[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=buovLQ9qyWQ#!]

Can you imagine what the individual cop must feel as he follows orders first, to confront, then to attack, then to back away? How his adrenals, activated, urge him to not just beat them but kill them, anything to get them to stop, STOP! And how his mind, when backing off, feels furious at the “defeat,” even “humiliated.” And yet these kids are this cop’s kid brothers or sisters, cousins, playmates, sons and daughters. He meets them on the street when not in uniform and the connection is there. One of them opens the door for the other, or smiles, picks up something the other inadvertently dropped and hands it back to him . . . two humans, two hearts, beating as one, a living continuum.

What kind of deadening internal divisions within him would allow such brutal behavior against young people who raise their arms only to ward off blows, not to strike.

Can you imagine what the individual student must feel as he/she stands there, “taking it,” while over and over again, cops thrust thick hard batons into his or her chest and face. And all the while the students, moving and standing as one, are yelling, screaming, outraged, and awed. That it has come to this in America.

That it has come to this in America, the home of the brave, land of the free.

Well, these students are certainly brave, and in their willingness to stand up for all of us as we move forward into an unknown and untrammeled future, utterly and finally free.