White People Told They Are Not Welcome at Performance of BLM-Inspired Play
White theatregoers in London were urged to stay away from a play about African American history so that black audience members could enjoy the performance “free from the white gaze”.
The Theatre Royal Stratford East, in east London, has caused uproar after it told white people to stay away from a “Black Out” performance of the Tambo & Bones play on July 5.
Although the theatre claimed that “no one is excluded”, it went on to make it abundantly clear that white people would not be welcome at the performance that tells the story of a pair of African Americans on a journey from mistrels to rappers, who ultimately join the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement.
“While this performance has been arranged for Black audience members specifically, no one is excluded from attending,” a description for the ‘Black Out’ evening on the theatre’s website stated.
“A Black Out night is the purposeful creation of an environment in which an all-black-identifying audience can experience and discuss an event in the performing arts, film, and cultural spaces – free from the white gaze,” the theatre explained.
In comments provided to The Telegraph newspaper, Britain’s first black police and crime commissioner (PCC), Festus Akinbusoye said that excluding people based on race would “poor and dangerous precedent” and therefore “strongly urged” the theatre and director to cancel the ‘Black Out’ event.
“Society is richer and stronger when an understanding of each other’s cultures and stories are shared and heard,” the PCC for Bedfordshire said. “However I believe the Black Out concept runs contrary to this education and enrichment ethos.”
“As a lover of theatre performances – Hamilton being a recent one I attended – it was a great experience being able to share this with people of all races and cultures,” Akinbusoye continued. “Despite its majority black or visibly ethnic minority cast, I would not have watched it if it had been a ‘Black Out’ performance.”
The director of the British run of the play, Matthew Xia stressed the supposed need for having a white free evening in London, reportedly writing in promotional material: “Over the last few years, a number of playwrights and directors in the US and the UK have created private and safe spaces for black theatregoers to experience productions that explore complex, nuanced race-related issues.
“I felt that with a play like Tambo & Bones which unpicks the complexity of black performance in relation to the white gaze, it was imperative that we created such a space.”
The theatre also defended the decision to hold a white-free performance, with a spokesman saying: “Black Out night is an initiative which started on Broadway and has been taken up by several London theatres, the spirit of which is congregation, celebration and healing.
“Tambo & Bones, staged at Stratford East, is a bold new play, a satire which actively explores race and what it is to be black. We have chosen to embrace this initiative for one performance, during the play’s month-long run, as a space for black audiences to experience the play as a community.”
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HUCKSTERISM IS AN INHERENT PART OF
THE BLACK SUBCULTURE. JUST ASK
AL SHARPTON HOW IT'S DONE. SHARPTON
USES HIS 'CHARITY' TO BUY A ROLLS.
The New York City subway system is a deadly place. Crimes are disproportionately committed by black men. Passengers take that information with them when they enter the subway. When Neely, as reports indicate, began shouting in an irrational and threatening manner, passengers went into “fight or flight” mode. The three men who restrained Neely worked to keep him immobilized until police arrived.
Cullors’s family and friends reaped benefits too. Financial disclosures released in May 2022 revealed Black Lives Matter paid her brother, Paul Cullors, $840,993 for "professional security services," a sizable sum for the self-taught graffiti artist with no prior experience as a bodyguard. Paul Cullors went on to purchase his own Los Angeles home for $637,000 in December 2020. Black Lives Matter paid $969,459 to an art firm run by the father of Cullors’s only child, Damon Turner. A consulting firm owned by a Black Lives Matter board member Shalomyah Bowers, a close associate of Cullors, received $2,167,894 for providing management services for the charity.
Going For Broke: Black Lives Matter Revenues Dropped 88 Percent in 2022
'This doesn't seem safe for us...this nonprofit system structure,' group's founder says
2022 wasn't a very good year for Black Lives Matter.
The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation raised just $9.3 million in the fiscal year ending in June 2022—an 88 percent decrease from the year prior, according to records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. It’s a staggering decline from Black Lives Matter’s heyday in the summer of 2020, when it parlayed the nationwide unrest that followed George Floyd’s death into an $80 million financial bonanza.
The Black Lives Matter charity used that windfall to accumulate property and spread wealth to leadership while it could. Its founder, Patrisse Cullors, went on a cross-country real estate buying spree, snagging four properties in California and Georgia for a cool $3.2 million. The charity secretly purchased a glitzy $6 million compound in Los Angeles in October 2020 with donor cash, which Cullors used to film videos of herself drinking wine and baking peach cobblers. Not content with its budding American property empire, Black Lives Matter branched out to Canada, granting $8 million to its Canadian affiliate to finance the purchase of a Toronto mansion in July 2021 for $6.3 million.
Cullors’s family and friends reaped benefits too. Financial disclosures released in May 2022 revealed Black Lives Matter paid her brother, Paul Cullors, $840,993 for "professional security services," a sizable sum for the self-taught graffiti artist with no prior experience as a bodyguard. Paul Cullors went on to purchase his own Los Angeles home for $637,000 in December 2020. Black Lives Matter paid $969,459 to an art firm run by the father of Cullors’s only child, Damon Turner. A consulting firm owned by a Black Lives Matter board member Shalomyah Bowers, a close associate of Cullors, received $2,167,894 for providing management services for the charity.
Black Lives Matters’ troubles began when Cullors’s personal real estate purchases surfaced in April 2021. The two activists who were supposed to replace her never took the job. Black Lives Matter fell so far behind in disclosing its finances to the public that several liberal states barred it from raising funds in their jurisdictions in early 2022. The charity voluntarily shut down its ability to raise funds in February 2022 amid the crackdown.
The pressure of having to disclose the self-dealing that went on at Black Lives Matter on watch was almost too much to bear for Cullors. She said during an April 2022 event that she gets "triggered" whenever she hears the term "IRS Form 990," a standard financial disclosure document charities are required to file every year to the public.
"This doesn't seem safe for us, this 990 structure—this nonprofit system structure," Cullors said. "This is, like, deeply unsafe. This is being literally weaponized against us, against the people we work with."
Black Lives Matter’s Form 990 tax return covering its fiscal year starting July 2020 and ending July 2021 was ultimately weaponized, but not by the nefarious right-wing forces Cullors often claims to be persecuted by.
Black Lives Matter Grassroots, a former sister organization of Black Lives Matter, cited the charity’s tax return in a September 2022 lawsuit accusing Bowers, a close associate of Cullors, of using the charity as his "personal piggy bank." The lawsuit alleged Bowers siphoned an additional $10 million in "fees" from Black Lives Matter to his consulting firm on top of the $2,167,894 disclosed in the charity’s Form 990.
Bowers "continued to betray the public trust by self-dealing and breaching his fiduciary duties," BLM Grassroots said in its lawsuit. "His actions have led [Black Lives Matter] into multiple investigations by the Internal Revenue Service and various state attorney generals, blazing a path of irreparable harm to BLM in less than eighteen months."
The Black Lives Matter charity's Form 990 for fiscal year 2022 was due to the IRS on Monday. Black Lives Matter did not respond to the Free Beacon's request for the public document, which it is required by law to provide, and the charity delayed providing a more detailed required financial statement to Florida.
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