The Marguerite Casey Foundation, a left-wing grantmaking group that counts Stacey Abrams as a board member, financially backed several more anti-police groups and campaigns in 2021, tax forms reviewed by Fox News Digital shows.
Abrams’ campaign attempted to put her at arms-length away from the foundation during her second failed attempt at becoming Georgia’s governor by telling Fox News Digital that she does not share their views when questioned on its vocal calls to defund and abolish law enforcement.
Abrams, however, had backed an initiative shortly after joining its board in May 2021 to increase funding to such organizations. The foundation’s new tax documents contain its financial support during the launch of the anti-cop initiative and include Abrams’ first seven months on its board.
Throughout 2021, the Marguerite Casey Foundation doled out six figures to groups such as the Black Organizing Project, which received $100,000 from the foundation for general operating support.
The Black Organizing Project is part of the Anti Police-Terror Project, a coalition of far-left groups seeking to defund the Oakland Police Department and ‘build a replicable and sustainable model to eradicate police terror in communities of color.’
‘For the past 5 years, APTP’s Defund OPD committee has been leading the call to defund the police and invest in our communities,’ the project’s website states. ‘Our work has grown into the Defund Police Coalition with 13 BIPOC-led grassroots organizations* dedicated to refunding, restoring, and reimagining Oakland.’
The Black Organizing Project has also voiced its support for abolishing police. ‘We want to abolish police COMPLETELY!!!’ the group tweeted shortly after George Floyd’s death.
The Marguerite Casey Foundation also pushed $160,000 in grants to the Color of Change Education Fund, which is part of ‘the nation’s largest online racial justice organization.’
Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, joined the Marguerite Casey Foundation’s board at the same time as Abrams and has tweeted his support of defunding the police several times. His group also backed a failed Minneapolis effort to disband its police department and replace it with a department of public safety.
Additionally, the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE), which approaches its work ‘through an explicit racial lens,’ received a $100,000 grant from the Marguerite Casey Foundation marked towards ‘ending police violence.’
In the wake of the Floyd riots and unrest, ACRE was vocal about how it viewed the future of policing, using its social media platforms to call for defunding and abolishing police.
‘In the coming weeks, we at ACRE will continue our work as an organization set on abolition and defunding the police as well as ensuring justice in a number of other areas – not the least of which is the impending eviction crisis,’ ACRE said in a June 2020 press release. ‘We will not allow white supremacy to stop us, nor will we cower in its face. The time is now.’
Less than a week before the midterms in November, ACRE tweeted, ‘We need to abolish this system of policing and build a justice system that prioritizes the needs and well-being of all people.’ A couple of months before, they tweeted, ‘We need to abolish this system of policing…’
‘To truly build a world that is safe for Black people, we must fully defund & abolish the police,’ the group tweeted in September 2020.
The Marguerite Casey Foundation’s newest funding follows its substantial past support of anti-law enforcement groups. It also came as the group launched the Abrams-backed ‘Answer the Uprising’ initiative, which devoted more cash to programs and organizations ‘that directly address racial injustice in policing and the justice system,’ Fox News Digital previously reported.
‘This latest initiative is fully supported by Marguerite Casey Foundation’s Board of Directors, which recently named seven new changemakers to the Board, including Stacey Abrams and Rashad Robinson, President of Color Of Change,’ the group wrote in a May 2021 press release.
The Marguerite Casey Foundation recruited other left-wing organizations for the initiative, including Borealis Philanthropy, which has partnered with Black Lives Matter. Borealis Philanthropy acts as an intermediary for donors and provides large sums to numerous liberal activist groups, including those who want to strip the police of their budget.
According to the 2021 tax forms, Borealis Philanthropy received $500,000 for its Communities Transforming Policing Fund (CTPF), which was launched in 2017 and works on campaigns ‘focused on shifting power and resources from policing to communities to create public safety’ and reducing ‘the size, scope, and role of police,’ according to its website.
Borealis Philanthropy’s president Amoretta Morris also supported defunding police in an April 2021 tweet promoting CTPF.
The Marguerite Casey Foundation made its way into last year’s gubernatorial race and could later pose additional problems for Abrams, who recently said she’s eyeing another run for office.
‘I will likely run again,’ Abrams recently said, adding that she doesn’t know when that campaign will be.
The Marguerite Casey Foundation and Abrams’ campaign did not respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
