Friends, I ask you to please take 2.5 minutes of your one wild and precious life to bear witness to the kidnapping of Runeysa Ozturk.
Beloved Runeysa Ozturk is a Fulbright Scholar at Tufts University and a legal resident of the U.S.
This week she was kidnapped by U.S. secret police in Massachusetts.
(This video comes via Daniel Boguslaw on Twitter, reposted on Bluesky.)
After a fretful period of not knowing her whereabouts, she appeared to surface in a Louisiana facility. (Presumably same place they took Columbia-grad Mahmoud Khalil.) That facility is over 1400 miles from Somerville, Massachusetts, where Ozturk was snatched.
By the way: a judge ordered authorities to NOT take Ozturk out of state without 48 hours notice.
Guess what? They did it anyway.
The reason multiple witnesses were able to get Ozturk's abduction on film? Because Bostonians are seeing so many neighbors getting snatched.
Which means this kidnapping is one of many. In Boston … and all over.
(ICE agents targeted public schools in Washington, D.C. this week. Heroic public-school educators and administrators told them to f*ck right off.)
You, me, we — are witnessing beloved neighbors WHO ARE NOT ACCUSED OF BREAKING ANY LAWS being kidnapped by masked government agents in broad daylight. For no reason other than who they are or the views they express.
This is, truly, the “thought police.”
There is no question of “Is the U.S. in a Constitutional crisis?” or “Could this conceivably be characterized as an authoritarian government?”
Yes. Unequivocally, yes. To both.
The Trump administration is doing all of this in broad daylight and bragging about it afterwards. They are utilizing tactics to make these abductions go down easier.
Their tactics:
1) start with brown people — “immigrants.” Even legal ones, doesn’t matter. White and BIPOC folks with birthright citizenship just need to be able to tell ourselves “Sure, this is bad, but we are safe” until we are the frogs being boiled in the pot.
2) characterize these students (Ozturk and Khalil) as agitators with pro-Palestinian views, and of course—
3) equate “pro-Palestinian” with “antisemitic.”
This equation? It is a lie. Marching for an end to genocide and advocating for the human rights of the people of Palestine is NOT antisemitic. (See: Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, When? for starters.) This equation is a lie perpetrated by Zionist organizations who raise and spend a LOT of money to prop up this lie — organizations like AIPAC, KUFI, and the ADF. And these lies have been accepted, whole cloth, by a whole bunch of folks. Including, heart-rendingly, many of my friends.
However.
There is no evidence — none, zero, nada — of Ozturk, or Khalil last week, breaking any laws nor are there any credible claims of antisemitism. None. That is, unless you characterize ANY criticism of the Israeli government and its military perpetrating a CONTINUED GENOCIDE in Gaza as, per se, antisemitic.
It’s not. We’ve been over this before. Several times. No government, army, system, or religion is or should be exempt from good-faith critique and criticism.
We can be extremely mindful, respectful, moved, and sensitive to the absolute, undeniable horrors of the Holocaust AND AT THE SAME TIME know that no state or government, including Israel, is above or exempt from criticism, critique, or international law.
Did you wonder if the worst would happen? This quickly? Did your nightmares of Trump 2.0 include people being abducted by “thought police”?
It’s happening.
What will you tell your children, your grandchildren, about what you did in this moment?
Will you sheepishly evade the question, knowing that you silently joined the nation’s rightward, authoritarian creep? Were you trying to blend in? Did you stay silent to try to cover your own ass? Did you in fact actually participate, did you willingly believe the administration’s lies that innocent folks were antisemitic? Or were Venezuelan gangsters, without any evidence?
Or did you stick to your morals? Were you the person you hoped you would be?
Did you recognize that this is only the beginning? Did you see, with clear eyes, that they will make up any excuse to take anyone they don’t like? And that that list will grow?
Did you take a stand?
Did you meet the moment?
Did you say something, DO something, even —perhaps especially— when it put your own safety and comfort on the line?
We are living through history.
The least we can do is act like it.
We must, we must keep each other safe.
No one else will do it for us.
Solidarity forever.
XOXO
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