6/8/20 Matt Agorist on Black Lives Matter and the Police Brutality Protests

Scott Horton
All right, y’all welcome it’s Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I’ve recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow.

Matt Agorist
Good, man, thank you for having me on. And I’m glad we finally got to meet up. I know we’ve been trying to do this for a couple of days now.

Scott Horton
Yeah, I’m, I’m way behind on my cops and murders and protests and riots and soldiers interviews here. I’ve been waiting for you. Now I got so, so much is going on. I wanted to start with this article that you wrote for the freethought project that I poached and ran at the libertarian Institute as well about the 400 other people who were already killed by the cops in America this year, before they ever got around to murdering George Floyd. And what this really means for the American people and say, particularly for people who actually don’t live that experience at all and might not even believe the number could be that high.

Matt Agorist
Yeah, I mean, that’s, I wrote that pert that that Piece not to take away from the tragedy that was George Floyd’s death. But to just you know, just just capitalize on that moment. There were people who were paying attention to police brutality. And just to show them the actual scope of what we’re dealing with here. You know, these people they they’re protesting the death of George Floyd out there right now, but they’re also protesting the the hundreds of deaths that already took place this year at the hands of Americans. Peace Officers,

Scott Horton
do you have like a good ballpark estimate of what percentage of those are really unarmed and unwarranted versus people who hate you draw down on a cop? You? You know, that’s what happens. Coming?

Matt Agorist
Yeah. I mean, well, one of the cases that I cited in that actual article was Michael Ramos, who was killed by Austin police on video. Yeah. He had a someone made a report of an armed guy in a parking lot somewhere and when the Austin police pulled up they saw Michael Ramos there whether or not he was their guy. remains unclear as he could because he was not armed. However, within just a couple of minutes of arriving on the scene, he was dead. And this guy got out of his car, raised his hands in the air, showed the cops that he had nothing in his waistband by lifting up his shirt and was telling him he was not harmed. And this is all on video. And he was it was asking them what what, why they want him to why they’re there. What are they doing to him? And as their as he’s asking them these questions, some crazed cop in the background on loads and dumps a beanbag round into him. And it uh, it freaked him out. He I guess he thought he was being shot and killed. And so he jumped in his car and tried to drive away and that’s when they actually unloaded on him with ar 15 and did kill him. And you know, this, that’s like one of so many other deaths that take place in this country on a regular basis. That you know that we highlighted a few of them that were all unarmed and in this article, and then that’s what we’re dealing with, you know, Michael Ramos had never been accused of a crime, you know, he may have fit the description of some, some guy that someone called in about our 911 call, but he, he didn’t do anything and he hadn’t you know, he wasn’t suspected of any other crime other than fitting the description of a guy that may have may or may not have committed a crime. Yeah. And, yeah, that’s why people are angry. That’s why, you know, it’s on fire right now.

Scott Horton
Yeah, you know, as far as the calling 911 it’s almost like everybody knows that the wars are corrupt and the military industrial complex as even like Eisenhower said, and we always lose and create more terrorists and it’s still just great to join the army though. And that’s exactly what you should do son right. It right as soon as you get out of high school, and all of this because it’s almost you know, because joining is almost it’s a different reality. It’s a it’s a separate argument has no bearing on the actual reality of our foreign policy or any of these things. It’s just an entirely separate issue. It seems like the same way with 911. Where if people have an a kind of idea in their head from 30 years ago when they were a little kid or something about, if you call 911, that’s when the hero comes to rescue you or something like that, that no matter how many times they hear that somebody called 911, and some innocent person got killed by these guys acting essentially as armed rabid dogs. It doesn’t matter, they still have this conception in their head that well, what you do is you call 911. And that’s when the hero comes and saves you and they just can’t seem to adjust to the reality that for whatever series of reasons, American police are the most destructive force in society. They’re not superheroes here to protect you. They are here to spread violence to take every opportunity. They can. to escalate and make matters worse for their own fun. You see it over and over and over again. In this case, as you said, it seems like the the rookie in the back, you know, accidentally fired maybe at this guy and set off the whole thing. But then he’s just driving away and the other cop shoots him with an AR. Well, what’s the excuse for that? That’s entirely illegal. So even if, you know, some kind of as Donald Trump would say, even if she had choked with that first beanbag round, the other cop fires. No one says Hold your fire. This is just how they are and yet the lady who call 911 on the guy, you can guarantee that she won. That’s not my fault. It’s your fault. Whatever she’s proud call 911 people three times since then, you know, and Americans will hear people hear that story. And then they’ll still call 911 on each other all day long. Sucks

Matt Agorist
It’s true man and this I shouldn’t

Scott Horton
format in the phrase of a question doesn’t that suck?

Matt Agorist
Yeah, of course it does. We have the you know, we have the snitch society and then it was brought to a heightened peak of our state whenever this COVID-19 locked down and stuff ensued and people were snitching on their neighbors for for coughing in their own backyards you know this this is some This is like unprecedent at times we’re living in with with things going on like that you know and i i was gonna add before we started talking about the the snitches is that the same department that killed Michael Ramos is has been all over the art blotter you know, in the last couple of weeks for how they’ve been treating the protesters. And, you know, a 15 year old boy who was sitting on a hillside watching the protesters was shot right above his eye. He’s in ICU right now because of some crazed cop on some rage just decided that he was going to put a rubber band In this dude’s forehead,

Scott Horton
and it was just a pot shot. I mean, people can see that footage where the kids just standing there on this hillside separate from everyone doing nothing.

Matt Agorist
Right? And then there was another college kid, like a star student in political science who was attending like the University of Texas, I believe. And he was there peaceful protests hadn’t done any he hadn’t committed any crime, someone nearby him or something is what the police claim through a water bottle of cops. So they unloaded rubber bullets in that direction. And they shot the wrong guy in the head, and then immediately knocked him out. He’s still currently in ICU. But what’s worse about his case is that there four or five people, like pick them up, but to try to get them out of harm’s way. I mean, this is like a war zone do these people are carrying which is all caught on video. It’s all in the freethought project that they can go see. They’re carrying this guy like, you know, he’s he’s injured in a war zone. And as they’re carrying him, the dude even had a red cross on the back man. Like he was like, part of the you know, he’s a medic, and he was clearly You know, that he clearly had on the markings the show, please don’t shoot it these people you know. And cops opened fire on these people carrying a person that an innocent person that they had just shot, trying to get them to safety and they opened fire on them and shot several of the people that were carrying them,

Scott Horton
you know? In fact, I didn’t even read a thing that said that the cops had said Bring him here. We’ll get him medical attention. Exactly.

Matt Agorist
Yeah, they did and they got brought to the department they opened fire. Oh,

Scott Horton
yeah. Just sick. Yeah, that’s my hometown the APD who have a reputation around here as being less worse.

Matt Agorist
If you believe I have a I have a very good friend who was a who’s on the APD actually and I’m not gonna say his name but he’s uh, he’s he’s we did a story one time and I on him and not on him but on the APD and we had to research their their test scores and he was the highest scoring one like a by magnitudes of you know, Five like where everybody else is getting C’s on their competence exams and everything he he’s number one by a large margin where he’s doubling their their scores. Yeah,

Scott Horton
you know, I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll mention again, my worst friend who is kind of a bad person, but I like him. I’ve known him for a long, long time. We’re cab drivers together years ago, he went and joined up the sheriff’s department, which has the Travis County Sheriff’s have a reputation as being a little bit less worse even than the APD, who were said to be less worse than say, the Williamson County Sheriff’s. But anyway, they make you work at the jail for the first year before you get out there. And he didn’t last through that. He just couldn’t stand it. And he quit and went back to you know, driving a cat for a living, I guess.

Matt Agorist
Oh, wow.

Scott Horton
Because of just how criminal it was.

Matt Agorist
Yeah,

Scott Horton
and this is a guy who, you know, he’s a right winger enough that he’s like, maybe not totally ideological about it, but at least he’s extremely well educated in the history of George Washington and James Madison in the Bill of Rights and the whole theory that in America that people are born free and allow the government to exist to protect their rights and all of that. And here these people to him, they’re merely suspects. They’re in the county lockup, they haven’t, you know, actually been convicted of anything. His job is protecting their rights. He may be an sob, and he may not like or respect them at all. But hey, the job is what the job is, as if that wasn’t the job. The job was persecuting them and treating them all absolutely as terribly as possible for no reason all the time. And in just the very worst way, and he just couldn’t stand it and had to leave. Because the worst guy I know was like, these cops are such scum. I just can’t be around people like this.

Matt Agorist
That’s telling, right.

Scott Horton
Yeah. And I’m talking smack. I love this guy. He’s an old friend of mine, but still, he’s, he’s a bad person. You know? So listen now, so George Floyd, he touched it off and you know what people are on mandatory you mentioned the lockdown there. People are on mandatory fired from work all across the country 10s of millions of people. And then you have something like this to set off the spark. The long hot summer begins now with the killing of George Floyd here. So in fact, go ahead and and talk a little bit about that. I mean, I’m sure there are people who are not on Twitter who haven’t seen the video, they heard that some guy got killed. But can you talk a little bit about what happened to this guy? And then let’s talk about the brush fire that got touched off by the thing here.

Matt Agorist
Yeah, for sure, man. So George Boyd was Yes, he had a like a really weak criminal past and another state and but you know, not in Minneapolis. And he was accused of trying to pass off a $20 bill that was counterfeit. Now George Floyd worked in a nightclub. And I know from experience that when I used to bartend we would get counterfeit bills all the time passed off because it’s you know, it’s dark. there and that’s like a place where a lot of people go. So he might not even have known that he had a counterfeit bill, you know, because he might have just gotten tipped out that night or whatever, and then just went to go spend it and when they ran the ink on it, they saw that it was counterfeit or whatever. And then

Scott Horton
and that’s assuming that that’s right right now. Yeah, I mean, they’ve changed the currency so often that who knows they might have just been like, what the hell is this? Like who who even knows that he actually passed a counterfeit bill much less deliberately, you know,

Matt Agorist
right. He’s not he’s not around to tell us that but I mean to show that even if he was accused of it, he never ran and he was waiting outside the store for police who showed up you know, and he was taken in without incident the he got out of his car he was put in handcuffs he was put down on the on the side of the road. He sat down there he never fought the officers nothing nothing. He never fought anybody. And this was all seen on the surveillance camera not just the ones that the the viral video that you know, that was taken by the woman who filmed the cops actually kill him but the initial is an taken into custody was completely peacefully never resisted or anything. And then they, they for some reason they didn’t put them in the cruiser right by where they originally arrested them. They walked them across the street to where their their Chavez cruiser was. And you can see on the surveillance camera that first like either trips and goes to the ground, or they throw them down, and that’s when the other two cops held him down and dare dare show man put his knee on his neck for the next eight minutes until he died. And in the end, that’s that was just one of the most grueling videos to watch it. This guy begged for his life, you know, for the last few minutes and if you had all the apologists, you know, if you could say I can’t breathe and you can breathe, which time again, we’ve proven that so many people have been killed by the police. Their last words were I can’t breathe and they in fact, could not breathe And

Scott Horton
that seriously, you know, note for any cops listening to this, that when the person you’re strangling says, Mommy, they’re dying. They’re dying. That’s why they say that.

Matt Agorist
Right? Yeah. Actually Floyd called out for his mom while he was, you know, being killed, and it come to find out his mom is, uh, had died several years ago. And so it was like, you know, like, he knew he was dying. And it was, yeah, I mean, it just, it’s heart wrenching to know that that, you know, that was what he was doing as his last breaths were being taken from them. And there’s several videos of Floyd to about like, he was pretty active in trying to be like a, like a good person and mentor people. He’s, he had some Facebook videos where he got on there and urged the young kids not to be violent against each other and, you know, just be good jobs and do good in your community. I mean, this guy was a he was a good guy. Yeah. made some mistakes earlier in his life. But he was, you know, he was just a good guy. And he tried to mentor his community and let people know, you know that. It’s up to them to create a better world. And now he’s pushing up daisies.

Scott Horton
Yeah. So this thing went viral. And the protests started and now, I mean, it pretty much goes without saying when you have a protest movement, this big about police abuse, especially against poor black people in their ghettos across the country, that there’s going to be riots and collateral damage, but how would you kind of, like proportionally How would you measure the size of the protest movement versus the size of the rioting and and stealing I mean, there have been some killings and stuff it’s pretty serious. The same time we’re talking about every major city in America has been holding protests and there have not been riots and all of them

Matt Agorist
just this morning. We are We put a story out someone sent send send us in a video of Minneapolis cops in like a caravan of their their SUVs and they’re driving by completely peaceful protesters who are on the side of the road holding up signs. And they’re spraying them with pepper spray, like big clouds of pepper spray that shootout like 20 feet, they’re spraying all these people who are just peacefully protesting. That’s the type of stuff that you know that’s the stuff that makes that causes riots, right. They’re you they’re trying it’s like they’re actually trying to provoke these people into violence and the people are resisting now that don’t get me wrong like there’s a lot of bad actors also like you said, you know that there’s there’s been people killed. There’s some bad actors that couldn’t care less about the death of George Floyd who are exploiting these these organic protests to loot and get that they want and you know, or just do whatever they like maybe takeover rival neighborhood gangs or something like that. And so they’re they’re using these as cover to do that. They’re to do their dirty work. But that doesn’t that should never take away from the actual from the peaceful protests that are happening all across the country. And it’s also important to point out that that most of the we’ve reported on a lot of instances in which the cops weren’t confrontational, and no rioting happened in a lot of these other instances in which you see tear gas being fired at protesters and protesters returning like thrown back at cops and throwing bottles and stuff at the cops it’s it’s not because these protests turned violent and then the the tear gas had to be deployed. It’s because these these cops are enforcing ridiculously early curfews, like at 4pm in the afternoon in Los Angeles. And so when that people don’t want to disperse when they want to keep practicing their constitutional right to, you know, voice, their concern about police brutality, that they don’t disperse at 4pm like within this unlawful order that are being given that the police then open fire on with tear gas and rubber bullets, so they’re not even violent. They’re peacefully protesting exercising their constitutional right and the cops are opening fire into your guests with them to to get them to disperse because they’re violating some ridiculously unconstitutional curfew.

Scott Horton
Yeah, so things are Institute where I witness wrote that about Philadelphia where they’re just having a big protest. And then here come the cops on horseback charging into the crowd and causing a big ride and then the reaction from there and then now they have their excuse to roll in with the rest of their force. And of course, you know, in fact, there’s another article we ran by Bradley Thomas, where he had a quote from the cop talking essentially, you know, it’s a paraphrase about, well, of course, we would rather attack the protesters all day and let the riders go because the riders are in looters are dangerous. So we don’t want to put our cops in danger. So we’re going to go ahead, let the looters burn down whatever they want, steal whatever they want, and we’re going to focus on hurting these people who are out there. testing with their signs about police abuse instead because they’re just the lower hanging fruit and we’re a bunch of cowards

Matt Agorist
telling right Yeah, kind of sounds like the reason they pursue the drug war instead of actually go after actual criminals like murderers and rapists. Yeah.

Scott Horton
And even then on the drug war they focus on pot dealers instead of cocaine dealers and heroin dealers because the pot colors are easier to fight yeah

Matt Agorist
exactly because they they’re just chill people who want to have and sell a plant they’re willing customers Exactly.

Scott Horton
Yeah, so yeah, here they are, you know burning down city blocks and hear the cops admit that like Well, what do you want me to do? Put my officers lives in danger to arrest people who are burning down our city? Of course not. That would be reckless.

Matt Agorist
You know, right. Instead we’ll open fire on a peaceful crowd rubber bullets and tear gas grenades and, and maybe kill some of them in the process. Yeah,

Scott Horton
and of course all the artists involved Especially arson fires that night is the number one best public relations for police that you could ever invent. You know, for everybody who’s not in on the riot, that’s scary looking. And so it’s good for the cops to go ahead and let things like that spin out of control. So that just like in V for Vendetta, the rest of the city can remember why they need us, you know, because of it, actually, because of the disruptions that they cause.

Matt Agorist
It’s actually having the opposite effect that Minneapolis though, you know, that you had, on Sunday, they had nine of the 12 city council members hold a rally, I guess in the park and they they all came out and said that they’re now working on plans to disband the entire Minneapolis police force and replace it with something completely different community oriented, which could be awesome. And it also it also could, you know, it’s almost like the government is never actually gets rid of anything bad and places it replaces it with anything good. So, yeah, I’m kind of skeptical of that. But I do like the talk of removing a police force. That’s always awesome, you know? And yeah.

Scott Horton
It does raise a lot of questions, right? I mean, I guess first of all, if they might abolish this police department and then just Institute an entirely new different one right in its place. Or they could say, well, we’re just going to leave it all up to the county sheriff’s department, which is going to turn around and hire all these same cops back again, probably. Right, or, and, you know, I can see definitely, I mean, presuming you really have these social justice leftist seize control of the city government in this fashion, and they’re really determined to send a social worker instead of a cop as much as they possibly can. I mean, that could be great, right? Somebody’s having a heroin overdose. The cops don’t get called for that. You know, EMTs come out. Maybe some, you know, here’s a flyer for an addiction program. But, you know, something like that that could be, I gotta say here I was kind of picking around the edges saying, Let’s get rid of qualified immunity and these kinds of things. But if they want to talk about, you know, essentially ending policing, ending the enforcement of all kinds of laws, I think they could go really far with that. Except, you know, of course, there’s still the question of violent felonies, that people need to be protected from one way or the other. And what’s their plan for that? And I don’t know if you saw this, Matt, I just our allies, the leftists on this issue. on CNN are one of these I saw a clip somebody sent me a clip where they’re interviewing one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter group in Minneapolis and saying Okay, so when you abolish the police or might’ve even been one of the Councilwoman, I’m not sure when you do abolish the police. Okay, so Then what happens if someone tries to break in my house in the middle of the night? Who do I call? Then? You know, and it was actually like an honest question, not like trying to just already have the answer built in, you know what I mean? It was like an honest question. Well, so so what’s gonna be the alternative for that? And the answer was, that question comes from a place of privilege. And you have, you have no right to think that you should have a security force to help keep you safe in your home at night. You know, how dare you white lady TV reporter, you know, rich capitalist person or whatever. So, yeah, they’re not gonna get very far with that kind of thing. Because ultimately, these questions aren’t decided by the City Council of Minneapolis. They’re decided by the state legislature of Minnesota, and they’re not gonna completely turn, you know, security over to the sociology department at the local college or whatever seems to be going on.

Matt Agorist
No, no, not at all. And that could go I mean like, like you said that you gave a good example of what could happen if they you know, if someone has a heroin overdose and they send some kind of counselor over there maybe get them into some kind of rehab programs that lock him in a cage but it could also It could also go in like an extremely a terrible place with you know, we’ve seen some of these social justice movements that are based completely in reactionary and emotional thinking that have no logic or reason behind them and are in our entirely dangerous and anti freedom at all levels. And that would be pretty scary to see. Someone like that with a badge and a gun. You know, like, I saw a tweet on a Yeah, shoot over the weekend. It was hilarious. I don’t remember word for word, but it stated but without the police who’s going to protect you from plastic straws, you know, and that’s the it completely called out like the whole these. So many of the leftist people calling for the abolishing the Police which I happen to agree with, but they also want you know, they also use the police to implement all these crazy these permitting things and these uh, and plastic straw laws and and just you know arbitrary anti freedom type all those fees and

Scott Horton
all those taxes all those fines I know can you imagine what what would happen to every leftist program in America without the cops they’re

Matt Agorist
going to be able to pull off your entire mandatory way of thinking and they don’t do this don’t realize that you know but which is but that’s the discussion that I’m trying to push out yeah

Scott Horton
No, no what I kind of wish the you know the guy with the straw tweet would be quiet and go ahead and just let them abolish some police departments while we’re at it right now and let them figure out that now they don’t have the force to implement the rest of their stupid crap later. You know?

Matt Agorist
Yeah, he also said who would take the guns to say who would take the guns and the plastic straws? If you abolish the police. It’s funny.

Scott Horton
I saw right winger tweeting that, you know, this is all Obama’s plot to disarm the police and the citizens to so that then only the government will have guns

Matt Agorist
with the police or the government.

Scott Horton
Yeah, yeah. Anyway. right wingers on Twitter, man, they don’t think things through much better than Black Lives Matter times most of the time. And speaking of which, I mean, and this is such a huge point that you wrote about that. I honestly, I’m a bit surprised. You know, I always complain, the Black Lives Matter is kind of missing the point. I mean, it really should be accountability for killer cops. That is the bottom line. And isn’t that what’s important. We’re going to abolish racial prejudice as the long way around to abolishing police brutality. It’s gonna be awesome. While it seems like there are other things that could be done sooner, you know, but you know, they do talk about accountability from time to time anyway that like, yes, this would be big progress. But they do not pick up on what you call the elephant in the room here, the most obvious leading cause of police abuse of all people and probably especially black people in society, and that is the war on drugs. So tell us about that great article that you wrote. And then also, I’m curious of why you think that is? Because it seems like yeah, you gotta have a war on drugs. What do you think is the number one excuse for all of these intrusions and on all levels to you know,

Matt Agorist
right. I, I actually, I wrote that article to do two things to, to call out the people who kept saying all lives matter. All lives matter. I wanted to try to give them a bit of perspective. So they may have some empathy into why people are saying Black Lives Matter. It’s not because they’re saying black lives matter more than white lives or any of that it’s because black people experience completely set separate for some form of justice in the United States. And it’s it’s shown statistically, by in by all the numbers, you know, black people are disproportionately killed more than white people. They’re four times more likely to have police violence escalated against them in the exact same type situations than their white counterpart. It’s the racial disparity is a real thing. It’s measurable. And it shows us that the system is far from equal it does not do allow justice dole out justice equally like it should. And so that’s why there’s Black Lives Matter there. Everybody like the there’s like the the tweet I cited in there from comedian Arthur Jew. He said Do people who change black lives matter to all lives matter run through a cancer fundraiser going? There are other diseases too. Yeah, no, it’s just like that. It’s a it’s trying to take away from why they’re why they’re saying Black Lives Matter. There’s an implicit to at the end of that phrase, Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter, too. But it does suck, though that Oh, that Oh, but our lives are being disproportionately affected by the police state far more than yours. So that’s why we need to draw attention.

Scott Horton
Yes. It is unfortunate though, that they can’t say they couldn’t name the movement. Black Lives Matter too, because then that sounds whiny and weak. Right?

Matt Agorist
Right.

Scott Horton
So they, they had to drop the two and like you say, just leave it implicit. But if people are unwilling to infer it, then they won’t get it. And then they react in the way that you described where they think that the slogan means black people are special, not you, which was never the thing. It was black. People are just as special as you That’s all. But it just it’s kind of a it’s kind of custom made to be misunderstood, unfortunately, you know, really right. And even people who are disingenuous it gives them a great out, you know? Right,

Matt Agorist
right. And it’s it’s easy to be admitted, easily dismissed by those who don’t even want to content you know to have this conversation. Oh, you said black lives matter that you’re irrelevant to me now you know that’s racist or it but it’s just it’s really isn’t but so that was the first part I wanted to do in that article. The second part I wanted to do was the point I wanted to make was that black lives matter they they want to talk solutions and like their main solution to their pointing right or pointing to right now is to defund the police, which is a really good solution. It’s it’s one aspect to a multifaceted problem that we have, but that that’s a long way down the road. Like you said, you know, the Minneapolis police department they’re trying to do that right now. And that’s gonna all go through the state and it’s not gonna it’s not gonna look like what they think it’s going to look like. It could arguably make things a lot worse if you you know, if you go through this half cocked and don’t actually have a plan to do this, and it doesn’t appear that they do. But one thing that the Black Lives Matter group could do right now, which would which would end 80% of police interactions that turned violent is to advocate for the end of the drug war right now, if the drug war was ended today, people the cops wouldn’t be shaking down kids on the street if they smell weed, they wouldn’t be pulling people over suspected him of carrying a plant in their car. They wouldn’t be stopping and frisking people thinking that they you know that they might get to fish for some other crime about that they may have some kind of contraband in their pocket. That’s what all these police interactions are about are the like the majority of them anyway are for cops fishing for for substances deemed illegal by the state. We’re talking you know, 70% of cars. Don’t quote me on that. But it’s pretty close to there. I’m not I don’t have these numbers in front of me. But I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s roughly 70% of the people in, in, in the prison population right now are for are in there because of drugs. You know, and this is in this what you when you arrest somebody for drugs and put them in prison for a substance that they chose to ingest or sell to willing customers that’s deemed illegal by the state, then that puts a permanent record on their on our permanent scar on their record. So they they become unemployable, then they have to go back to crime just to make a living when they get out of jail. And then they learn about all this other bad thing, all these other bad things while they’re in jail, and it leads to recidivism, which is when it’s the likeliness, that you’re going to return back into the system after you’ve already been marked into it. So if you’re disproportionately targeting black communities, which we know that the law the US justice system does do, you’re actually guaranteeing future crime from the from that community Because we see that the the effects of recidivism that guarantees that people wind up back into the system so it’s it’s a, it’s feeding the drug the drug war is feeding the prison industrial complex. With black bodies, they’re keeping them the prisons full at 99% capacity. And they’re, they’re doing so because they’re enforcing prohibition. And we obviously you know, your your listeners gonna know that prohibition never works. It never removes the demand for a product that just pushes that demand into the black market creates crime, and it and it creates violence for the from the criminals trying to maintain their monopolies on the supply lines. And so that’s another talking point of the right is, well, they’re all saw all the Black Lives Matter people are silent on, you know, all the black people killing black people because 98% of the black people killed are killed by black people, but they completely ignore the fact that that’s not mutually exclusive and that the reason that they’re killing black people is because they’re participating in an illegal drug trade. That’s kept illegal by the government that creates this crime and, and makes black people kill black people because they’re they’re at war with each other. There’s rival gangs there’s criminal gangs that protect the supply lines and territories and all these towns and like Chicago and they’re they’re literally at war with one another because the government has made a substance illegal and created an entire market that drives criminal behavior and violence.

Scott Horton
They also ignore the black people complain about it all the time. You know, it’s not like they’re silent about that. Of course they talk about that, you know,

Matt Agorist
yeah. So that’s it

Scott Horton
now so what do you think is what do you think is the reason for the reluctance behind the Black Lives Matter types to get behind ending the war on drugs? It’s such a simple argument, you know,

Matt Agorist
it really is man. It’s uh, it’s it’s obviously one you can tell I’m passionate about but it’s uh, I have no idea I will be speculation but I mean, it’s almost conspiratorial for them. It’s it’s irresponsible. It does nothing to help their cause. In fact, it does everything to help They’re calls that the fact that they’re not doing this, you know that you have you have other groups like drug war Alliance and leap, you know, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition that have been advocating these solutions for years if they could join forces with Black Lives Matter and push this, this same ending the drug war agenda, this might have been taken care of five years ago.

Scott Horton
And in fact, if Black Lives Matter would invoke conservative type and and libertarian type and ex law enforcement type groups that take these positions as the ultimate proof that they must be right because even these right wingers agree with them about it, then that’s the perfect talking point. You know, hell, William F. Buckley wrote in the national review that we ought to give up the stupid drug war back in like 1988 or something man, you know what public enemy was still new.

Matt Agorist
Ron Paul has been saying it for decades

Scott Horton
Yeah, I mean, of course you have libertarians have said so all along and, and and I’m sure that there are On the left who have who have been doing great work on this all along to I don’t mean to dismiss that, but it seems like and you know, people are afraid to say something that sounds too controversial, like legalized heroin. But what the hell you’re talking about abolishing police departments, you think that’s not shocking to people’s imaginations when they’ve never thought of such a concept before in their lives? Go ahead and explain it. Actually, we’d be better off without them know, really. Same thing with the drug laws. That Yeah, for all the problems that come with the abuse of opiates. Go on. The problems of opiate prohibition are far worse. And especially when as you said, it can not work so you should not try, you know, for all the collateral damage when there’s no possibility of success. That’s sinful, man that’s wrong. And so find a better way. And you know what, this is the thing that bothers me too, is every grown adult in America every single one of us knows this. solution to drug addiction and that is that you have recovered addicts help current addicts recover Simple as that. It has nothing to do with nailing them to the wall or burying them in a cage under the ground somewhere until they start acting right and never works

Matt Agorist
no you can’t you can’t cure addiction with the barrel of a gun and that’s as simple as that. I mean we can it actually has like I pointed out it has the opposite effect. We have the highest rate of drug overdoses in the history of America going on right now and we have the cops have the most resources air quotes to actually go after that is what they consider you know, because if they they’re like we got we need bigger guns we need you know, so you got em rats rolling down the street right now to go kick it to go the level houses that someone suspect of growing weed in and it’s not doing a damn thing to stop demand. It’s making the problem worse you have worse drugs coming back out into the market. Now you have fentanyl which is which is deadly. One of our one of our Writers jack burns that freethought project. His son just recently died two weeks ago from a fentanyl overdose, man. Yeah, and this is all stemmed by the war on drugs. You know, this is these these fentanyl lines are coming. They’re there. This is like some it’s like a bathtub drug. You know, it’s like these people are making some really ridiculously strong and deadly stuff because you can’t just grow heroin in the United States, you know? So all these synthetic things are coming through on all the different black market streams and people have no idea what they’re doing and they can you know, that I’m not saying like, it’s responsible to use heroin on a daily basis or anything like that. But regular heroin is far safer than any kind of fentanyl and fentanyl is a direct reaction to the prohibition of heroin. Yeah, and that’s all it they just keep making these substances illegal and new ones keep coming in. They’re more dangerous and, and it’s a nice dosing

Scott Horton
right like fentanyl is perfectly safe if you take the right amount. It, you know, you go to the doctor, they give you that stuff for certain surgeries or whatever, doesn’t kill you, it only kills you because you don’t know what the percentage is. So you’re used to shooting this much heroin but now you’re shooting this much heroin plus fentanyl and it’s enough to stop your heart or stop your breathing, you know, right, that’s right thing and, and you know what, to just the sheer number 10s of thousands of these deaths goes to show that these are good people dying, you do not have to be some scumbag to be addicted to drugs. It happens though good people, you know that’s and so it was the rest of us should not be writing them off. You know, same with black people. You know what you might not be part of the black minority but they keep telling you very loudly that they live in terror of the SWAT team night raid, believe them, you know, tear about them for a minute. Same thing here you know might not be your cousin that died of fentanyl overdose, but it could have been.

Matt Agorist
That’s a that’s it’s so true man. So like jack burns his son, he was. He was the star like he was the star athlete of his high school. He, I think he had a football scholarship and went to his college and he was still in college when all this happened. And here’s the thing this is this is how the system actually created his fitting on heroin problem. He was, uh, he was on Adderall for ADHD. And Adderall was causing him some kind of heart palpitation disorder. And so he spoke with his doctor, they decided that it would be a good idea for him to get off the Adderall and he could try medical cannabis in place of that, and it took it the state he lives in I’m not gonna give away any of this information I don’t want I don’t want the you know the family to not anyone know me anybody know who it is so, but so the state that they live in you have it takes a while to apply for the medical Cannabis card and this son didn’t carry started doing the start smoking weed before the current medical card was approved. And I think it was like the day before the he got the he got his card that he was caught with like a joint in his in his car. And this they have like these mandatory laws in this state and so he was sentenced to drug court, which is for those who aren’t familiar with drug court, it’s like basically it’s just a scam by the state to make you pay them thousands and thousands of dollars to not go to jail for a drug offense. And you have to go to these meetings at these at the courthouses and they’re full of drug addicts. And at one of these places, that’s where his son met. I guess, a really pretty girl who did heroin and couldn’t resist you know, like the herd like her deserve Her request to do heroin with him and then that’s what got him addicted to heroin and and that’s what eventually led to his untimely death less than a year later. So it’s a pretty crazy man because he was he would have probably never came in contact with anybody that ever did heroin in his life, you know, until he was sentenced to go interact with other people that were that that did harder drugs than he ever did. Yeah.

Scott Horton
Like ISIS being formed at Camp buco. You know, all these guys together. Yeah, no, it’s terrible. It’s completely, you know, if there was just a book about the collateral damage of the drug wars that were all you know, somehow tangential to whatever up the cops were launching at any particular time. You know, be a step to the moon is just unbelievable the amount of suffering that has, you know, taken place Against all kinds of people, but yeah, especially the poorest and racial minorities. And because, you know, of course cops know that they have, you know, legally they have immunity, but politically, they have immunity for taking out, you know, their sport on poor black people. Whereas if they pick on the rich white side of town, it gets shut down before too long, you know, they start taking, you know, rich white kids with promising futures away on cocaine charges. They’re, you know, people with juice are going to push back against that, but they can pick on poor black people all day and get away with it and they know it. So, I’m sure That sure looks a lot, you know, no different than guys weren’t clan hoods to people on the receiving end of it. But I think it’s a lot more about economics, you know, and political economic incentives than it is just outright bigotry. Though obviously it’s all mixed together.

Matt Agorist
Right? Well, I mean, there’s a, there’s a really chilling video of it was some interview with about 12 or 14, NYPD cops, who were all minorities and who all came forward and told, told the world that they were that they targeted minorities as well, because that was the easiest ones. And one of the cops even said that, like it was a black cop talking about how they had to go, they went to the black communities in the in the Latino communities to arrest these people for drugs, because it was easier. And he’s like, if we showed up at, you know, and the white neighborhoods and we try to do that we’d be shut down instantly. So we couldn’t do that we need they said we are the predators, they are the prey. And this is minorities that are targeting minorities, because they know if they target these upper middle class areas with the same bullshit laws, that for victimless crimes, then they then they’d be shut down immediately. Yep, that’s that’s sad state of affairs. I mean, that that is the white privilege, the racial disparity that is the whole system when the system is so racially connected that even minority cops have to prey on minorities and know that they’re doing it because they can’t prey on the rich people. That’s when you know, some some some messed up. Yeah,

Scott Horton
well, I mean, a big part of it is just even the existence of these police unions where Hey, when the crime rate falls, these guys should be getting laid off in droves. But instead the whole thing is just a racket they got to find things to do. You can’t expect them to actually just provide basic security services in response to you know, not you know, legitimate 911 emergencies or what have you and prosecution of felony cases, which probably most people go ahead and agree to without a problem. They get to find all these other things to do all these other laws to enforce and, and all the rest of this stuff and you know, Once you’re in the system, good luck man and probation for five years, you’re going to get revoked and go back and then you’re going to get another five year probation after they let you out and this and that they’re gonna find you, as you talked about, make you go to these classes, how you supposed to keep your job, when you have to take the bus across town to go do another government piss test again, and all of these things, they just completely ruin people’s lives with this stuff. It’s like that movie Brazil or something. We’re just the lowest level bureaucrats. You know, idiocracy level bureaucrats just completely smashing you and destroying your life over Yeah. Roach in your ashtray or whatever gets it started, you know,

Matt Agorist
right. Window Tint or seatbelt violation

Scott Horton
or an outright lie?

Matt Agorist
Yeah, or just yeah, just a bad cop.

Scott Horton
Okay, so, but now, let me ask you a little bit about the whole thing about Donald Trump calling out the military and all of that. I mean, my initial impression with this thing was just I don’t know the exact numbers but I kind of have in my gut an estimation of how much National Guard force the governor Have without any federal help, and it seemed like it’s plenty. And I can’t imagine a situation where you would, you know, really need, you know, US Army to help instill or like maybe if somebody knew St. Louis there’s not like under what circumstances could anyone consider you know actually calling out the military. I wonder if you think that was just a big bluff or what I guess not. You got you got the highest generals and people distancing themselves from it and all this.

Matt Agorist
Yeah, but Donald Trump is crazy, man. I mean, he when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Are you kidding me? You’re threatening to extra to just extra dude judicially murder people for a suspected property theft. And he’s just

Scott Horton
gonna President of the United States.

Matt Agorist
That’s utter insanity. Like I mean, I’d ever really gave us about any of the Russian conspiracy things against Trump or anything like that. But him him tweeting that out last weekend was, I mean, that’s grounds for that’s grounds for impeachment. That’s grounds for putting them in jail right then and there. I mean, he’s, he’s talking about with removing due process and executing Americans in the street for a misdemeanor crime. That is a that’s unprecedented. No president has ever said that before. And it just shows it just shows to the state of affairs in the land of the free that we have right now that we’re dealing with is it’s utter insanity. And we know that he would have invoked the military. I mean, look what he did just to pay for a photo op, you know, and he cleared the protesters in Lafayette Square and then they the press secretary comes on and says no, we’d never use tear gas and we never, but that was bullshit. Where there was all kinds of people on the ground filming at the time when they were peaceful in Lafayette Square when it’s your grass can’t see your gas canisters came flying. And then they were cleared out with rubber bullets. So the President could walk across the street and take a picture holding the Bible. That’s some that’s some. I mean, I hate to do it invoke the Hitler, you know, analogy but that is some Hitler’s that is that is some that’s crazy off the wall just flexing your might for no other reason but because you can and you’re doing so while doing so you’re trampling the rights of people that were peacefully protesting that Exactly,

Scott Horton
yeah. The only difference is he’s so much more of a flake than Hitler. You know. It all just seems so disingenuous. I mean, on the other hand, somebody set fire to that church, man, that’s, you know, this is again, back to the right it’s, you know, it serves discredit to your whole we just want our rights narrative, that when you’re burning down One of the oldest churches in America. And and oh, and the one that all these politicians have gone to, you know, that matters the most to them as symbolic across from the White House 200 year old thing. Yeah, not good. In fact, that might even have been cointelpro stuff right there. That was so bad. You know, I don’t know. Although you can’t sell these leftists short they have plenty of bad ideas.

Matt Agorist
Yeah, yeah. There’s some crazy stuff going on out there, man. I’m glad not anywhere near me.

Scott Horton
But now it was clear, though, right that the riots aren’t gonna last long enough for troops to be called out anywhere. Clearly the Secretary of Defense and the chiefs are going to be telling him No, sir. We’re not putting the arm. We don’t need the army. There’s not a single neighborhood in this country where things are so out of control that the National Guard can’t handle it. Sorry. I mean, we just there’s no need to do it. So and then that’s played out. Right. I guess there’s still some very low level writing in some places, but mostly it’s all given way to peaceful protest. Now correct.

Matt Agorist
Yeah Yeah, that’s what seems to be going on seems to the mass violence is not mass violence, but the the destruction is looking like it’s taken an optimistic turn for the better for sure.

Scott Horton
But I mean, I’ve seen some of these huge marches. I think one was in Philadelphia and San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge and some of these things. It’s really something else. And again, everybody’s got nothing to do. Show up to these effects. It’s the only thing they’re allowed to do socially with each other. Right? Otherwise I get a ticket. Or worse get slammed on the curb, you know?

Matt Agorist
Yeah.

Scott Horton
Okay. What are you doing stand in their talk, and you better either protest or set something on fire or I’m taking you to jail.

Matt Agorist
Oh, man, that’s sad, but true,

Scott Horton
man. All right. Well, listen. I meant what I said at the beginning of this thing that I think the freethought project is so important and You ruined my day every day with this thing, man, the afternoon email. I hope everyone will Subscribe to it. As I wrote in my last article for anti war calm and a look. Check out the world from somebody else’s point of view. Here people getting their heads smashed, oftentimes all the way open by the cops every single day in this country and it’s almost unbelievable at set, that it’s still true. And that’s the freethoughtproject.com Thank you again very much, Matt.

Matt Agorist
Thank you Scott means a lot brother.