‘First’ BLM Activist Elected to Mayor’s Office, Citizens Furious

Who would have thought that an activist with an organization famous for grifting off of the largesse of donors would get elected to mayoral office and start allegedly grifting with his city’s finances?

Meet Khalid Kamau, mayor of South Fulton, Georgia. He’s also known as “Mayor Kobi” for reasons inexplicable by God or man. According to the New York Post, he brags about being the “first” Black Lives Matter-associated mayor in the country.

Surprise of surprises, he’s accused of a bevy of unauthorized charges on a city credit card totaling over $26,000.

“With a population that is 92 percent African-American, South Fulton, Georgia is now the blackest big city in America,” his page on the city website said. “[K]halid is a mission to make America’s Blackest City Black.  On Purpose — which means a city that is not just unapologetic about its demographics, but moving on purpose to be a laboratory for economic, housing and restorative justice policies aimed at improving the lives of African Americans.”

Instead, it appears that Kamau might be about “restorative justice” to himself.

According to a report this week from WSB-TV, South Fulton residents are now questioning the mayor’s use of funds, including a 20-day trip to Ghana that he put on Instagram. (Whoops.)

“Bank records from a city-issued credit card show nearly $26,000 spent between October and December on unauthorized travel, food and other expenses,” the station reported, noting that its reporters “went through documents and discovered multiple plane tickets totaling more than $5,000, including an Air Kenya flight worth more than $1,500.”

“There’s also a purchase for a $1,300 drone. According to documents, the mayor also made multiple purchases from Amazon, with one purchase totaling more than $1,800.”

Residents, naturally, are furious.

“I wanted to find out if taxpayers paid for this trip,” resident Reshard Snellings said.

One of the station’s reporters asked South Fulton Councilwoman Helen Z. Willis whether the city had any business in Ghana or anywhere in Africa. “Not to my knowledge, that isn’t even a priority,” she said.

“We need more economic development here and we don’t need to go to Africa in order for the city to have a multi-business deal,” she said, adding that the council was investigating.

Speaking to WAGA-TV, Willis added that it was “a pretty large amount of unauthorized charges.”

She wasn’t the only one on the council questioning the charges, either. Councilwoman Linda Pritchett said she’d talked to “Mayor Kobi” privately and thought he needed to come out and make things public: “I would like to see the mayor have the opportunity to address the issue transparently,” she said.

Councilman Jaceey Sebastian, the mayor pro tempore, said “[t]here are some things that I see in the public that need some explanation.”

The card cannot be used for personal expenses, although there’s no policy on the usage of it for international travel. There were also 112 receipts which weren’t justified within 72 hours of purchase, as city policy requires.

What the city did in response to the revelations was to vote to suspend international travel for somewhere between 30 and 45 days while they review their policies. That’s it, for now. Keep charging that plastic, “Mayor Kobi.”

You might not be surprised to know that when asked to justify the purchases, he refused requests to respond.

But why should we be surprised in the first place? If somebody is bragging about being the first BLM activist to be elected to mayoral office, they’re basically touting themselves as a member of an unaccountable organization that helps itself to heaps of corporate money and spends it unaccountable ways.

You may have heard Patrisse Cullors’ name in the news again, as the Black Lives Matter co-founder and self-described “trained Marxist” allegedly lost two of her three Los Angeles-area mansions in the Southern California wildfires. Of course, this brings up the reason why Cullors had three mansions in L.A. in the first place. (Spoiler alert: You probably know the answer.)

The difference between Cullors and “Mayor Kobi,” it looks like, is that the latter simply failed to think big. Why go for $26,000 when you can have a few mansions instead? That’s what inquiring minds should be asking. As for the residents of South Fulton, one does feel bad for them, but what did they think they were getting? Another spoiler alert: There’s no right answer aside from “grifter.”

Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.