The deeply in debt and stark blue state of Illinois appears to have given $300,000 to a Black Lives Matters group in its 2024 budget that has been inactive since at least 2021.
Further, the person listed as running it appears to have had run-ins with the police.
According to government spending watchdog group OpenTheBooks, the group Breakthrough Ideas, a policy advocacy and education organization, discovered the $300,000 grant tucked away in the state’s 2024 budget.
It was also found that the same BLM group, BLM Lake County, received huge influxes of cash in the last several budgets, totaling at least $375,000 additional dollars.
Per OpenThebooks:
Aside from concerns about government funding political activist groups, critics say that the BLM Lake County doesn’t appear to be an active organization anymore. Breakthrough Ideas found little social media activity from them, and no physical presence in the community, despite opening an office in Lake County in 2020. The landlord of this property allegedly filed a commercial eviction notice against them in 2022. The status of that notice is unknown.
Additionally, the head of the group, Clyde McLemore, has faced charges from law enforcement, according to press reports. In February 2021, McLemore was charged with a felony count of attempted battery of a police officer and misdemeanor disorderly conduct after allegedly kicking a door at the Kenosha Courthouse.
McLemore was acquitted of the felony battery charge but convicted of the disorderly conduct charge.
In another incident, after becoming disruptive at a Waukegan City Council meeting while out on bond for his 2021 charges, he was charged with criminal trespass in October 2022 after refusing to leave. This triggered a felony bail jumping charge for allegedly violating conditions of his bond.
All this even as Illinois is one of the most in-debt states in the nation with a pension bomb set to explode, citizens fleeing by the tens of thousands and taking their tax dollars with them, companies closing down their Illinois offices and moving elsewhere, and skyrocketing government spending.
Good job, Democrats.
So, the big question is, what does Clyde McLemore and BLM Lake County have to show for these many hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxmoney?
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
