“Black Lives Matter” protesters who were apparently hired to cause a ruckus in Ferguson, Missouri, say they are angry because they haven’t been paid for their hard work.
The hired protesters held a sit-in last week outside the offices of Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) – the re-branded Missouri branch of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)—after the group allegedly stopped paying them.Demonstrators also confronted MORE executive director Jeff Ordower at MORE’s St. Louis office. One of the angry protesters can be observed threatening Ordower, a bald white man, in a video posted to the Twitter account of @search4swag on May 14 with the hashtag #CutTheCheck.
WCC… thinking about Occupying the offices @KWRose pic.twitter.com/PQxser7Ckj
— Search4Swag (@search4swag) May 14, 2015
“We gonna just # you up,” she said to Ordower from across a boardroom-style table.
MORE has been paying protesters $5,000 a month to demonstrate in Ferguson. The group reportedly filed for bankruptcy in 2010, but received millions of dollars from George Soros.Tax filings from Soros’s private foundation revealed that the billionaire financier donated $33 million to dozens of organizations supporting Black Lives Matter movement, which turned events in Ferguson from a protests into a nation-wide phenomenon.
The demonstrators also launched a #CutTheCheck hashtag on Twitter to pressure on the socialist groups to pay them. Here are some of the #CutTheCheck tweets that haven’t been deleted:
Slavery is over. You WILL not make money on Black folk fighting for our liberation and think you are going to keep it. #cutthecheck
— KB the drummer (@drbec) May 14, 2015
Folks “working” in the streets 277 days,riots,looting,arrests& now mad thyere not getting paid #CutTheCheck #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/R9npf5Nh2c
— Alexiis Starr (@AlexiisStarr) May 15, 2015
Here it is. @organizemo paid people to protest in #Ferguson. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/JFSEt2rzQi — Joe Prich (@JoePrich) May 15, 2015
We all in here trying to get @organizemo to cut these checks while we try to scrap up some money to have lunch as we occupy. The irony. — Anita Baéker (@keenblackgirl) May 14, 2015
The movement lives #cutthecheck pic.twitter.com/llGhooEnxH — Ida B. Yomama (@ms_tjp) May 14, 2015
Lots of folks doing work & acting on conscience. It is not fair that a group of 20 get $50,000 for throwing a tantrum. #Cutthecheck — elizabeth vega (@chicanapoet1) May 14, 2015
The group Millennial Activists United posted a letter demanding MORE “cut the checks” to the protesters.
“Early in the movement, non-profit organization MORE, formerly known as the St. Louis chapter of ACORN, and local St. Louis organization Organization for Black Struggle created a joint account in which national donors from all over the world have donated over $150,000 to sustain the movement,” the letter read. “Since then, the poor black [sic] of this movement who served as cash generators to bring money into St. Louis have seen little to none of that money.”
“Questions have been raised as to how the movement is to sustain when white non-profits are hoarding monies collected of off [sic] black bodies? When we will [sic] hold the industry of black suffering accountable? The people of the community are fed up and the accountability begins here and now,” the statement continued.
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