Amazon Gives ‘Black Lives Matter’ The Boot From Its Charity Platform

In a recent statement issued by Amazon, the ‘Black Lives Matter’ group has officially been removed from its charity platform, AmazonSmile, after the company stated that the progressive organization has failed to follow the standard it placed on itself as a charity to keep itself in “good standing” in the wake of the group being under scrutiny over the past few weeks for their failure to disclose how it is wasting millions of the dollars that are being donated from groups, individuals, and corporations.

As first reported on Wednesday by the Washington Examiner, the online retail and consumer titan dropped Black Lives Matter as a charity that was eligible for the AmazonSmile program. AmazonSmile is a program that lets each user give a portion of the total spent on their Amazon order to a charity of their choosing, as explained by Business Insider:

AmazonSmile is a program that donates 0.5% of your eligible purchases on Amazon to a charity of your choice. All you need to do is start your shopping at smile.amazon.com. The donation will be made at no extra cost to you and you can choose from nearly one million public charitable organizations.

Despite this, Washington Examiner reported that Black Lives Matter has recently fallen out of compliance across quite a few states:

BLM voluntarily shut down its online fundraising on Feb. 2 after California and Washington issued legal threats to the group for its failure to report what it did with the millions it received during the second half of 2020. BLM published a report in February 2021 claiming to have ended 2020 with $60 million in its coffers.

As of Wednesday afternoon, BLM remains out of compliance in those states, as well as in New Jersey, North Carolina, Connecticut, Colorado, Maryland, Maine, and Virginia.

BLM said when it shut down its fundraising that it had engaged “compliance counsel” to get back in good standing with the states.

Due to that, the group was found to no longer meet the strenuous standard from Amazon to be listed as one of their participating charities:

“Charitable organizations must meet the requirements outlined in our participation agreement to be eligible for AmazonSmile,” an Amazon representative told the Washington Examiner. “Among other eligibility requirements, organizations are required to be in good standing in their state of incorporation and in the states and territories where they are authorized to do business. Organizations that don’t meet the requirements listed in the agreement may have its eligibility suspended or revoked. Charities can request to be reinstated once they are back in good standing.”

This is not the first instance of Amazon making the choice to drop a charity from its program over odd choices. Back in 2021, the company removed quite a few groups from the program as they cleaned house of anyone suspected of funding the group that carried out the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

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