(Headline USA) The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation filed a lawsuit this week against another leftist activist organization funding the anti-Israel student encampments on college campuses, accusing the group of withholding tens of millions of dollars in promised funding.
The Tides Foundation has “refused to honor its promises and continues to commandeer BLMGNF’s donations,” said the lawsuit filed in California Superior Court on Monday.
BLMGNF went on to accuse the Tides Foundation of using funds allocated for BLMGNF to support a BLM breakaway group run by anti-police activist Melina Abdullah, who was involved in her own legal battle against BLMGNF.
BLMGNF ended its relationship with the Tides Foundation in 2022, and the Tides Foundation has refused to hand over the nearly $33 million BLMGNF gave to it, the complaint says.
The Tides Foundation is a Los Angeles and San Francisco-based organization that has funneled tens of millions of dollars into various left-wing causes for years.
According to the New York Post, the umbrella group acts as a “fiscal sponsor,” collecting donations for groups that may not have tax-exempt status or protections.
It has been heavily involved in the recent anti-Israel protests on college campuses, managing donations for pro-Palestinian groups such as the Adalah Justice Project.
Leftist billionaire George Soros, whose Open Society Foundations also funds radical pro-Palestinian groups, has funneled nearly $14 million into the Tides Foundation over the years.
“Tides has engaged in deceptive business practices and has operated in a quasi-banking capacity without appropriate regulatory oversight of licenses,” the BLMGNF lawsuit said. “Tides operates with a level of autonomy and minimal regulatory scrutiny that is starkly at odds with the regulatory framework imposed on traditional financial institutions.”
BLMGNF went on to accuse the Tides Foundation of acting as a bank without being regulated as one.
A spokeswoman for the Tides Foundation dismissed BLMGNF’s allegations as “completely” false.
“Resources in the Black Lives Matter [collective action fund] were never intended to be granted to large, well-funded national organizations like Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, and were always intended to be granted to local Black Lives Matter chapters,” the spokesperson said. “BLMGNF’s lawsuit seeks to circumvent the intent of the Fund’s donors and deprive grassroots Black Lives Matter chapters critical resources, for its own benefit.”
BLM has fallen under intense scrutiny in the past for its own fiscal mismanagement, which led in large part to the group’s downfall after having enjoyed pride of place as one of the most influential and sought-after charities during the 2020 George Floyd riots.
The group was accused of spending its donations on lavish lifestyles for its top leadership while ignoring the social justice causes in the black community that it pledged to address.
At one point BLM cofounder Patrice Cullors shrugged off the discrepancies in the group’s expenditures and the failure to live up to their promises, suggesting that she had simply been the beneficiary of a massive outpouring of “white guilt money.”
