Ford Motors has long held a stronghold on American Police Cars.
With a market share of 65%, Ford is the king when it comes to providing moving offices for America’s heroes but in an odd alliance with Black Lives Matter and the Defund Police Movement, Ford is stepping into pretty weird territory.
According to the National Pulse, the Ford Foundation “is proudly taking part in the Defund the Police movement.”
“….the Ford Foundation is proud to support a number of courageous individuals and organizations in the throes of this fight, raising their voices and risking their lives to protect the rights of communities of color, demand an end to oppressive policing and greater investment in communities of color, and call on the nation to uphold its values and deliver justice for all. They are fearless warriors for equality and justice who are tackling the issues of systemic racism and the unaccountable policing responsible for George Floyd’s death. Already, we’ve seen our grantees at the forefront of the change that’s taken place over the last few days—from the City Council of Minneapolis’s pledge to dismantle the police department to reimagine public safety, to Mayor Garcetti’s commitment to divest $250 million of the LAPD’s budget to support affected communities, to Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon voting to end the presence of police in their schools.”
Founded in 1936 by Edsel Ford, the Ford Foundation is one of the country’s most recognized charitable organizations. In 2019, it handed out $500 million in grants to promote a “just, fair, and peaceful world with opportunity for all.”
But now, for the first time since 1976, a member of the Ford Motors dynasty sits on the Board of the Foundation.
Henry “Sonny” Ford, joined the Foundation’s Board of Trustees in February of 2019 to help drive its “racial injustice” agenda. Ford is the Director of Investor Relations for Ford Motor Company.
While aimed at giving the Ford Foundation more legitimacy as it presses forward with its social justice policies, but what message is that sending to the thousands of police agencies that purchase their vehicles?
No cop would disagree with donating to social justice issues but those that promote a narrative of police racism and the abolishing of law enforcement is certainly an odd mix for a company that has profited so much from the checkbooks of police agencies.
“The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and Sean Reed are the result of an ugly, painful legacy of systemic racism and violence at the heart of the American story. It’s a story that begins with the genocide of indigenous peoples and continued with the enslavement of African people, whose free labor built the wealth of countless white Americans.”
According to the National Pulse, since 2016, Ford Foundation has given roughly $7.8 million to Black Lives Matters and other similar groups through a partnership with Borealis Philanthropy. These groups are the public face of the Defund the Police movement.
And that movement was formed from a group seeded by the Foundation back in 2015 called Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) at the University of Chicago. Their mission was to “Disband, Disarm, Disempower” the police.
Since the group’s founding, the Ford Foundation has given them $3.1 million. BYP100 now serves as central command – recruiting protesters, providing professional protester training, and coordinating protests in cities across the U.S.
Mr. Ford may not have to look far to see the results of what the Ford Foundation has been funding. In his hometown of Detroit, murder is up 25 percent since last year and there have been 271 non-fatal shootings – up 30 percent, according to Deadline Detroit.
Posted by Law Officer
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