Amazon suspends Black Lives Matter from its charity platform | Hacker News Reader

Amazon suspends Black Lives Matter from its charity platform

nypost.com

82 pointsraziel41462 comments

Important to note that this is the BLM Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF), which is not the same as the grassroots, decentralized BLM movement that happened nationally.

If I recall correctly, BLMGNF was formed by a couple folks in Los Angeles to give a formal organization the authority and organizational weight of what the BLM movement was about. The BLM movement, being decentralized and leaderless at the national level, mostly rejected BLMGNF speaking for them and being recognized as the organization of the movement, but BLMGNF moved forward with claiming national leadership regardless.

If they're not 'the real blm' then where is the funding from? I don't heard of donators complaining to have been defrauded, only claims that it's racist to criticize blm for actions by the organization with all the money..

Indeed. Every single time there's some alleged BLM scandal (and there seems to be many), there is someone who assures us that it's not the "real" BLM, but the "national organization"/"local organization"/"someone using the BLM name". It's "fake" BLMs all the way down, seemingly.

Plausible deniability all the way around, at least for scandals like spending millions on homes.

For any good press, plenty of people stepping forward for credit.

I live in portland and amazon suggested that i buy clippers, laser pointers, and balaclavas during the riots. Also made their banner says BLM for two or so weeks

The BLM movement and the BLM organization are different. Much the same way that Americans will all claim to be democrats but less than half will claim to be Democrats.

I don't know of any American who claims to be a democrat without also claiming to be a Democrat; the terms are synonymous with the political party in the US.

While the literal term isn't used the way the parent describes I believe that their comment is trying to communicate "While only half of Americans describe themselves as Democrats, most Americans would say they're "an advocate or supporter of democracy" (the definition of a democrat).

Thank you for clarifying my post. That is indeed what what I meant.

Right, but when arguing semantics, then semantics matters. "democrat" as in "someone who advocates democracy" simply isn't in common usage here.

Likewise, if I said I donated to BLM, odds are good I am talking about the fund by that name, not an abstract concept of a movement that random people ephemerally belong to.

Perhaps they meant: Americans will all claim to be democratic*

>Much the same way that Americans will all claim to be democrats

I'm not a democrat and I'm American.

What's wrong with democracy?

Not answering your question, but making sure the clarification is made that we (in the USA) do not live in a Democracy. We live in a Constitutional Republic.

I know, I know... some people cringe when someone points this out, but it's true.

It depends on how you define "democracy".

I'm not inclined to participate in an argument about it here, but there are valid points of view other than the one you assert.

Purports to be about consent of the governed, will of the people, popular rule etc. In reality, you can't even prevent your own children from being taught as truth some pseudomoral garbage that maybe 5-10% of the population believes. Basically it transfers power to the most motivated actors, almost regardless of their popularity.

> you can't even prevent your own children from being taught as truth some pseudomoral garbage that maybe 5-10% of the population believes.

What are you referring to? Also, you can home-school your kids. Or just move someplace where nobody cares.

It's not perfect, but name something that gives you remotely as much freedom and power over your government.

Many millions have given their lives, physically or temporally, to making it better, to give you and I the historically unequalled freedom, security, and prosperity we were born into. If you see problems - and so do I - how about helping make it better rather than sitting around criticizing while others do the work?

The question was literally asking for critique though.

It requires people to be educated about what they are voting on. Having people spend time educating themselves wastes a lot of societal time. Voting doesn't scale well so people end up delegating their votes to someone else who usually doesn't have the same exact beliefs and may vote different than themselves. It turns into a popularity contest. The process of making decisions can be slow.

If we aren't a democracy, can we just ignore your opinion and do what we want?

> Voting doesn't scale well

It's scaled amazingly well, far beyond what the creators could have imagined. Billions vote around the world. In the US, without looking up the population in 1776, it's probably scaled 100x.

And it's been, by far, the most successful, free, prosperous, stable, functional form of government in human history. Name any that comes close - any country that has come close in history that isn't a democracy. Name a better form of government, or a country in any time and place that people would prefer to live in. Note the massive migration to democracies. It's like citing Apple Computer as a company that doesn't scale well (except there are other companies in Apple's league, and no other form of government competes with democracy).

The only question is, who is so anxious to tear it down and why?

You don't have to answer as we've definitely drifted off topic.

Is there a reasonable solution to these problems? I feel like without the popularity contest element, that's only more delegating to those who don't necessarily vote the way people would want. Without the delegating, there is stronger requirements on a citizen to educate themselves.

Representative democracy seems to be at the rough point of compromise between these downsides.

edit:formatting

>Is there a reasonable solution to these problems?

One idea is community level dictatorships where people can freely create, fork, join, and leave these communities.

Actual democracy may be fine, but democracy as practiced here on Earth is usually a theatrical version of the real thing.

As an example: M4A has strong bipartisan support among the public, but politicians discuss it using rhetoric and propaganda, demonstrating that it is fake.

In the eyes of most people they are the same. Using obvious words in subtle ways makes it hard to people to differentiate.

Just as Republicans don't claim to be democrats, defund the police means removing all funding for police, etc.

OP phrased that weirdly (and apparently doesn’t know that no one calls themselves a small d democrat - just not a phrase normal people use).

The point though, is that most people who support ending police brutality know that BLM Global Network Foundation is mismanaged. There are many other groups doing work to fight against police brutality which have more support from people involved in that movement.

Well, it seems this 'confusion' has tricked even the biggest companies to not only 'show support' for the movement with their now pointless banners, but also donate to the organisation which basically failed to be held accountable for the missing $60M that was spent on properties.

They supported both, including the 'Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation'.

So they were supporting fraudsters all this time?

Probably true when they donated money. Certainly not true when they put up posters or claimed to support things. Fraudsters cloaking themselves in the names of things is pretty common throughout hot button political issues, although sometimes it's fraud and sometimes it's unintentionally mismanaging money. I mean, the trucker thing in Canada raised millions of dollars, and while some of it has not been transferred because of the apparent fraud, only $1 million was only ever planned to be spent on the trucker thing and the other $7 million was destined for the organizer's bank account.

In general, there are no trademarks on social movements, and it's a tough problem.

> the missing $60M that was spent on properties

It’s not missing, it's the money they reportedly had on hand at last account.

(And if anyone knew it had been spent on properties, it still wouldn't be missing.)

> it's the money they reportedly had on hand at last account.

Exactly. Everyone knows that the 'missing' $60M didn't go to their own causes, but was spent on themselves (and everything else unrelated to BLM), just like what fraudsters would do. They were successful at manipulating the emotions of their supporters and executed a magnificent scam that even tricked the largest of companies.

So we are still defending fraudsters?

> Everyone knows that the 'missing' $60M didn't go to their own causes, but was spent

No, they don't, that's rather the basis of the (still inaccurate) characterization of it being missing.

> The BLM movement and the BLM organization are different. Much the same way that Americans will all claim to be democrats but less than half will claim to be Democrats.

It's more different than that between the BLM movement and the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation organization (which, despite the domain name, isn't the sole BLM organization); among the groups at odds with BLMGNF are either a substantial minority or perhaps even an actual majority of the former local chapters, BLMGNF has apparently been leaderless for most of a year after failing to reach a deal with the two people that were supposed to take over last May as coleads to replace the outgoing executive director.

I can't help but feel like non-profits who name themselves after decentralized movements are often a grift. They count on people not knowing the difference and giving them money to support a cause they may or may not actually contribute to.

I should point out that this isn't universally true, the woman who set up the initial "Woman's March" event on Facebook, Teresa Shook, founded an organization of the same name, so there is some legitimacy to that org's claim there.

Exactly. I don't know why everyone including the big tech companies fell for the BLM grift so that they could scam their 'supporters' into taking the money and now running off with their donations which was used to buy properties, mansions, etc.

How could they be so gullible?

A lot of people who could have raised this issue were shouted at for being racist, anti-black, etc. no matter if their concerns were valid.

https://twitter.com/Sean_Kev/status/1488195035418013701

Sean Kevin Campbell's article was some great investigative journalism. Highly recommend reading to anyone interested in deeper knowledge about this controversy. I've seen several pundits (on "both" sides) regurgitate his work inaccurately, so think reading his article directly is important.

(article linked in that tweet)

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/01/black-lives-matter-f...

Sean Campbell is black. That doesn't stop you from being called a racist for criticizing BLM; but it certainly helps.

Because they had a problem and they wanted a solution. It's basically "blackwashing" and BLMGNF (good night funds?) was there to "sell" them the solution to a problem they were facing.

There's basically zero desire to actually really work on any problem that isn't related to their stock portfolio, so they jump at it and post some PR and then they're done.

Happens time and time again, more or less legit depending. Look up donations to environmental groups whilst the business doesn't change much if anything about what they do.

Giving the public something to focus their attention on rather than goverment and corporate America (and the relationship between the two) is a shrewd investment in my speculation.

So, I figure I may as well ask what blacklivesmatter.com[0] is? I was wondering if that website was anything to do with this scam organisation, but came away even more confused. They don't have a mailing address, any organisation (e.g. Black Lives Matter Foundation) naming / references on the website, or... anything, really.

Where does the money go from this website? Does it go to a grassroots organisation, or are these another group of bandits?

I would be curious to know more.

[0]: https://blacklivesmatter.com/

I feel like the corps are rapidly cutting ties with BLM after the Kentucky event: no business wants to be dragged into the upcoming investigation as a financisl donor to the org.

Makes sense, although there are lot of other "charities" that I'm pretty sure have no accountability. I'm guessing this one got removed cause it is under the most scrutiny by the public.

Or, it's because the IRS revoked their tax exempt status.

https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/detailsPage?ein=473691474&name=...

Amazon doesn't really get a choice in the matter here.

That's a different and completely unrelated [1] organization that happens to have a similar name (Black Lives Matter Foundation vs Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation).

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/black-lives-mat...

Yeah, it seems here that people are just getting confused about which organization is actually in charge due to two different organizations registering very similar names. I wonder if they trademarked the brand Black Lives Matter, and if so if they attempted to enforce it to prevent something like this from happening, or if they are in fact affiliated with each other.

Maybe there should be a BLM ETF with all the organizations in one bucket? Then you can spread out your risk in case one of them actually intends to be legitimate. Excuse the sarcasm.

Corporations are more concerned about the signal donating money sends than the actual effectiveness of the receiving organization. Did Amazon independently donate any money to this organization?

BLMF was a single person running a small scam.

BLMGN was a small group running a big scam. It was mostly a sink for corporate "blackwashing" PR spend, as megacorps rushed to fake "doing something woke" in 2020.

Both hijacked the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter for profit.

I would imagine the Amazon process is fairly automated so there's no scrutiny, bias, etc. Fact is, NPOs have certain legal/tax. requirements so the data in question shouldn't be a problem, unless it is.

Maybe there's a good reason for the disconnect, but two yrs running is not a good sign.

tl;dr: BLM Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF) hasn't disclosed where donations have been going and is out of compliance with various state's rules for non-profits. Amazon suspended donations to BLMGNF until the compliance issue is resolved.

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