Monica Cannon-Grant is the founder of the non-profit Violence in Boston, a campaign organizer for Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, District Attorney Rachael Rollins, and Senatorial candidate Joe Kennedy, and is arguably the face of the black lives matter movement in Boston. She’s been legitimized in the media, having written several op-eds for the Boston Globe, and has taken part in interviews on several stations including public television WGBH. She’s organized several large protests in Boston with crowds over 50,000 in size, including a 2017 anti-free speech rally, and numerous BLM protests in Boston since the killing of George Floyd.

Congresswoman Pressley is facing a challenge in November from Republican Rayla Campbell, a black mother of three from Randoph. Cannon-Grant responded by posting a viciously racist 30 minute video on Facebook, which she has since removed.
— TurtleBoy Daily News, 7/17/20

Sit back. You can see why….

Meanwhile, the damage has been done.

A Black Republican who’s challenging U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley says she’s fled her Randolph home in fear for her life after a Boston activist’s video went viral questioning the woman’s Blackness and making crude references to her sex with her white husband.

“This is racism to the ultimate level. … Racism is racism no matter where it comes from,” Rayla Campbell, the Randolph Republican, told the Herald on Tuesday. “I was horrified and absolutely terrified. I had to uproot my family and just stay elsewhere.”

In a Friday video widely disseminated by the blog Turtleboy over the weekend, Roxbury community activist Monica Cannon-Grant repeatedly called Campbell a “heifer” and made frequent crude references to Campbell’s white husband. Rollins has quickly distanced herself from the video, telling the Herald and Campbell herself that the attacks on Campbell’s family life are deeply inappropriate.
— Boston Herald, 7/21/20

As usual, the distancing from the words only come after they were made public.

As Turtle Boy also meticulously documented, Cannon-Grant has received monetary and community support from a who’s-who of Boston’s political, media, social, and business elite including Senator Elizabeth Warren, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, Altman Vilandrie & Company, The Network/La Red, Alpert Cohen Charitable Fund, Marsh & McLennan Companies, Shell Oil Company Foundation, Boston Circus Guild, Strand Therapeutics Inc., Trillium Asset Management LLC, Lyft, Fidelity Investments, and more.

But perhaps the most suspicious thing she’s done to date happened last year after a shooting took place at the Warren Garden housing projects where she lives with her husband and 6 kids.

Although the shooting had absolutely nothing to do with her, Monica made it sound to her followers that she was targeted, and thus needed to move because she was unsafe living there. Two separate fundraisers raised close to $10,000 for her moving expenses and hotel rooms where she would stay until they could find a place to live.

Knowing liberals as we do, they probably won’t throw this Boston racist opportunist under the bus, in fact they’ll find a way to support her and succumb to the woke.

Bostonians of the Year are selected by the editors of the Globe Magazine. Send comments to magazine@globe.com

They know what they’ll be called if they don’t.

UPDATE

A federal grand jury has indicted Monica Cannon-Grant, a high-profile local activist in Boston’s racial justice movement, and her husband on allegations they defrauded donors of the nonprofit they founded, Violence In Boston; committed unemployment fraud; and lied to a mortgage lender, prosecutors announced Tuesday.

Cannon-Grant, 41, and Clark Grant, 38, were charged in an 18-count indictment alleging the couple spent financial donations to the nonprofit on themselves, using the cash to pay for hotel reservations, gas, restaurant meals, food deliveries, nail salon services, and personal travel, while concealing their transactions from bookkeepers, directors, and financial auditors.

The two also received roughly $100,000 in unemployment benefits they were not entitled to, officials allege.

Both were charged with two counts of wire fraud conspiracy, one count of conspiracy, 13 counts of wire fraud, and one count of making false statements to a mortgage lending business, according to Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins’s office.
— Boston.com, 3/15/22

The indictment alleges the couple used the funds to pay for personal expenses including, hotels, car rentals, auto repairs, restaurant meals, nail salons and personal travel, prosecutors said.

Cannon-Grant also allegedly paid herself $2,700-a-week and treated herself to a $450,000 five-bed house in Taunton, Massachusetts, last year. She is accused of using much of the $1 million raised by her nonprofit Violence in Boston for good causes. Her salary jumped from $25,000 in 2020 to $170,000 in 2021.
— Daily Mail, 3/15/22

The arrogant almost always go too far.

FYI — Bob was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts

UPDATE

Monica Cannon-Grant, the founder of the nonprofit Violence in Boston, plans to plead guilty to federal charges of defrauding people who donated to her organization. In a one-page document filed in federal court in Boston on Friday, Canon-Grant requested a change of plea hearing.

Cannon-Grant faces a 27-count indictment on charges including wire fraud, mail fraud, making false statements, and filing false tax returns, among other offenses.
— Fox 25, Boston, 9/12/25

Justice may be slow but it does eventually catch up.

UPDATE

“Bostonian of the Year” ordered to pay back $224K she stole from her own nonprofit
Monica Cannon-Grant was ordered Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley to forfeit every dollar she made from her crimes — from diverting donations from her own nonprofit, collecting fraudulent pandemic unemployment benefits, and pocketing rental assistance she wasn’t entitled to.

The forfeiture amount includes roughly $181,000 in diverted donations from Violence in Boston Inc., the nonprofit she founded, more than $33,000 in fraudulent pandemic unemployment benefits, and about $12,600 in rental assistance benefits, according to a copy of the court order. That’s on top of the $106,000 in restitution Kelley already ordered at Cannon-Grant’s sentencing in January, when the judge gave her four years of probation, six months of home detention, and 100 hours of community service — no prison time, despite prosecutors requesting 18 months behind bars.
— Mass Daily News, 3/23/26

Screaming racism won’t work this time.

During Donald Trump’s first term, Democrats were in vocal and legislative opposition but they weren’t hurting financially either. Their personal portfolios have benefited like those of millions of Americans. But after the 2018 midterms, a political fissure erupted within the Democrat Party; a fissure that was unprecedented and probably horrifying to blindsided leadership.

It was called gross insubordination by punk ass freshmen.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi implored her majority, after days of high-profile public infighting, to focus on common goals — including defeating President Donald Trump — and to silence the sniping that threatens their fragile hold on power. The lengthy closed-door session underscored the broader divisions between her centrist and liberal members — and between Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with her “squad” of star-power freshmen — that are testing party unity and reshaping Democrats ahead of the 2020 election.

“We’re a family and we have our moments,” Pelosi told colleagues. “You got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it. But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just OK.”
— Associated Press, 7/10/19

Incoming freshmen were traditionally given closet-size rooms on the top floor of the Cannon House Office Building, furthest away from the elevator and closest to the stairs. They may receive insignificant committee assignments, if at all. Their first term was one of learning the ropes, and above all else, respecting the established hierarchy. The 2018 Democrat freshmen class, led by AOC, blew that up.

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York suggested that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been “singling out” freshman congresswomen of color — the latest charge in a growing rift between the leader of the party in the chamber and the high-profile progressive freshman.

“When these comments first started, I kind of thought that she was keeping the progressive flank at more of an arm’s distance in order to protect more moderate members, which I understood,” Ocasio-Cortez told The Washington Post in an interview published Wednesday. “But the persistent singling out … it got to a point where it was just outright disrespectful … the explicit singling out of newly elected women of color,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
— CNN, 7/11/19

Democrats like to accuse others, rightly or wrongly, of racism. They, especially a Democrat speaker, don’t like it when they’re accused by petulant “women of color” freshmen. You know Pelosi was privately fuming….

According to the media, there was a reconciliation.

Really?

At that time, the Trump economy was rolling along like a freight train. If you go by James Carville’s “It’s the economy, stupid”, higher ups within the DNC were probably ready to throw in the 2020 towel. But there was another problem: AOC and the Squad had the attention of millions, they were driving a socialist agenda that was way too radical for a party that always tried to appear level-headed and “moderate”. The Squad’s followers were rabid and out of the control of Pelosi and other senior party members.

Could the total upheaval of norms we’re seeing today be a plot to assure Democrats lose ugly in 2020?

After every presidential election, there is that customary public postmortem.

Speaker Pelosi will not accept any blame for a Trump landslide victory. She will not pile on the Democratic National Committee or any party PAC. Democrat Capitol Hill leadership will not assume responsibility for an electoral beat down. Despite any political loss, Pelosi and her party leadership will personally weather any storm so burning down the house will not put them on the street.

However, Democrats might blame a 2020 presidential and down-ballot shellacking on the disastrous messaging from irrational freshmen and call for a more reasoned and traditional agenda for the Democrat Party. Translation: they’ll summarily set the insubordinate children up to be primaried and hopefully banished in 2022.

Seriously, even the staunchest of Democrats weren’t for a job-killing Green New Deal, let alone the violence and destruction associated with #BlackLivesMatter and a George Floyd crisis not wasted. Most Democrat voters aren’t for dismantling police forces around the country. Liberal CEOs, professionals, academics, entertainment celebrities, and other big money donors nationwide are being bit by the millennials’ #CancelCulture and you know whose private phone numbers they have on speed dial.

Maybe the party is giving their socialist know-it-all loudmouths the rope to hang themselves.

And given the media allegiance to the Democrat Party, all these polls implying President Trump being behind by double digits is not a fluke. The Democrat base is being set up for a face plant into the concrete. Look who they’re presenting to their base as the party presidential nominee. A possibly senile old man who really has nothing to lose when it comes to a political career, unlike those whose names are being bandied about. Why do you think it’s taking so long for Joe Biden’s campaign to find a running mate? Who’s going to want that on a resume once the long knives of finger-pointing begins the morning after a Trump landslide?

A mass defection to Donald Trump combined with a depressed party turnout mean Democrats could find themselves in the minority again. Do you really think Nancy Pelosi will accept blame when having to give up the gavel while positioning herself to be Minority Leader? Do you think any of the senior members will decide embracing and publicly justifying socialism, CHOP zones, vandalism and/or removal of monuments, and “mostly peaceful” protests in the streets will be the template for 2022 success?

Do you think they’ll allow themselves to be forced to kneel again… ever?

Washington, D.C. should be renamed to what it’s always been known for: Washington CYA. Specifically, that’s how Democrats become old Democrats.

There will be a concerted effort, should the Election 2020 Democrat ass-whuppin’ be felt from Capitol Hill down through every state legislature, to have a message publicly sent that things will go back to the ways they’ve always been done. Democrats will again want to appear moderate and they’ll promise to go back to their safer default where they can “pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”.

The media will be directed to turn on The Squad. Their arrogance will be highlighted and replayed in slow motion. Apologies won’t be issued, making matters worse. The inside-the-Beltway establishment will assert their rightful authority, showing no desire to spare the rod. Like the old days, these children will be spanked in the street for all to see.

UPDATE

Not only has the Democrat Party put all their eggs in a basket carried by a man with clear cognitive issues, but now with a woman who was so popular with the base that she was the first to drop out during their presidential primary season.

Who does that?

Again, the question should be why….

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) told a San Fernando Valley fundraiser audience that the Council on American–Islamic Relations was founded because Muslims were given increased scrutiny after the 9/11 attacks because…

“they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”

Not that the September 11 terror attacks forever changed the way Americans live within our own borders.

Five months later to the day, during the 9/11 Memorial and Museum Ceremony in New York City, Representative Omar’s comments were addressed by a private citizen.

Wearing a shirt with the Muslim Minnesota congresswoman’s infamous words emblazoned on it, Nicholas Haros Jr. paused from reading the names of the dead at the televised Ground Zero service to lambaste Omar.
— New York Post, 9/11/19

You probably won’t see this clip on any of the major news outlets because the New York Times clarified who was really responsible.

“Airplanes took aim”, possibly with “some people” who “did something”.

Glad we finally got that cleared up.

Not sure who originally said that but it accurately illustrates the enabled egos of four freshmen Congress “women of color” who were elected to a legislative body and decided they were suddenly qualified to run the place. They believe their social media lemmings support their personal agendas and any opposition is to be met with the very bully tactics they claim is being imposed on them.

Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) accused Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) of playing the race card after the freshman lawmaker complained that Speaker Nancy Pelosi had again singled out young, progressive lawmakers of color for strong public criticism.

Saying he was personally offended at the suggestion, the long-tenured member of the Congressional Black Caucus said Thursday that Ocasio-Cortez and three fellow progressive freshmen women who call themselves “the Squad” were lashing out because “they didn’t get their way” as the tensions between the old guard of Democratic leadership and the young, assertive lawmakers with outsized social network presences exploded into public view.

As Clay—who has been targeted for a primary challenge by Justice Democrats, the group that propelled Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign—went off on the group, his colleagues rallied to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s defense. But for Democrats like Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Ocasio-Cortez’s comments resonated. “I don’t think the speaker is used to having a group of members who has bigger Twitter followings than her,” she told Politico.
— Daily Beast, 7/12/19

So, the chickens came home to roost within the party that consistently exploits the race/gender card, a senior black congressman is being targeted by narcissistic rookie Democrats, and now they needed a way of diverting attention away from the accusations of internal racism (seeing how socialists traditionally never had much use for black people and that appears how things are shaking out now).

Modern racial justice movements like Black Lives Matter are embracing the historically false assumption that socialism is anti-racist.

There is, in other words, a growing assumption among racial justice advocates that more socialism would result in less racism and, even, that socialism is, in itself, anti-racist. There is, in fact, no such necessary connection between socialism and anti-racism, as a closer look at early socialist writings amply shows.
— Foundation for Economic Education, 11/14/17

Do a quick search and aside from fellow “Squad” members, how many pics of them do you see of them with “people of color”? You won’t see many (outside of the necessary 2018 campaign stumping).

Never letting a good crisis go to waste, President Trump poured fuel on the Democrat’s internal fire.

Of course, the president’s quote would fall into the bias-by-omission column and the selective “why don’t they go back” phrase was complemented with a uniform message for his supporters.

Trump Is a Racist. If You Still Support Him, So Are You.

Progressive women almost always tout their brains and strength, that is until (like most liberals) their ideas are challenged. Then they either refuse to debate their ideas or make themselves the victim. Having a social media megaphone makes the latter a direction that requires the least amount of gray matter.

With the benefit of a friendly, liberal media that very seldom factchecks Democrats, Omar, Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib knew they could say anything they wanted about President Trump and be unchallenged for accuracy.

But again, this was not a genuine attack on the president based on anything he put out on social media but yet another Democrat bait-and-switch; this time to deflect from their targeted, internal racial division. These four loose cannons (led by @AOC whose Justice Democrats) are targeting current officeholders who aren’t enthusiastically onboard with HER agenda, and when black Democrats are targeted from within and fingers can’t be pointed at evil Republicans, there is an optics problem.

So it’s time to do what Democrats do best: create a problem and then demand a Republican assume the responsibility and fix it while they sanctimoniously criticize the suggested solutions. For those who whine about having too much work, calling someone a racist is much easier.

At the whitest of annual progressive gatherings, Netroots Nation 2019, we got the latest from one of the Democrat freshmen big mouths who’re now targeting those within her own party who won’t do what SHE wants, when SHE wants it.

I don’t want to bring a chair to an old table. This is the time to shake the table. This is the time to redefine that table. Because if you’re going to come to this table, all of you who have aspirations of running for office. If you’re not prepared to come to that table and represent that voice, don’t come, because we don’t need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice. We don’t need black faces that don’t want to be a black voice. We don’t need Muslims that don’t want to be a Muslim voice. We don’t need queers that don’t want to be a queer voice. If you’re worried about being marginalized and stereotyped, please don’t even show up because we need you to represent that voice.
— Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA)

Yeah, because just wanting be an American voice is such a waste.

And exactly who are these “we”?

“The Squad” believes they alone are now setting the rules and anyone not willing to play by those rules will be targeted for political elimination. They have no problem publicly saying what would be called racist/xenophobic/homophobic if anyone else said what Pressley said, and it’s being noticed.

These humility-challenged, self-appointed women of color (two of whom could play the white female card if convenient) are again playing the victim and taking great offense at a series of Tweets by the president.

So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!
— President Donald Trump, 7/14/19

While the Democrat media has predictably run mostly with the “why don’t they go back” headline, President Trump does make some good points as many have asked those fleeing their #shithole countries why they aren’t staying home and organizing to make their homelands a better place. We wouldn’t want to have the United States become a nation of cowards, right?

These “Squad” women have shown the worst in those who believe they are not just elected representatives, but mini rulers. But they also exhibit immature weakness when defaulting to being a victim after they spit on someone bigger and have to start dodging punches.

In politics, alliances have to be made; even unholy ones. If you wish to go it alone, fine but a martyr is only as good as the amount of people who appreciate the personal sacrifice. We’ll soon see if the artificial social media numbers of “friends” and “followers” will actually translate to votes in 2020 for “The Squad” because their actually support may be tenuous at best, they know it, and that’s why they’re lashing out at everyone around them.