’s own political and economic resources.

It is asinine to believe that black people can continue to organize and take to the street when they can barely meet their basic needs. In St. Louis, organizers and protesters depleted $50,000 of the available funds and dispersed it among the people in the movement in no particular order. Jeff Ordower, executive director of MORE, stated that another $57,000 is expected in the next one to two weeks in which those funds will also be dispersed to the black people in the movement.

Moving forward, we are building a board of accountability within this movement. We must funnel economic into this movement through the hands of black people who are fighting with and for black life. More on this board will be discussed as we develop.

 Not a happy group. 

To summarize:  MAU claims:

a) at least some of the supposedly spontaneous street protests were, in fact, paid events,

b) the people who were to be paid are destitute Black people,

c) they were to be paid by MORE, a far left group,

d) but they have seen only a small fraction of the money that should have been paid, and

 e) in any event, the far left group is dominated by White racists.

Is this stiffing of the paid protesters because MORE is strapped for cash?  Not according to Matthew Vadum, writing for frontpagemag.com:

MORE and other groups supporting the Black Lives Matter movement have received millions of dollars from radical America-hating financier George Soros (net worth: $24 billion). In the fall MORE even created an Amazon wedding registry so supporters could donate rioting supplies. And yesterday it was reported that hip hop performer Jay-Z and his wife Beyonce (combined net worth: over $1 billion) wired tens of thousands of dollars to help bail out protesters jailed in the Black Lives Matter riots in Ferguson and Baltimore. Perhaps that money went to MORE.

 

In any event, MORE apparently has money somewhere but Ordower isn’t anxious to part with it.

Now, tell me: is this newsworthy? 

Is it a story you would expect mainstream media, which have fed off of the Michael Brown shooting and other supposedly similar incidents around the country for almost a year now, would – if they were interested in presenting two sides of the story – be reporting on?  Would the Sunday shows have had segments on it?

Well, did you see any?

And if you didn\’t (which I would bet money is the case), I have one more question:  why would you rely exclusively, or even primarily, on mainstream media to give you full, evenhanded reportage of this, or any other, news event?