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For those of you not yet convinced of the power of YouTube, watch this.

And then, when you are done, explain to me why it is that there aren't riots today on the UCLA campus.

I've long defended this generation of college kids' relative political apathy by suggesting that what separates them from their colleagues in the late 1960s is the lack of a military draft. But if the student community at UCLA doesn't shut their campus down over this, I'm going to have to seriously rethink my claim.

The editorial by UCLA's Free Press is an embarrassment to their name. And this op-ed by David Lazar in the same paper is unconscionable.

"He was asking for it," says Lazar. He was, at the very least, partly to blame. Lazar claims that, issues of police brutality and excessive force aside (and here I thought that was the only issue. Siily me!), the student was showing a "blatant disregard" for both university rules and police authority. This section is particularly rich:

We now know, in hindsight, that Tabatabainejad was not dangerous, but he might have acted in such a way to make the police worried about potential danger. People should take this into account before jumping to conclusions.

Sure, he wasn't a danger, but he might have been, and shouldn't that be enough justification to allow police to engage in this sort of behavior? What kind of a society are we if we don't allow police to use excessive force when they may at some point in the future face some sort of indeterminate threat? What kind of society are we if we don't allow the use of force before all the facts are in? Before we know for sure who really is and is not a threat?

Oh, wait....

What the hell is wrong with this country? The kid was "misusing" a library computer. He didn't have his student ID. That's it. He wasn't a threat to anyone, least of all to the police. Even after the police arrived, the only "threat" he posed was to their authority. He refused to leave on their terms, so they tazed him repeatedly.

Watch it for yourself. Don't look away. Watch this all the way until the end:

I honestly don't know what is worse: that this happened, that the kids watching it stood by and did nothing more than film it, or that today, judging by the university newspaper, students are more upset about the proposed management of two national nuclear labs than they are about this incident.

This doesn't need a coordinated campaign. It doesn't need an official organization or leader. It can start with one person and spread. Sit down in the library, or the administration building, or in a classroom building. Sit down and refuse to leave until the issue is addressed. Don't wait for others to lead. Do it yourself, and do it now.

For god's sake people, the rights we have weren't handed down from heaven. They were won with sacrifice and pain, with hard work and suffering, often against what seemed like insurmountable odds. We have the rights we have only because others fought and died for them. Honor that. Respect that. Don't simply sit by and wait for someone else to do something. For god's sake don't just sit by and take for granted the life of privilege you've been given. Nothing is guaranteed. Everything is contingent on what we do in this life, right here and right now. Am I the only one who sees this?

But this happened on Tuesday. And so far, nothing... Just a meaningless editorial from a divided staff of a paper that likes to think of itself as "free."

UPDATE: Wonderful. We now have a second example in under a week, this time courtesy of the Houston Police. The subject of the brutality here was a group of peaceful protesters, and the weapon used was horses, but the result was the same. Take a look.