(LifeSiteNews) – A Black Lives Matter (BLM) organizer in Boston is being forced to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen through multiple avenues, including her own nonprofit.
The Mass Daily News reported that on Monday U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley ordered Monica Cannon-Grant, whom The Boston Globe had once dubbed “Bostonian of the Year,” to forfeit $224,063. The lion’s share of that sum, approximately $181,000, had been donations she had pocketed from her nonprofit, Violence in Boston Inc.
She must also repay over $33,000 in fraudulent unemployment benefits related to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as $12,600 in benefits related to rental assistance. The latest order is in addition to $106,000 Cannon-Grant already owes. She was already sentenced in January to four years of probation, six months of home detention, and 100 hours of community service.
Cannon-Grant is far from the first BLM activist caught using “social justice” as a front for personal enrichment.
Most recently, Oklahoma City BLM leader Tashella Sheri Amore Dickerson was indicted on 20 counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering, allegedly embezzling “at least $3.15 million into her personal accounts and then used the money to pay for trips to Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, (and) retail shopping,” while spending “at least $50,000 in food and grocery deliveries for herself and her children, a personal vehicle, and six properties in Oklahoma City deeded to her or to a company she controlled,” according to prosecutors.
The BLM movement reached its peak after May 2020 when the death of Minneapolis criminal George Floyd during a police altercation sparked a wave of protests across the country predicated on the narrative that the incident was symptomatic of systemic racism in American law enforcement rather than an isolated case of misconduct for which the officer involved was investigated, tried, and ultimately convicted and sentenced to 22.5 years in prison. Many of those protests devolved into rioting that led to killing, injury, and millions in property damage.
The Biden administration wholeheartedly embraced BLM’s narrative, commemorating the anniversary of Floyd’s death and bemoaning the “legacy of systemic racism in our criminal justice system and in our institutions more broadly.” In fact, however, research shows that police are not disproportionately likely to use excessive lethal force against black suspects and may actually be less likely out of fear of being accused of racism after the fact.
