On their website, the Movement for Black Lives coalition claims to be anti-capitalist. Google lists their “type of business” under “social movement.” In the past month, they have raised over $100 million from a billionaire, foundations, and the same Democratic Party for which they disavowed any affiliation in 2015. The ante of pledged financial support is now close to two billion dollars.

As more money is on the way, I am reminded of Malcolm X’s analysis of the 1963 March on Washington, where Malcolm was an observer. A few months later, he spoke in Detroit about the influence white philanthropy and leadership held over civil rights organizations around the time of the march.

Malcolm said, “A philanthropic society headed by a white man named Stephen Currier called all the top civil-rights leaders together at the Carlyle Hotel. And he told them that, ‘By you all fighting each other, you are destroying the civil-rights movement. And since you’re fighting over money from white liberals, let us set up what is known as the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership. Let’s form this council, and all the civil-rights organizations will belong to it, and we’ll use it for fundraising purposes.’ Once they formed it, with the white man over it, he promised them and gave them $800,000 to split up between the Big Six; and told them that after the march was over they’d give them $700,000 more.”

The Ford Foundation and the Borealis Philanthropy just formed the Black-Led Movement Fund for the Movement for Black Lives coalition. Prohibited, like Malcolm, from speaking at the 1963 March on Washington, James Baldwin soon after the spectacle said, “the March had already been co-opted.”