The father of a young black man whose shooting death by police helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement has joined critics of the group who are demanding greater accountability and transparency from the larger group.
Michael Brown Sr., whose 18-year-old son Michael Brown was fatally shot by police in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, signed a Friday statement from the dissident group BLM10Plus slamming the Black Lives Matter Global Network for its lack of transparency.
BLM10Plus, consisting of 14 BLM organizations including the 10 original chapters, is pushing for BLM Global Network to open the books about the structure of the sprawling organization.
The public should know about how many chapters there are, how the various legal entities under the Global Network are related to each other, the salaries of staff members and the founders, deals with contractors and more, BLM10Plus said.
“The little we do know, has come from persistent requests for transparency over the years,” said the statement, which is titled, “Tell No Lies.”
It described tangled negotiations involving where official chapters were located and which ones got funding.
“The most alarming use of official and unofficial chapters was BLMGN’s willingness to position a chapter as unofficial if the chapter did not align with their personal political interest,” it continued. “Chapters were often referred to as official in cities BLMGN was seeking to court prominent individuals and high-visibility opportunities.”
Meanwhile a large number of groups seeking to affiliate went ignored, BLM10Plus said.
BLM10Plus was founded in November and includes chapters in New Jersey, Boston, Chicago and the Hudson Valley, among others.
In addition to Brown, other parents whose children were killed by police also added their names to Friday’s statement, including Samaria Rice, mother of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was killed by police in Cleveland in 2014. Lisa Simpson, whose son Richard Risher was killed by LA police in 2016, also added her name to the statement.
Both mothers told The Post last month they had tried in vain to get the movement to help them seek justice for their murdered sons. Simpson said BLM’s LA chapter had raised $5,000 in Risher’s name, but she had never received the cash, which she had hoped to use for funeral expenses.
Earlier this year, after the Black Lives Matter Global Foundation Network told the AP it had taken in more than $90 million in donations after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, many questioned where that money went. At the time, Brown had asked the group for $20 million to help Ferguson.
The controversy intensified after The Post revealed Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the co-founder of BLM Global Network, went on a real-estate buying spree, purchasing more than $3 million in properties, including a sprawling home with an airstrip and hangar in Georgia. She said her real-estate purchases had been financed with the money she earned from public speaking and book sales.
Less than a month after The Post’s revelations, Khan-Cullors announced she was resigning from BLM leadership to focus on finishing a book and working on projects for Warner Bros.