The story gets a whole lot more interesting if the student is Muslim, and he was tased for simply refusing to stand up (while brown). In America, even being an asshole isn't sufficient justification for the authorities to use violence against you. At least it wasn't until just lately. This incident isn't just about a student at UCLA, it's about what's happened to our country over the past six years and what it means, anymore, to be American.
I'm going to be writing a much longer piece about this later. In the meantime, if you haven't watched the video of this student being tased last night in the UCLA library, someone recorded it on their cell phone (amazingly enough), you need to watch this. It's about 5 minutes long, and you should watch the entire thing. It's horrific, and needs to be seen, and shared. You can share this video with others by emailing them this Web address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyvrqcxNIFs
