Community Movement Builders (CMB) is a Marxist, Black-focused organization calling for defunding the police, ending cash bail, mass releases of prisoners and illegal immigrants from detention centers, decriminalizing minor offenses and drug laws, and removing police from protests, schools, and public housing. CMB is based in Atlanta, Georgia, and insists on unarmed responses to traffic stops, mental health calls, and interactions with homeless people. CMB opposes building a police training facility in south Atlanta, which it argues threatens to bring a negative economic impact to the city unless it is stopped. ¹

CMB advocates for a communist economic model over capitalism, wants local communities to control policing rather than cities and government entities, and demands free public health care for everyone. CMB states that allowing gentrification in neighborhoods is a form of violence allowed by the government. CMB’s political education coordinator called for a new people’s army and for revolutionary violence and socialism. ²

History

Community Movement Builders established its first chapter in 2015 and owns a community house in Atlanta, Georgia. ³ The Atlanta chapter hosts community organizations and meetings, a home-schooling program for youth, a community garden, and a farmers’ market. ⁴

A chapter in Dallas, Texas, was formed for organizing work by experienced activists. ⁵ The Dallas chapter works on youth organizing, police misconduct, community organizing, and policy work impacting the Black community. ⁶

The Detroit, Michigan, chapter of CMB provides training on radical education, leadership and youth development, economic justice, and holistic healing and resistance. ⁷

Programs and Positions

Community Movement Builders programs include ending police violence, anti-gentrification, community liberation, pan-African solidarity, food sustainability, and the Black Panther Party veterans’ mutual aid fund. ⁸ CMB advocates for so-called liberated territories in cities (places where local-communities control land, organizations, and institutions) and opposes corporate and development interests working with elected officials. ⁹ CMB calls for government-provided universal health care in the U.S. ¹⁰

Ending Police Violence

Community Movement Builders seeks to defund and abolish police forces and to decentralize policing in the United States to allow Black communities to control their own institutions to resolve conflicts. ¹¹ CMB calls for non-armed respondents to traffic stops, homeless people, and mental health calls. ¹² CMB calls for all police to withdraw from streets to allow protestors to occupy public spaces. ¹³

Community Movement Builders further seeks to immediately end the cash bail system and release current inmates held for the inability to pay bail. ¹⁴ The organization calls for all those it deems political prisoners, such as members of the radical-left militant groups Black Panther Party, Weather Underground, Black Liberation Army, and MOVE, to be immediately released from prisons. ¹⁵

CMB seeks the immediate release of all detainees from immigration detention centers. ¹⁶ CMB favors the removal of police officers from public schools and public housing, the decriminalization of marijuana, vacating sentences for non-violent drug offenses, immediate disposal of armored police vehicles, and an end to the criminalization of minor offenses such as expired tags or broken tail lights. ¹⁷ CMB trains safety patrols and cop watches in local neighborhoods as well as organizing against what it calls militarized policing. ¹⁸

CMB is part of a coalition of organizations fighting construction of a police training facility south of Atlanta. ¹⁹ CMB’s executive director, Kamau Franklin,  stated that if the “right-wing white supremacist governor of Georgia” did not stop building the training facilities in Atlanta then CMB and other groups would bring economic pain to the city and state. ²⁰ CMB calls for corporations and institutions to divest from any training facility funding, insists that Atlanta stop building the facility, and that domestic terrorism charges against those arrested in a confrontation with police over the site of the facility be dropped. ²¹

Anti-Gentrification

Community Movement Builders opposes gentrification. CMB argues that allowing developers to buy homes will increase the cost of living, transform racial and economic makeups of neighborhoods, and force poorer, often Black residents out of communities. ²² CMB claims that gentrification has far-reaching negative consequences in Black communities in a harmful, violent way, and it argues that the government should not “promote this kind of violence.” ²³ CMB criticizes rising costs, loss of history and culture, and increased policing due to gentrification. ²⁴

Food Sustainability

Community Movement Builders is developing food cooperatives where worker-owners participate in community gardens and communal plots of land to grow food to respond to food deserts, promote healthy eating, and take ownership of food supplies. ²⁵

Pan-African Solidarity Network

Community Movement Builders seeks to unite radicals in the U.S. and work for Black liberation worldwide to oppose capitalism, support leftist parties and radical organizations, and build alternatives to perceived colonial states. ²⁶

The first stated endeavor of the movement is to take control of Haiti, impose Black Marxism, and oppose capitalism. ²⁷

Black Panther Party Veterans Mutual Aid Fund

Community Movement Builders established a Patreon account to donate to veterans of the Black Panther Party movement to assist in paying for rent, health care, groceries, and everyday items. ²⁸

Controversy

Community Movement Builders’ political education and media coordinator, Marte White, called Israel a white supremacist and settler-colonial state. ²⁹ During a protest outside the White House in November 2023, White shouted into the microphone that “Palestinians have a right to fight ‘by any means necessary…and I do mean any means necessary!’” ³⁰ The New York Post stated this presumably referred to Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians including music festival attendees in October 2023. ³¹

White stated that Black people or “New Afrikans” living in the U.S. are living in a country that stole land, was built on the idea of white supremacy, and was formed through white terrorism. ³² White claims that Israeli forces regularly gun down and tear gas innocent Palestinians just as the Atlanta Police Department kills innocent Black people. ³³

White advocated for a “People’s Army capable of fighting against ameriKKKan settler-colonialism, capitalism, and white supremacy…guided by Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.” ³⁴ White further stated that this new force must understand the need for revolutionary violence and socialism and the dangers of capitalism. ³⁵

Finances

In 2022, Community Movement Builders reported net assets of $1,224,791. ³⁶ According to the organization’s tax returns, in 2022 Community Movement Builders reported $990,702 in revenue and $948,429 in expenses. ³⁷ In 2021, Community Movement Builders reported $1,370,872 in revenue and $402,478 in expenses. ³⁸

Donations

Donors to Community Movement Builders include the Arch Community Fund, United Way of Greater Atlanta, Moore Impact, the Women Donors Network, the Peace Development Fund, Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative, Heising-Simons Foundation, and Omidyar Network. ³⁹ CMB acts as a nonprofit fiscal sponsor to Earth Seed, an environmental education farm rooted in African traditions. ⁴⁰

Leadership

Kamau Karl Franklin is founder and executive director of Community Movement Builders. Franklin is a former co-chair of the National Conference of Black Lawyers and former member of the New York executive committee of the radical-left National Lawyers Guild. ⁴¹

Franklin was the first legal program director of New York City Police Watch, southern regional director of American Friends Service Committee, civic engagement director of the Mississippi NAACP, and racial justice fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights concentrating on federal class action litigation against the New York Police Department for racial profiling. ⁴²

In 2016, Franklin was the director at ATL for ALL, a left-leaning organization to increase political participation and advocate for left-of-center policies such as opposing charter schools. ⁴³

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31. Nelson, Steven, Olivia Land, Alyssa Guzman, Larry Celona. “Thousands of Pro-Palestinian Marchers Descend Upon WH Chanting ‘Allahu Akbar,’ ‘F—k Joe Biden’ As They Demand Ceasefire.” New York Post. November 4, 2023. Accessed March 25, 2024. https://nypost.com/2023/11/04/news/pro-palestinian-marchers-flood-dc-say-racist-state-israel-does-not-have-the-right-to-exist-long-live-the-intifada/.
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