March 16, 2022

Boston Globe's 'Bostonian of the Year' BLM race activist and husband indicted for fraud

By Thomas Lifson

New England's most prominent exponent of the Black Lives Matter movement is facing charges of bilking donors and using charity funds for personal gain.  The highest-profile race activist in Boston, Monica Cannon-Grant, has been indicted by the U.S. attorney in Boston on 18 counts:

[W]ith two counts of wire fraud conspiracy; one count of conspiracy; 13 counts of wire fraud; and one count of making false statements to a mortgage lending business. The indictment also charges Cannon-Grant with one count of mail fraud.

YouTube screen grab.

Cannon-Grant founded a group called Violence in Boston (VIB) before the George Floyd death in police custody.  That event and the riots that followed propelled her and her group into the stratosphere of prominence and Beantown, with accompanying honors from the progressive media and plenty of cash from suckers donors.

The Boston Herald reports:

Cannon-Grant has associated herself repeatedly with U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley's campaign, which says she never worked there and declined to comment further. VIB has gotten financial support from various elected officials, with City Councilor Julia Mejia, whose office didn't respond to a request for comment, giving by far the most at $1,235.

Cannon-Grant's profile particularly soared during the racial-justice protests of summer 2020, when she organized a massive rally in Franklin Park in which she yelled "(Expletive) the police." The donations poured in — as did glowing profiles, with The Boston Globe naming her a "Bostonian of the Year" and Boston Magazine "2020 Best Social Justice Advocate."

But the news stories turned sour. Local conservative newsblog TB Daily News put out a series of reports on Violence in Boston's financial dealings and grant receipts — topics that the indictment touched heavily on. And Cannon-Grant further fueled the fire with several outlandish statements that generated immediate blowback, such as baselessly claiming that a teen was lynched in Hopkinton and going after a Black Republican's interracial relationship.

The Boston Globe, which had previously named her "Bostonian of the Year," provides this example of her shenanigans:

In a June 2019 ceremony at the Suffolk district attorney's office, Monica Cannon-Grant was handed a check for $6,000, a grant awarded to her nonprofit, Violence in Boston Inc., to take a group of at-risk young men to a retreat in Philadelphia.

The trip was meant "to give these young men exposure to communities outside of the violence riddled neighborhoods that they navigate daily" and focus on community-building activities and coping skills, according to her grant proposal.

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