Jason Lee and Patrisse Cullors discuss allegations and the money invested in Black Lives Matter
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00:00 Why did black people buy into it?
00:02 And second question is, do you think the Black Lives Matter movement failed in protecting you?
00:08 [laughs]
00:10 Um, I think black people bought into it because the right-wing messaging went viral.
00:18 And, you know, folks like the Shade Room picked it up, and then like, you know, that's like,
00:25 a lot of people didn't know about it until like the Shade Room picked it up the first time.
00:28 You know, I've had— A lot of our people didn't know.
00:30 Yeah, exactly. And I've had my conversations with folks at the Shade Room about that.
00:34 You know, and I think—and then they did a whole retraction, and they came through for the situation, you know, once they heard more about it.
00:43 And I think at the end of the day, the virility of social media is hard to contain.
00:50 And once a certain message has gone out there—because it could have been a totally different messaging,
00:55 which is like, BLM co-founder invests in homes that supports her family, and that's what black people do.
01:02 And like, black people would have seen it differently, but the fact that the first messaging was,
01:08 you know, she has all these homes and she went on a shopping spree.
01:11 I mean, at the height of it, Jason, the New York Post had me on the cover.
01:16 They put—I was like—I remember waking up, you know, the dirt thing came out, maybe it was a Thursday.
01:23 Then that next day, it was kind of quiet, but then by Saturday, I was on the cover of the New York Post.
01:31 Like, physical copies. And I was like, how the—how do they do that? What is going on? Like, what's happening?
01:38 And that's when I started to realize, like, oh, I'm a target now.
01:42 Like, they are actually, you know—what people don't know is these groups have think tanks.
01:49 They start to message, they start to see, like, okay, who's the most popular person?
01:53 Who is the easiest? Who's the most vulnerable? I was the most vulnerable.
01:58 There were so many gaps in my—and, you know, just things I—I'm not operating like I'm a celebrity.
02:05 I'm operating like I'm a community organizer.
02:07 So I'm not thinking about certain things that need to be protected.
02:12 And so that—and I think, you know, the question around did the Black Lives Matter movement fail to protect me?
02:18 I don't know. I don't want to place blame. I think that's too harsh.
02:23 I just don't think we know how to protect each other.
02:27 I don't think we have enough wherewithal and infrastructure to differentiate what is generative critique
02:37 and how we hold someone accountable without throwing them under the bus or without them—
02:45 you know, in my situation, like, not being able to get the protection that I needed.
02:50 There's a lot of things I wish happened.
02:52 But how do we say you created the Black Lives Matter movement,
02:57 and then when mainstream goes on a lynching campaign,
03:02 the Black Lives Matter don't show up to say that your black lives matter and you not be angry?
03:09 Malina Abdullah has been the biggest supporter of me.
03:12 Like, she has shown up from the beginning.
03:15 And so there have been individual people who have been very present and very protective of me.
03:21 But our movement infrastructure does not have the capacity to protect black women right now.
03:31 We just don't. It's not a judgment.
03:34 My hope, like I said earlier about, you know, this moment, my hope is that this is a learning moment.
03:40 My hope is that this won't happen again,
03:43 and we will protect each other.