Confronting the intolerable should be challenging and upsetting. Who could read the testimonies of Primo Levi and not feel intellectually and emotionally exhausted? Or Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, not to mention those of Malcolm X? It is the conditions that produce violence that should upset us ethically and prompt us to act responsibly, rather than to capitulate to a privatized emotional response that substitutes a therapeutic language for a political and worldly one.

What must be addressed in the most immediate sense is the threat that the emerging police state in the United States poses not to just the young protesters occupying a number of American cities, but also the threat it poses to democracy itself. This threat is being exacerbated as a result of the merging of a war-like mentality and neoliberal mode of discipline and education in which it becomes difficult to reclaim the language of obligation, social responsibility and civic engagement.

The domestic war against "terrorists" [code for young protesters] provides new opportunities for major defense contractors and corporations who are becoming more a part of our domestic lives.

We need to educate students to be critical agents, to learn how to take risks, engage in thoughtful dialogue, and taking on the crucial issue what it means to be socially responsible.

At the same time, you see in those studies, you see the emergence of various movements among black youth that are really challenging the ideology of neoliberalism since the 1980s.

Under the interlocking regimes of neoliberal power, violence appears so arbitrary and thoughtless that it lacks the need for any justification, let alone claims to justice and accountability. It is truly as limitless as it appears banal.

Collective freedom is one devoid of material bondage and one that supports the institutions necessary for democracy.