“Accountability Shouldn’t Be an Annual Event”: Don Matthews on “Happy F— the Cops Day”

We The People News sat down with editor and songwriter Don Matthews for a recorded interview about his new single “Happy F— the Cops Day,” released under his Bad Actors Music label together with its “Blue Wall Remix” and “Double Remix (Blue Wall Collapse).”

Asked what inspired the song, Matthews said it “wasn’t born out of some random desire to shock people” but out of “years of frustration, personal experience, watching what happens when government power goes unchecked” — years he has spent documenting encounters with police, prosecutors, and judges, including his own arrests, prosecutions, and court battles.

On the title: “I expect some people to interpret it that way,” Matthews said of criticism that the song expresses hatred toward police. “There’s an enormous difference between condemning an institution’s misconduct and advocating violence against the people who work inside that institution. The song doesn’t advocate harming anybody. It condemns corruption, dishonesty, retaliation, unlawful arrest, excessive force, and the protection of officers who engage in wrongdoing.”

“The Constitution doesn’t require me to express my disagreement politely,” he said, “and it certainly doesn’t require the American people to celebrate authority simply because that authority wears a uniform.”

The song designates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as “Happy F— the Cops Day.” Why three days? “Because accountability shouldn’t be an annual event,” Matthews said. “We’ve designated days for almost everything in this country. But when it comes to confronting government misconduct, the public is too often expected to forget about it the moment the headlines disappear.”

“You can’t demand transparency on Monday and turn a blind eye on Tuesday,” he continued. “The Constitution doesn’t take days off. Neither should accountability.”

A Marine veteran, Matthews tied the message to his service: he knows what an oath means and what it means to be entrusted with authority — and it is precisely why government misconduct bothers him so deeply. An officer’s oath, he said, is not to a department or to “some imaginary blue brotherhood. It’s to the Constitution.”

The full recorded interview was conducted by WTPN’s lead anchor desk. This article quotes the recorded transcript.