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Many see the slogan Black Lives Matter as a plea to secure the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans, especially historically wronged African Americans. They add the BLM hashtag to their social-media profiles, carry BLM signs at protests and make financial donations.

Tragically, when they do donate, they are likely to bankroll a number of radical organizations, founded by committed Marxists whose goals arent to make the American Dream a reality for everyone but to transform America completely.

This might be unknown to some of the worlds best-known companies, which have jumped on the BLM bandwagon. Brands like Airbnb and Spanx have promised direct donations.

True, others like Nike and Netflix have shrewdly channeled their donations elsewhere, like the NAACP and other organizations that have led the struggle for civil rights for decades. These companies are likely aware of BLMs extreme agenda and recoil from bankrolling destructive ideas. But it requires sleuthing to learn this.

Companies that dont do this hard work are providing air cover for a destructive movement and compelling their employees, shareowners and customers to endorse the same. Just ask BLM leaders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi.

In a revealing 2015 interview, Cullors said, Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. That same year, Tometi was hobnobbing with Venezuelas Marxist dictator Nicols Maduro, of whose regime she wrote: In these last 17 years, we have witnessed the Bolivarian Revolution champion participatory democracy and construct a fair, transparent election system recognized as among the best in the world.

Millions of Venezuelans suffering under Maduros murderous misrule presumably couldnt be reached for comment.

Visit the Black Lives Matter website, and the first frame you get is a large crowd with fists raised and the slogan Now We Transform. Read the list of demands, and you get a sense of how deep a transformation they seek.

One proclaims: We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear-family-structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another.

A partner organization, the Movement for Black Lives, or M4BL, calls for abolishing all police and all prisons. It also calls for a progressive restructuring of tax codes at the local, state and federal levels to ensure a radical and sustainable redistribution of wealth.

Another M4BL demand is the retroactive decriminalization, immediate release and record expungement of all drug-related offenses and prostitution and reparations for the devastating impact of the war on drugs and criminalization of prostitution.

This agenda isnt what most people signed up for when they bought their Spanx or registered for Airbnb. Nor is it what most people understood when they expressed sympathy with the slogan that Black Lives Matter.

Garza first coined the phrase in a July 14, 2013, Facebook post the day George Zimmerman was acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin. Her friend Cullors put the hashtag in front and joined the words, so it could travel through social media. Tometi thought of creating an actual digital platform, BlackLivesMatter.com.

The group became a self-styled global network in 2014 and a fiscally sponsored project of a separate progressive nonprofit in 2016, according to Robert Stilson of the Capital Research Center. This evolution has helped embolden an agenda vastly more ambitious than just #DefundthePolice.

The goals of the Black Lives Matter organization go far beyond what most people think. But they are hiding in plain sight, there for the world to see, if only we read beyond the slogans and the innocuous-sounding media accounts of the movement.

The groups radical Marxist agenda would supplant the basic building block of society the family with the state and destroy the economic system that has lifted more people from poverty than any other. Black lives, and all lives, would be harmed.

Theirs is a blueprint for misery, not justice. It must be rejected.

Andrew Olivastro is director of coalition relations at the Heritage Foundation. Michael Gonzalez is a Heritage senior fellow and author of the forthcoming book The Plot To Change America.

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The agenda of Black Lives Matter is far different from the ...

Backlash against Black Lives Matter includes branding it as Marxist.

The attack has been made in recent weeks by Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trumps personal lawyer; Ben Carson, Trumps secretary of Housing and Urban Development; conservative talk show host Mark Levin; and PragerU, which has more than 4 million Facebook followers.

Arent sure what Marxism is, actually? It was developed by 19th century German philosopher Karl Marx and is the basis for the theory of communism and socialism. "Marxism envisioned the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat (working class people) and eventually a classless communist society," Encyclopedia Britannica and Oxford Reference say.

These days, Marxism usually means analyzing social change through an economic lens, with the assumption that the rich and the poor should become more equal.

In a recently surfaced 2015 interview, one of the three Black Lives Matter co-founders declared that she and another co-founder "are trained Marxists."

But the movement has grown and broadened dramatically. Many Americans, few of whom would identify as Marxists, support Black Lives Matter, drawn to its message of anti-racism.

"Regardless of whatever the professed politics of people may be who are prominent in the movement, they dont represent its breadth," said Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Princeton University African American Studies professor and author of "From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation."

"There are definitely socialists within the movement, as there have been in every single social movement in 20th century American history and today. But that does not make those socialist movements, it makes them mass movements," she said.

Trained Marxists

In a Facebook post labeling Black Lives Matter as a Marxist movement, PragerU included a video interview with Carol Swain, a Black conservative and former professor at Vanderbilt and Princeton universities. She said, "Now, the founders of Black Lives Matter, theyve come out as Marxists."

Swain alluded to Black Lives Matters three co-founders, who are still featured prominently on the groups website Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. Their primary backgrounds are as community organizers, artists and writers. Swain, though, was referring to a newly surfaced interview Cullors did in 2015, where she said:

"We do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia, in particular, are trained organizers; we are trained Marxists. We are superversed on, sort of, ideological theories. And I think what we really try to do is build a movement that could be utilized by many, many Black folks."

We didnt find that Garza and Tometi have referred to themselves as Marxists. But the book publisher Penguin Random House has said Garza, an author, "describes herself as a queer social justice activist and Marxist."

What Black Lives Matter says

Black Lives Matter was formed in response to the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, in Florida. The group calls its three co-founders "radical Black organizers."

The project started with a mission "to build local power and to intervene when violence was inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes," the groups website says. "In the years since, weve committed to struggling together and to imagining and creating a world free of anti-Blackness, where every Black person has the social, economic and political power to thrive."

Included on its list of beliefs is one that has drawn criticism as being consistent with Marxism:

"We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable."

A spokesperson for Black Lives Matter; Kailee Scales, managing director at Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation;and the three co-founders did not reply to our requests for information.

"On one level, these are just put downs," University of Massachusetts Amherst economics professor Richard Wolff, author of "Understanding Marxism," told PolitiFact about the attacks on Black Lives Matter.

If people declare themselves Marxists, they are in effect Marxists, but "there really is no standard" of what Marxism is, "theres no way to verify anything."

Black Lives Matter today

Its important to recognize that movements evolve.

Noting Cullors declaration of being Marxist trained, "one has to take that seriously: if the leadership says it is Marxist, then there's a good chance they are," said Russell Berman, a professor at Stanford University and a senior fellow at its conservative Hoover Institution who has written critically about Marxism.

But "this does not mean every supporter is Marxist Marxists often have used useful idiots. And a Marxist movement can be more or less radical, at different points in time," he said.

Black Lives Matters "emphatic support for gender identity politics sets it apart from historical Marxism," and the goals listed on its website "do not appear to be expressly anti-capitalist, which would arguably be a Marxist identifier," Berman added.

The groups support is broad.

Even as some Americans express support for socialism, most view it negatively, and few of the supporters would identify themselves as Marxist.

Meanwhile, 50% of registered voters support Black Lives Matter as of mid-July, up from 37% in April 2017, according to Civiqs, an online survey research firm.

In July, the New York Times reported that Black Lives Matter may be the largest movement in U.S. history, as four polls suggest that about 15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of Floyd and others in recent weeks. (That does not account for similar protests overseas.)

"I am fairly convinced these are mostly attempts to smear anti-racist activists. I think in some media, Marxist is dog-whistle for something horrible, like Nazi, and thus enables to delegitimize/dehumanize them," Miriyam Aouragh, a lecturer at the London-based Westminster School of Media and Communication, told PolitiFact.

Black Lives Matter "is not an organization, but a fluid movement; it doesnt actually matter if one of its founders was a liberal, Marxist, socialist or capitalist."

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PolitiFact | Is Black Lives Matter a Marxist movement?

The Greater Atlanta organization maintained an active presence on Facebook, sought donations through GoFundMe, and cheered on the protesters. Weve been blown away by the millions that are coming together to demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and countless others whove had their lives taken, said one of its posts in August.

Mr. Page said in private messages that the donations it received were being used to finance the groups activism, federal investigators said. None of the money was used for personal items, Mr. Page wrote in one of the messages. All movement related.

Other groups based in Atlanta have distanced themselves from Mr. Pages organization and its appeals for money. A similarly named but unrelated organization, Black Lives Matter Atlanta, wrote on Facebook, This page will never seek donations. This is a grass-roots collective movement to fight for justice for the disenfranchised, and victims of police brutality.

The Greater Atlanta group stressed in a post in June that donations to it were not tax-deductible: We said it once, and we will say it again, BLMGA is no longer a nonprofit org, we are a social media grass roots org.

The authorities said that Mr. Page established a nonprofit organization in 2016 and opened a bank account for Black Lives Matter of Greater Atlanta Inc. in 2018 with himself as the only signatory. The balance in the account never exceeded $5,000 until May of this year, and at one point it was overdrawn by $12.42.

But then donations exploded.

Investigators found that Mr. Page used a debit card linked to the bank account to pay for food, entertainment, furniture and a home security system. On Aug. 21, the authorities said, he spent $112,000 of the donated money for the house in Toledo and an adjacent lot.

A friend, Ron Goolsby, told The Toledo Blade that he expected Mr. Page to be exonerated. Mr. Page had plans to turn the Toledo house into a shelter for victims of domestic abuse, Mr. Goolsby said. This is all going to be cleared up, for sure, he said.

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Man Spent Donations to Black Lives Matter on Himself, Prosecutors Say - The New York Times

The hamlet of White Sulphur Springs, two hours north-west of New York City, tumbles toward the rolling foothills of the Catskill mountains off New York state route 52 in rural, verdant Sullivan county. The first white settlers, drawn by the dense hemlock forest, set up sawmills; later, dairy farms and tanneries were the areas main economic drivers. But now and for the past hundred or so years, this bucolic wedge of New York countryside relies on tourism.

Nowadays in White Sulphur Springs, theres one inn, a gardening store, a small grocery that doubles as the local post office, a quaint used bookstore, a Methodist church, and a Dollar General.

And, in 2020, a couple of dozen Trump signs. In a town of 377 people, where 351 of those people are white, you cant help but notice the Trump flags, even if youre just driving through.

Sheila Parks says this proliferation of insignia displaying the US presidents name might be her fault, at least inadvertently. Back in late spring, Sheila decided that she was going to put a Black Lives Matter sign and a Biden For President sign in the front lawn of the house where she lives with her husband, Jimmy, and their two teenage sons. Theirs is the only house in White Sulphur Springs with a Biden or a Black Lives Matter sign. Their home is right before the main stretch of town. You cant miss it.

All the Trump signs came up after, she says. It was in response.

Sheila is Catholic but was raised in a Jewish hotel, where her parents worked, in nearby Swan Lake. She remembers guests with tattooed numbers from the Holocaust concentration camps. Her mother grew up in the Bronx, the daughter of Irish immigrants, and Sheila herself has traveled the world and lived in multiple places. Shes also an army veteran.

She credits those experiences with broadening her perspective. We were raised as people who, no matter your race or economic position, everyone should interact equally, Sheila says. Obviously it wasnt that way when I grew up here in the 70s and 80s. They were still using the N-word, you didnt see people of color in positions of power, and its pretty much the same way now.

In 2016, Sheila supported Hillary Clinton, but she didnt feel like she needed to put a sign out. Then, well, Trump won. This time around, she wanted to display a small act of resistance, but she was nervous. White Sulphur Springs is a conservative place youll also see one or two Confederate flags if you drive through and her husbands family are Republicans all the way down, though Jimmy doesnt count himself in that number. She was also concerned about consequences for her children, one of whom is especially supportive of progressive causes on social media.

But that was never going to stop her. She wanted to show that people who didnt cleave to the town orthodoxy of supporting the NRA, Trump, and hating AOC wouldnt be intimidated. And she wanted to show her kids that its important to stand up for what you believe in.

Plus, its not like Sheila is totally without support. Elderly Mrs Hogencamp, across the street, couldnt believe her eyes when she saw the signs. She supports Biden and BLM, but she doesnt want the drama that comes with advertising that. Same goes for the Parks neighbors, a Latino family who moved to White Sulphur Springs about a year ago. And Sheilas friend in town, Christina, is also supportive (her last name is being withheld at her request).

Christina is Puerto Rican and her husband is Black. He has been nervous since the pandemic began because when he wears a mask, people cant see him smile when he goes to the supermarket, and thats the best way to show youre not an angry Black man. When their 13-year-old daughter saw the video of George Floyd being killed by police officers, she was devastated. She was like, Mom, I dont want my dad and my brother to end up this way, Christina remembers. To be a parent and have to express to your child, I cant promise you it wont happen, but Im here for you she trails off. To see Sheilas signs just gave me a little sense of hope. I reached out to her literally in tears. Because its hard.

People drive by the Parks house and yell things like Biden sucks! or Bidens going down! (Occasionally there are more supportive gestures.) But a lot of politically opinionated people in White Sulphur Springs feel like they cant talk to Sheila if theyd even want to. Shes the town liberal, a role she seems to take some pride in. Same goes for her eldest son, 16-year-old Dylan. (Hes very opinionated, says one Trump-supporting woman, who happens to be Dylans aunt. Very opinionated.) For his part, Dylan can wholeheartedly say I dont feel like I belong in this town at all.

No, the individual whos borne the brunt of the backlash is Jimmy Parks, who has lived in White Sulphur Springs for 54 years. Jimmy is like a lot of people in the US: his political identity is not neatly divisible along party lines. I just want a good country, he says. I got kids. Hes voted Republican in the past, but hes colorfully unapologetic about his support for Biden and Black Lives Matter, and as for the Trump administration: They dont care, theyre racist people.

Whereas most of the Trump supporters in town dismiss Sheila out of hand, theyre befuddled by Jimmy. He seems a lot like them: white, working class, from the area and never really left. His family goes way back here. There are people in White Sulphur Springs who simply dont believe that Jimmy believes what he believes. Hes been approached at the store, confronted by cousins and strangers, all questioning why he has those signs on his lawn.

A lot of people in these small towns, they dont understand about equality, how much diversity there is in this country, Jimmy says. As for whether they ever can, hes not all that optimistic. Theres so many people in this country who are truly set in their ways, he reasons. Racist people who just want that Chevrolet, apple-pie lifestyle. Its not that way any more, man, and really at the end of the day, it never was.

April Kissel put up her Trump signs out of political loyalty, not in response to Sheila. She lives with her husband, Joe, in one of the first houses on the road into White Sulphur Springs. Joe is also a Trump fan. He watches Fox Nation all night, and was in the US national guard for nearly two decades after joining in 1969.

The Kissels have had four Trump 2020 placards on their lawn for the past month, but April says shes always advertised her political support, even for local elections. Shes not trying to start a dialogue, but to help other people think a little bit. Especially the people driving through. Its a small town; we all know each other, April says. Which means: where everybody stands politically.

April is Jimmys first cousin, but despite the fact the Kissels and the Parks live half a mile down the road from each other, the families dont interact much. The Biden sign is fine, but I dont agree with the Black Lives Matter sign at all, April says. Black lives arent the only lives that matter. It has nothing to do with politics.

Paul Lindsley feels much the same way. Whether Black, Spanish, white, Chinese all lives matter, he says when I find him sitting on his front porch, with a beautiful view of the hills, smoking a cigarette in a green wool overshirt. Paul is a hunter and a shooter, and he thinks Joe Biden is going to take his guns away. His house is next door to the Parks, and hes actually related to Jimmy, too a distant cousin. As is Judy Bradley, who lives across the street, next door to Mrs Hogencamp. When I first drive out to White Sulphur Springs, the Bradleys have two Trump lawn signs, an All Lives Matter sign, and a fire department sign. Judys not interested in talking. Two weeks later theres a Trump 2020: No More Bullshit flag flying in their yard.

Its not the most ostentatious display in White Sulphur Springs, however. That honor goes to Ed Roth, whose house is bedecked with three large flags: a thin blue/red line flag for policemen and firefighters; a flag depicting Trump standing proudly atop a panzer tank, assault rifle in hand, with an explosion in the background and a bald eagle soaring into battle; and, right in the middle, raised above the other two, an American flag. From the detached garage out back fly two more banners: A No More Bullshit flag and a Gadsden flag, the yellow banner depicting a coiled rattlesnake above the words dont tread on me. (The Gadsden flag was originally designed during the American revolution, but has subsequently been embraced by Confederate war veterans groups, white supremacist groups, and the American Tea Party, lending it the dual symbolism of revolution and racial animosity.)

When he speaks, Roth has to hold his thumb to the hole in his throat, which was cut out on his 50th birthday. The cancer is on his tongue now. Ive beat it twice, he says. Having trouble beating it this time.

To him, flying flags is all about respect. He used to be a Democrat, but he left the party a long time ago. He says hed hang a Confederate sign if he had one. They believed in what they were fighting for, just like the north believed in what we were fighting for, he explains. It was the same thing.

Not everyone is motivated by grievance politics, though. At the far end of town flies a bright blue Keep America Great banner, a gift to logger Dale Klein from his dying grandmother. Klein fashioned a makeshift pole out of two-by-fours painted blue and stapled together to raise the flag in her honor.

Dale is friendly. He refers to strangers as buddy. When I find him, hes wearing a racing cap and a T-shirt that reads Intercourse, PA, which is a real place in the Pennsylvania Dutch country. The makeshift pole where the Keep America Great flag hangs will be replaced by a 30ft aluminum pole as soon as Dale and his coworker find the time to pour concrete for a base.

As for the current set-up, we got a few compliments here and there, but thats about it, Dale says. Never got no complaints.

If theres any self-censorship of political expression in White Sulphur Springs, it isnt only exhibited by supporters of Democratic causes. When Alan Werlau hung a Trump banner from his front deck, his neighbor expressed support, but said he couldnt put one out himself because he works in real estate and is concerned it would harm his business.

The Trump signs just keep going up in White Sulphur Springs, from supporters who run a typological gamut of rural whiteness: a tatted-up biker who lives in an old hotel, a bottle-blond housewife with hot pink nails, men in rocking chairs with cigarettes and American light lagers. Theyre showing support, or acting out of fear or anger, or honoring some long-lost ideal. Mostly theyre affirming an identity.

What there isnt much of is dialogue, in a place you might expect there to be some. Everyone knows each other, after all. The state assembly district that includes White Sulphur Springs has been represented by a Democrat who has run unopposed since 2014. The district voted for Obama twice before swinging to Trump in 2016.

As for the 2020 election, Jimmy Parks knows its importance the pandemic, and its attendant threat to voter turnout, has only heightened the stakes for him. That sumbitch aint gonna stop me from voting, he says, referring to Trump.

The prospect of the US president winning re-election sends his mind to a scary place, though. Or at least an uncomfortable one. Ive been peeing in my backyard and living off the land my whole life thinking this is the greatest country in the world, Jimmy says. But if Trump were to upset the odds again, I think Id want to move, he says despairingly. But where would I go?

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The family whose Black Lives Matter sign shook their conservative town - The Guardian

More than 200 people gathered Saturday afternoon in Portland to protest police brutality and systemic racism, just days after a Kentucky grand jury decided not to hand up murder indictments for the three Louisville police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor in March.

The Black Lives Matter Maine demonstration moved between the Portland Police Department headquarters and City Hall, snaking through the Old Port and marching down Congress Street.

At one point, the protestors staged a sit-in at the intersection of Franklin and Middle streets, near the police station. They spread across four lanes of traffic, chanting along with trumpets and drums.

This is called civil disobedience, activist Hamdia Ahmed shouted. Are we rioting?

No, the crowd yelled back.

The sit-in was part of the hourslong peaceful demonstration. Diners, shoppers and walkers stopped to watch them pass by. Some raised their fists in solidarity.

Whose streets? the crowd chanted. Our streets.

On the steps of both city buildings, young Black people took the megaphone to call for change.

Justice for Breonna Taylor is us, Josh Wood told the crowd. We are the people. We have the power to change things in Portland, Maine, and everywhere.

In the hours before the protest, the organizerstraded criticismswith the Portland Police Department on social media.

On Friday night, Police Chief Frank Clark shared a statement that faulted the organizers for failing to work with his department or return its calls. Black Lives Matter quickly responded with a statement that said the organizers had reached out to the police in preparation for the event and accused the police chief of trying to discredit the movement.

The police department shared an update Saturday, sayingthe organizers agreed to start the protest at the police station and then move to Portland City Hall.

Were continuing to ask for calm from all of todays protesters and counterprotesters, the departments Facebook post said. Help us, help you as we work to protect each of you and your right to peacefully and lawfully protest.

But the group met a small number of agitators near City Hall, and organizers decided to move the protest away from them.

There may be counterprotestors here, but what are we here for? Ayanna Pappas said as she walked through the crowd with a megaphone, calling people away from the small group on a nearby corner. To spread the message.

They returned to the police station, first taking a knee and then sitting as speakers shared their own experiences with the police. When the sky was dark, they again marched into the Old Port. Dozens of people kneeled on Commercial Street, shouting one name over and over.

Breonna Taylor, they yelled. Breonna Taylor.

The protest ended back at City Hall, where the remaining people sang Lean on Me together shortly after 8 p.m. As the crowd dispersed, glowing messages flashed across the buildings face.

Black Lives Matter, the words read, and then, Say their names.

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Members of Black Lives Matter Maine protest in Portland - Press Herald