This violence is so pervasive. We see it in our schools, where we have more security guards now than teachers. We see it in California where more prisons are being built than colleges. It goes on and on. We see it in a trillion-dollar war budget, politics becoming an extension of war rather than vice versa. This violence is like a fog. It covers everything.

The issue should not be, we're going to tax you more to give you the services you want. The issue is, this is the wealthiest country in the world, and we're going to use that wealth to service human needs and not to service a military industrial corporate surveillance state.

Neoliberal ideology is enormously powerful.

Young people now reside in a world in which there are few public spheres or social spaces autonomous from the reach of the market, warfare state, debtfare, and sprawling tentacles of what is ominously called the Department of Homeland Security.

Certainly I think the state is more than willing to not only attempt to change the consciousness of people, but to employ violence in ways that make people quite fearful.

As young people make diverse claims on the promise of a radical democracy, articulating what a fair and just world might be, they are increasingly met with forms of physical, ideological and structural violence.

The promises of higher education and previously enviable credentials have turned into the swindle of fulfillment.