Exposing Black Lives Matter | Ami on the Loose

I'm Ami Horowitz and Black Lives Matter was formed in order to protest a claim of an epidemic of shootings of unarmed black people by the police. It was framed as giving voice to black people across the country. I want to find out what the organization truly stands for. Black Lives Matter evolved to become the largest single movement in the history of the United States. Its popularity soared after the shooting of Michael Brown, who assaulted and robbed a minority store owner and was subsequently shot by a white police officer. The claim was made that his hands were up, leading to the Hands Up, Don't Shoot crusade and the ensuing sacking of the town of Ferguson. But black eyewitnesses, black grand jury members, and Barack Obama's Department of Justice destroyed the false narrative of Hands Up, Don't Shoot. In fact, it found the opposite. Michael Brown attacked Officer Darren Wilson and attempted to take his weapon. Yet this durable lie continues to exist. Black Lives Matter used this incident to catapult the organization into the national dialogue. While most of those marching in Black Lives Matter protests were not involved in the rioting across the country, there were very few among the hundreds of protesters that I spoke to that wouldn't in some way justify the riots on the basis of perceived institutional racism or actual historical wrongs. For this video, I spoke with people in the Black Lives Matter leadership and hundreds of BLM supporters across the country to get a sense of their values and thoughts on the direction of our nation. In order to clarify this intense and important debate, I met with Malina Abdullah, a national leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, the founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, and she was among the original group of organizers that formed the organization. We sat down with her in Los Angeles in order to get insight into the heart of the BLM movement and to get a sense of what the organization truly stands for. What is your role in kind of the national dialogue of Black Lives Matter or within the national movement of Black Lives Matter? Well, Los Angeles is the first chapter of Black Lives Matter. So from the beginning, Black Lives Matter, Los Angeles has played a really central role. And I've always been involved in dialogues across chapters throughout the network and also across the movement for Black lives and have been part of kind of the national and global development and work of Black Lives Matter from the very beginning. After the killing of George Floyd, the nation was convulsed with upheaval and rioting began across the country. During these riots, dozens of people were killed or injured, thousands of businesses and properties were looted and torched, many of them minority owned. The total losses for these businesses is estimated to be up to $5 billion, with the majority of these businesses not insured for this type of loss. The devastation of these mostly minority neighborhoods will be felt for years. Melina explained the role of BLM in these riots. So our Freedom Rides, the work that we've been doing, it's really important that we go to Louisville. It's really important that we go to Minneapolis, right? It's really important that in 2014, we went to Ferguson or that we went to New York. And so it's important to understand that, yeah, there's these spaces and moments of mass uprising, and that's what Freedom Rides do. Also, we do them as groups. So, you know, it's a great way to really deeply get to know and understand the people that we're organizing with, all of whom are doing this work because we believe it to be our sacred duty. Abdullah's views were echoed everywhere I went. We just got to get rid of the whole s*** startup. Burn the whole s*** down. If there is no change, there might be a lot more destroying until there is. Riots of voice to the unheard. But I think some destruction and looting kind of sends a message to people, and breaking their s*** is justified. So when we take it back or we burn it down, yeah, we're getting back what's ours. You want to give it up? Okay, you ain't having it no more. This country was built on violence, and when people had enough of the violence that y'all have against us and we give it back to y'all, y'all want to be mad. Do we need violence as a tool? Yes. You got to have violence. There's four levels of protest. Looting and rioting is part of being protesting. So, yes, I do agree that it needs to be there. While filming the riots in Minneapolis, one of the protesters attacked an older gentleman who was defending his home with rocks and a stick. Cory Brooks is a longtime pastor focused on turning kids around who were former hardcore gangbangers in the heavily dangerous South Side of Chicago, an area hit hard by BLM riots. We spoke about his views on Black Lives Matter on O Block, less than 100 feet from his church, and called the most dangerous block in America. How have those riots affected your community? Well, when people say that they're proud about the rioting and the looting that has gone on, it amazes me because that lets me know that these are individuals who don't understand the impact that it has on people who live in these communities. It amazes me that someone would even have the capacity to even think that those riots and the looting has helped our community. It is obvious when we're already dealing with economic issues, we're already dealing with not having enough jobs in our community, not having enough economic base. The last thing we need are for companies to pull out, for stores to close, for people to not have the resources because of rioting and looting. That's something that we never, ever need to happen again in our community. The same Black people that you're saying you want to help are the same stores that you're rioting and looting. And so when people say, well, we don't own any of the stores, that's not true. There are mom and pop stores all around the south side of Chicago who have experienced the looting and experienced the rioting, and they're not coming back. They're not going to open again because they've been devastated by people rushing in, looting, taking their things, and now they have nothing. The unemployment soars. It goes up. That does not help us. That does not help our cause. That does not help us to transform our communities. It does not help us to rebuild what we're trying to do as a community to reestablish families, to reestablish an economic base. It only deteriorates it and destroys it even more. In the wake of these events, a major debate ensued. On one side, those that saw the rage as a reason for more policing and those who came to the exact opposite conclusion and wanted the police to be defunded. The answer to this vital debate disproportionately affects minority communities because much of crime in America takes place in these neighborhoods. Nearly all of the BLM leadership have publicly called to not only defund the police, but rather abolish them. We are going to abolish police. Policing evolves from chattel slavery. So wouldn't it be ridiculous to say let's reform a vestige of chattel slavery? We do have to be prepared to completely dismantle the system of public safety. One of the things that I think about when I hear people say, you know, they want to defund the police or abolish the police, I think about this neighborhood. I think about the work that we're committed to doing. And I think about how idiotic those type of statements are for people who live here. The impact that it would have on the increase of violence, the increase of crime, the chaos that it would bring. We're already dealing with difficult times and difficult days in our neighborhood. And the last thing we need is for the police to be defunded. Not to have everything they need, the resources to bring about a peaceful neighborhood. The last thing we need to do is abolish the police in our neighborhood because we cannot have the anarchy and the chaos that would go on with police not being present. It would be devastating. The 2020 BLM riots led to the injury of a thousand law enforcement officers and over a dozen police officers were shot. On July 7th, 2016, after months of anti-police rhetoric, a BLM activist shot and killed five Dallas police officers. The sentiment of killing police officers could be seen advocated at every BLM riot and even most of the protests that I went to. No, I think we should kill them bitches. But you know, hey, you come for me, I'm coming for you. Point blank. I asked Abdullah about her views on the targeting and killing of police officers. Can't talk about that. Yeah. If according to the BLM leadership, law enforcement needs to be abolished or possibly killed, it does beg a larger question about our laws and legal infrastructure. The criminal system of injustice, right? That it is police and it's also prosecutors and it's also jails and it's also prisons and it's also probation. It's all of those things that are part of a larger criminal system of injustice. Yeah, it's a racist system. It's an oppressive system. Yes, all of the systems. When we talk about institutional and systemic racism, I can't think of an example of a system that is clean. Jayden Grayson was the Seattle organizer of CHOP, one of the largest BLM protests in the country. At the criminal justice system, the courts, all of that need to be taken away? Absolutely. Without question. Should we abolish the prison system? Yes, we should get rid of it as we know it today. Get rid of it. Yes. Black Lives Matter is not only committed to destroying our judicial infrastructure, they also want to destroy our economic infrastructure. Black Lives Matter's founders and most of their leadership are Marxist or direct opponents of any free market system. We are trained Marxists. We are super versed on sort of ideological theories. Black Lives Matter, as an organization, are wholly committed to destroying the economic engine of the United States, an engine that has created the environment for black median household income to outstrip white median household income growth since 1992. And is capitalism destroying our country? Yeah, absolutely. Capitalism, which is based on, you know, this drive for profit in the unpaid labor of the worker, right, super exploits black people and creates systems to kind of shore it up. The free market seems to be a racist economic model. Is that fair to say? Yeah, that's good. Yeah, that was very succinct. But there's at least one sector of capitalism where we could all agree that black men can earn and thrive. Well, when we talk about economic systems and sports is one area, you know, I think that we're talking about, we should be talking about, you know, what it means to be an owner and what it means to be a worker generally. And that would include sports. Even if you're making $40 million a year. There's a book called, what is it? $40 Million Slaves. The only part of capitalism that BLM does, in fact, love is guilt capitalism. The American dream. It wasn't made for everybody. It forgot about one very important detail. Black America. That's where corporations and individuals donate massive amounts of money to the organization, even though Black Lives Matter demonizes them and exists to put them out of business. According to The Economist, between May 2020 and December 2020, donations to Black Lives Matter related causes netted over $10 billion. A significant portion of that money is unaccounted for, and no one in the mainstream media is asking where that money went. I reached out to over a dozen corporations who have donated to Black Lives Matter, and not a single one would make someone available for us to speak to. While it has become clear that much of the money that has been raised has not gone to black people, it brings up an interesting question. Whether Black Lives Matter is devoted to all black lives or only the ones that fit into their narrative. Do you think black lives in the south side of Chicago matter to BLM? Absolutely not. I mean, if, if, if, listen, if black lives really matter to BLM, then why are you not here when six month old children get shot? When a three month old, when a three year old girl gets shot? When a 12 year old gets shot in the head? And all of this violence is all around us. If they really matter, where are you? Why don't you show up? Why don't you give us a hand in helping us to transform our community? It's amazing to me that organizations can say they're for black lives, but when black lives are being eradicated and taken and stolen, there's no sight of them. And so as a person who lives in the community, and as a person who works very hard to make sure that lives matter to everyone, and to make sure that people live peaceably amongst one another, it's an injury and an insult for them to never be here. While people living on the south side of Chicago don't seem to matter to BLM, there is a group of people who seem to matter very much to the organization. And it is deeply disturbing. Much of the Black Lives Matter leadership has taken on a distinct anti-semitic flavor, including being outspoken supporters of the openly and unapologetically anti-semitic Lewis Farrakhan and Patrice Cullors, one of the founders of BLM, called for the destruction of the only Jewish state in existence. If we don't step up boldly and courageously to end the imperialist project that's called Israel, we're doomed. Most disturbing was what happened on May 30, 2020, when a Black Lives Matter Los Angeles protest became a riot in the heavily Jewish Fairfax district. In what is a widely underreported event, they destroyed or defaced Jewish businesses, Jewish schools, and every synagogue in the neighborhood. Believe it or not, Abdullah, one of the national leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement, was actually holding back even more disturbing views. There was a lot I would have liked to talk about, but we're in a lot of, we're dealing with a lot of safety issues right now. So I have to be really, really careful. I probably would have been a little bit more. Ultimately, it comes down to the way the leadership and the hardcore supporters of Black Lives Matter view America in general. If anybody's a thief, it's America. America has to come if they don't stop right now. Do you think it's time to end the American experiment? Yes. Yeah, it is time to end it.