How BLM Blew $90 Million. Plus. . .
Emily Oster asks: Are smartphones stealing childhood? The New York Times fails to disclose a source’s ties to Hamas. And more.
It’s Wednesday, October 23, and this is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Coming up: Are smartphones stealing childhood?; the Abercrombie & Fitch CEO charged with sex trafficking; plus, legacy media quotes a Municipality of Gaza spokesperson without revealing his likely ties to Hamas. But first, the rise and collapse of Black Lives Matter.
A lot can change in four years. Just ask Kamala Harris, who’s walked back various 2019 policies such as a fracking ban and support for Medicare for All. Now she’s boasting about owning a Glock. Meanwhile, Democrats have forgotten they ever uttered the words “defund the police.” But perhaps the most vivid example of how we’re not in 2020 anymore—and that the vibes have most definitely shifted—is the fall of Black Lives Matter. In 2020, after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, the movement took on quasi-religious status, with chapters raising $90 million in one year. Today, the BLM brand is widely recognized as a scam that lost $6.2 million in the last fiscal year.
Earlier this month, Tyree Conyers-Page—a.k.a. Sir Maejor Page—the 35-year-old former leader of the BLM chapter for Greater Atlanta, was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison for money laundering and wire fraud. Instead of spending the $450,000 raised from 18,000 donors to “fight for George Floyd,” Page splurged on tailored suits, nightclub bar tabs, an evening with a prostitute and, as he texted to a friend, “a big-ass” mansion in Ohio.
Page is not an outlier. Take Melina Abdullah, co-director of BLM Grassroots, who media reports accuse of using the organization’s money to pay for vacations to Jamaica and her own personal expenses. Though Abdullah has not been charged with a crime, California’s attorney general has threatened to revoke her organization’s tax-exempt status if she fails to turn over its delinquent tax filings and late fees by Sunday.
“Abdullah has denied the allegations, but at least $8.7 million in donations is unaccounted for,” writes investigative reporter Sean Patrick Cooper in his first piece for The Free Press. “The answer to where the money went may come soon.”
“Maybe,” Sean concludes, “if the founders had been as committed to social justice as to enriching themselves, BLM could have enjoyed a long life as a progressive institution.” Instead, the movement is a cautionary tale for what happens when people with good intentions are given too much money. Read Sean Patrick Cooper on how BLM misspent millions of dollars.
Why Is The New York Times Not Disclosing a Source’s Ties to Hamas?
On the first anniversary of the October 7, 2023 massacre, The New York Times published an episode of its flagship podcast, The Daily, featuring two men on opposite sides of the war in Gaza. The first was an Israeli man, Golan Abitbul, who’s described as a “liberal” 44-year-old father from Kibbutz Be’eri. The second was “Hussein,” cast as a Palestinian man struggling for survival, whose identity was shrouded in secrecy.
In the episode, Hussein speaks of Israel “imposing collective punishment on over two million people with no reason.” The podcast’s host, Sabrina Tavernise, doesn’t think to drill down on that, nor to ask why he has an unusually “good income” that enables him to pay $1,000 a month in rent.
It turns out that Hussein is Hussein Owda, who spent eight years working as the head of public relations for the Municipality of Gaza, which multiple sources told Olivia Reingold is controlled by Hamas. “Every government structure in Gaza was run by Hamas,” Jon Schanzer, a former terrorism analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, told Olivia. Schanzer added that Owda, as the former head of public relations for the municipality, likely was “providing propaganda” to advance Hamas’s mission.
None of this means Owda is an actual terrorist. Some employees are just trying to “put food on the table for their families,” Schanzer told Olivia. And perhaps Owda is one of those people. Yet for the past decade, he has been employed by entities linked to Hamas—including a nonprofit with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and now UNRWA, the UN aid agency with suspected ties to Hamas. That ambiguity is why, Schanzer said, all cards should be laid out for the reader.
“Just saying he’s a municipal worker in this context? It’s almost glib,” Schanzer said. “Not mentioning his connection to Hamas at all? Now that’s a problem.”
The New York Times has quoted Owda four separate times, citing his work for UNRWA twice but revealing no other affiliations. Read Olivia Reingold’s piece about NYT’s failure to reveal a source’s troubling connections.
In Episode Six of Raising Parents, Emily Oster Asks: Are Smartphones Stealing Childhood?
Kids today are digital natives. Increasingly, it seems like their first word after mama and dada is iPhone. Parents may feel uncomfortable giving their children a small supercomputer, but they often cave to social pressure. By the time the average American child is 10, more than 40 percent of their peers own a smartphone. By age 12, that figure is 70 percent. And by age 14, it’s over 90 percent. Meanwhile, nearly 50 percent of teenagers say they use their phones “almost constantly.”
In the latest episode of Raising Parents, Emily Oster explores how much smartphones are harming children’s social lives, cognitive development, and physical and mental health. And, she asks, who should we trust to put things right: parents, schools—or even the government?
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