The woman who organized a group to support protesters in Portland, Oregon, has stepped down after divisions among the Wall of Mom group surfaced along racial lines.
Bev Barnum, who is white and founded the group on social media in mid-July, has been replaced by black activists and the name of the group has been changed to Moms United for Black Lives Matter.
Antoinette Rootsdawtah, an activist who lives in California, is heading up the group, according to Oregon Live, the website associated with the Oregonian newspaper. Demetria Hester, a black activist who lives in Oregon, will also have a leadership role in the reorganized group, and Uganda Richardson and Alexandra Loves are also named in the Oregon Live report.
“Portland Wall of Moms, a group formed in recent weeks and quickly recognized as a staple of nightly downtown protests, was accused publicly Wednesday of ‘anti-Blackness’ by leaders of an existing, Black-led community group,” Oregon Live reported.
Last month, the Wall of Moms gained national attention after they positioned themselves between police and protesters. Barnum said she was surprised at the reaction to the moms clad in yellow T-shirts.
“I‘ll admit two and a half weeks ago I was a novice, and I was making mistakes grappling with the speed that it was growing,” Barnum said in an Oregon Live post. “I’d have to say the attention that Wall of Moms was getting, nationally, contributed to local conflicts with a small group of people in Portland.”
But just weeks after it began, Wall of Moms was history. Oregon Live reported:
On July 24, Wall of Moms announced on Instagram that white Wall of Moms leaders rescinded their positions after talks with Don’t Shoot Portland and executive director Teressa Raiford. At that time, Raiford, Hester and Danialle James assumed leadership alongside Barnum. The statement said that decision was made because members felt it was problematic that so many of the group’s leaders were white.
And another alliance between the Wall of Moms and Don’t Shoot Portland, led by black activist Teressa Raiford, also fell apart after the two groups joined forces to oppose federal officers deployed to control violent riots that have taken place nightly in Portland for months.
Wall of Moms and Don’t Shoot Portland filed a joint lawsuit against the U.S Department of Homeland Security, claiming federal officers violated free speech, used excessive force, overstepped their authority, and acted under the command of someone, Acting CEO and Commissioner Mark Morgan, who hasn’t been formally confirmed in his role.
But only five days after filing the lawsuit a conflict over the legal status of Wall of Moms erupted.
“Barnum explained that she filed for nonprofit status because the group was receiving donations and she wanted to make sure no one worried about where the money was going,” Oregon Live reported. “She said there were also fraudulent Facebook pages soliciting donations.”
“These people were not associated with WoM, but we had no legal standing to recover the money being collected, so we could use it to support the protesters,” Barnum said in a statement emailed to the Oregonian. “This is when we began discussing with our accountants and attorneys about filing as a non-profit.”
Oregon Live included in its report Barnum’s full statement on her short-lived movement, which said, in part, “I’d like to be very clear, I did say we would protect all protesters, but it was not my intention to distract from Black Lives Matter. I personally believe BLM is the most important movement of our age, and I believe in the Champagne analogy given by Alicia Garza. I don’t believe all lives matter until black lives matter equally. I wish every success to Don’t Shoot Portland, Snack Bloc and everyone trying to make the dream of BLM reality.”
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