“In Los Angeles.” So, I moved to Los Angeles last week and I am happy to return to Polimedia.

I spent my weekend furnishing the small studio with items from IKEA.

The hardest part was not building the pieces (very easy), it was lugging the boxes up four flights of stairs in a building without a functioning elevator. Thankfully, my friend Kyle was in town and helped me carry things.

It is mostly done. I just need to get some shelving and a comfy chair to sit on and I will have a cute, livable space. The best thing about it is that I did not have to break the bank.

An Occupy Wall Street protestor is grabbed by police as he tries to escape a scuffle in Zuccotti Park, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011, in New York. Two days after the encampment that sparked the global Occupy movement was cleared by authorities, demonstrators marched through the financial district and promised mass gatherings in other cities. (John Minchillo/AP Photo)

On Nov. 17, protesters of the global “Occupy” movement marked the two-month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street protests with marches, rallies, and various mass actions. They were protesting many things: corporate greed and its influence in our political discourse, a two-tiered justice system that favors the very rich and the very powerful, the massive bank bailouts funded by hard-working Americans, and the burdensome debt and chronic joblessness afflicting many Americans – the so-called “99 percent.” Yet in cities all across the United States, these expressions of the very American right to free speech and peaceful assembly were greeted with violence at the hands of local governments.

When one reads or watches news reports about these protests, one might think that these protests regularly devolve into a violent free-for-all that justifies or even necessitates the brutal police actions inevitable follow. “Objective” and “neutral” journalists of the corporate media too often describe these confrontations between police and protesters as “clashes,” as if the protesters are the aggressors. In truth, the violence in these so-called “clashes” are initiated by just one side: the police. In the confrontation between unarmed protesters and heavily armed and armored police, it is the police that are the aggressors and the peaceful protesters the victims. There is not an asymmetry in violence, but just violence inflicted by the State and its police.

It is understandable then why politicians and their police would react this way. The movement is a rejection of, and thus threat to, their model of society and governance. It is a dissent against the inherently violent and coercive State.

Consensus, not mandates

Despite the crackdowns, the arrests, the brutality, the Occupy movement has, for the most part, adhered to their oft-stated principle of non-violence. In their rhetoric and actions, the overwhelming majority of the protesters have been peaceful and non-violent. In their general assemblies, occupiers have adopted a decision-making process based on consensus, striving to reach near, if not outright unanimity in their decisions. The movement is leaderless, rejecting representatives to speak on their behalf. The occupiers choosing instead to represent themselves as individuals and choosing to add their many voices in this growing movement. What the occupations lack in hierarchy, they make up for in direct democracy.

Conservatives and libertarians with a desire for limited government will find their perfect government in the occupiers’ system of governance: the General Asssembly. The General Assembly, or the GA, is an open, participatory, and horizontally organized (as opposed to the traditionally vertical, or top-down, form of organization) in which every participating member has an equal voice and opportunity to affect the decision of the group. Participation in the decision-making process and direct actions are encouraged, rather than coerced. The GA is not compulsory and its directives are backed not by laws or the threat of punishment, but by voluntary association and individual action. Problems are identified by consensus and solved by the voluntary actions of its members. The GA and its direct actions are funded by charity and not by taxes, and while some in the movement profess dislike for free market principles, they are already participating in it.

It might be a surprise to the most hardcore and militant Socialists and Communists in the movement that they are participating in a grand libertarian experiment. At its core, the Occupy movement is an experiment in a voluntaryist model of society devoid of state violence and coercion. This is not mere political disobedience, but a dissension from the violent and coercive State. Whether it stays that is another matter entirely.

What have the occupiers wrought? A voluntaryist society, if they can keep it.

This editorial appears in the Nov. 21 issue of the student-run newspaper The Chaparral.

Bernie Quigley, in an op-ed piece for The Hill about the current crop of Republican Party presidential candidates, said this:

Three of the Republican candidates for president, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Jon Huntsman, are of the highest caliber, on a level we have barely seen in the post-war period.

What struck us as odd was not his analysis of these candidates (he is repeating the same tired line that Mitt Romney, Rick Perry are the only serious candidates and poor Obama appointee Jon Huntsman just cannot get any love from the media), but the fact he referred to a “post-war period.”

We really hope he was referring to the period after World War II, because if not, I must ask: what “post-war” period?

This “post-war period” is a disgusting meme that will gain traction after Dec. 31 when the United States will withdraw its combat troops from Iraq (and leave behind thousands of private military thugs to continue the violence there). It must be noted that these departing American troops will not enjoy a “post-war period.” They will be redeployed into new theaters of combat to die in any one of our dozens of senseless wars in Afghanistan, Uganda, or the Philippines.

Not to mention Iraq itself, which will experience years of violence regardless of American presence. The bombings, the checkpoints, the sectarian strife, all of these will continue after “withdrawal.” There will be no “post-war period” for Iraqis.

That the end of the Iraq War will bring about a “post-war period” is a nice fantasy, but it is an outright lie.

This editorial appears in the Oct. 31 issue of the student-run newspaper The Chaparral.

On Sept. 17, a group of protesters gathered in New York City in a protest of corporatism and the failed policies of this government. They called themselves “Occupy Wall Street” and they did occupy. The protests persisted and despite the corporate media blackout, the word of their “occupation” spread. Organizing themselves through social media networks, like Twitter and Facebook, support and the sympathy for the protesters grew. A month later, the protest that became an occupation became a movement that spread throughout the United States.

In more than 1000 cities all across the nation, protests inspired by “Occupy Wall Street” have sprung up. For the most part, the participants of these protests come from a very diverse cross-section of America. This diversity in turn is translated in the multiple “demands” articulated in New York City protesters’ first declaration and gives fuel to their critics’ charge that the protests lack clear objective.

This charge is unfair. In “Occupy Los Angeles” and “Occupy D.C.” in the nation’s capital, conservatives and libertarians freely mingle with socialists and environmentalists. A reporter from the Christian Science Monitor called these protests ”an awesome, harmonic convergence of ultra-left and libertarian right.” While there are multiple demands declared in these protests, the one issue uniting the protesters is the acknowledgement that there is something fundamentally flawed in the current corporatist-controlled, two-party system. So, it is surprising then that the Democratic Party is attempting to co-opt the movement.

In fact, the Democratic Party is seeking to divide the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and turn it into an extension of the Obama 2012 presidential campaign. According to ABC News, “consensus is emerging among Democrats that the ‘Occupy’ movement is worth tapping into, even helping along and joining with in some instances.”

If the Democratic Party succeeds, the “99 percent” will become the 33.7 percent (the percentage of self-identified Democrats according to Rasmussen Reports, Oct. 2, 2011). This could prove devastating for the nascent protest movement and the chance for real social transformation would once again be lost. This is the artificial left-right divide that the corporate media, the Republicans, and the Democrats are trying very, very hard to maintain. After all, the 99 percent are protesting the policies beguay a right-wing president and continued by a left-wing president. We the people in the 99 percent are protesting the status quo, not demanding more of it.

The current status quo the Democratic Party seeks to maintain can be defined by the actions of their figurehead in the past weeks. President Barack Obama in the past few weeks has assassinated an American without due process, created a secret panel that authorizes assassination of Americans, authorized a new crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries in clear conflict of state laws, and news has come out that under his administration that the Department of Homeland Security has created a terrifying “pre-crime” detection program that is currently being tested on American citizens. Let us not forget that in the three years Obama has been in office, he has tripled the use of Predator drones, tripled the American deaths in Afghanistan, and started another war in Libya.

We must remember that Obama, Nancy Pelosi, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, are all part of the 1 percent that are responsible for the failed policies that is crippling this country.

There is a reason why Cantor is rejecting the movement and why Pelosi seems to be supporting it: this ensures that this movement will never become a force to threaten their parties. Their support or rejection of support is an attempt to divide, make no mistake. The maintenance of the current status is their sole purpose and goal.

Defy, resist, dissent! That is all we can do in the face of all of these attempts to co-opt and destroy this movement. Together, we must dissent.

This editorial appears in the Oct. 17 issue of the student-run newspaper The Chaparral.

There was justified anger over the execution of Troy Davis, but why is there none over the White House and the U.S. government’s assassination of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki?

Ivan Eland questioned this double standard, saying that “at least Troy Davis got due process (however flawed), as the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution requires, before being executed. In contrast, there has been no similar outrage that Anwar al-Awlaki, also a U.S. citizen, has been put on a U.S. government assassination list with no due process.” He argues that the Fifth Amendment guarantees that all persons, including non-citizens, cannot be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Eland also pointed that since no war has been declared by Congress, the excuse that in wars governments do not try every enemy soldier should not apply. Eland thinks that it is because the word “terrorist” was applied to al-Awlaki that the outrage do not manifest. Al-Awlaki is accused, but has neither been charged nor convicted of terrorism.

We respectfully disagree with Eland.

The real reason for the lack of outrage is because Barack Obama is the one allowing the illegal assassination to occur. The U.S. government’s extrajudicial executions carried out by their numerous Predator drones do not elicit the same kind of condemnation because Obama is president. In the same way that the ever-expanding wars compelled thousands of people to protest against them under George W. Bush and now only a handful under Obama.

On Sept. 30, the president announced the death of al-Awlaki and one other American citizen. He hailed the execution of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki as a “major blow to Al Qaeda.” There was no due process, no habeas corpus, no trial, no jury of his peers, and no pretense of justice. The Constitution has lost all its meaning when a sitting president can claim a right to assassinate this country’s citizens with no judicial oversight.

The state of Georgia was rightfully condemned by activists and many reasonable people, but nary a peep from these same people against a murderous federal government and the murderer at its helm.

This editorial appears in the Oct. 3 issue of the student-run newspaper The Chaparral.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton talks with Libyan Transitional National Council chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil, center, and Libyan Transitional National Council Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril during a walk to the Elysee Palace in Paris, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2011. (Evan Vucci, Pool/AP Photo)

Last Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Arab countries not to “trade one form of repression for another” and to embrace freedom and reject religious extremism as they cast off the last remnants of dictatorial control from their society.

No offense to the secretary of state and the administration she works for, but if they were really concerned about extremists, they would not be aligning themselves with extremists.

What do we mean by that? We have NATO fighting alongside Islamists in Libya; we are allies with Saudi Arabia, where there is not freedom of religion.

Anyone attempting to convert people in religions other than Islam in Saudi Arabia are given the death penalty.

And let us not forget Bahrain, where a legitimate pro-reform movement is being crushed by that regime with an implicit approval from the United States and its Western allies. That the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet is docked there is worth noting. We do not find this administration’s sudden concern for foreigners’ well-being to be credible in the slightest bit. Under this administration, we have increased drones attacks, upped the number of wars, not to mention all the secret wars in 120 countries.

Religious extremists? We are creating extremists everyday through the daily death and ruin we rain down on these people. And this is what is bizarre and frankly sick about American foreign policy: sectarian violence becomes justification for military intervention and further violence.

This is going to sound harsh: but we are sure that the people of the Middle East, if indeed they were to have any violence, would rather be killed by their own people than American bombs. American intervention will lead to blowback, which leads to further military intervention, which leads to more blowback.

The U.S. wants an Arab Winter, even if their rhetoric says otherwise.

This editorial appeared in the Sept. 19 issue of the student-run newspaper The Chaparral.