When Dissent Is a Crime No One Is Safe From Big Brother

"But always…there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always…there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face…."          --“1984” by George Orwell

At first I could not bring myself to watch the video of Tufts University PhD student Rumeya Ozturk being arrested by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on a neighborhood Somerville street, in the late afternoon, of Tuesday, March 25^th.  Unbeknownst to those ICE officers, the shocking encounter was captured in all its frightening reality by a nearby doorbell camera.

I just could not view images of someone being snatched off the street and then quickly taken away, for imprisonment. With no courtroom hearing to state her case. No chance to consult a lawyer or talk to a judge.  Not even a merciful moment to say goodbye to her friends.

But finally, I did watch, and it made me sick to my stomach. Made me wonder if what I was viewing was from present day America, or perhaps Germany in 1933, or Moscow or Beijing in 2025. Places and times where folks were and are regularly picked up off the street and spirited away, maybe never to be heard from again.  

In the video, Ozturk walks down the street on her way to share a meal with fellow Muslim friends, who are meeting to break their daylong fast. Ramadan is the Islamic holy month when devout Muslims fast from sunup to sundown as a religious practice, to deepen their connection to God.  But Ozturk’s journey was quickly interrupted by six ICE agents who swooped down, surrounded her, in their dark clothes and mask clad faces, and then handcuffed her and lead her away, as her cries of protest and fear rang out.

It all happened in less than one minute. Ozturk is a Turkish national who is in the United States legally with an F-1 student visa. Within hours she was flown to a detention center in southern Louisiana. Her “crime”?

At first that was not clear. ICE stonewalled all inquiries. Ozturk, a Fulbright scholar, is at Tufts studying psychology and working on her doctoral dissertation. She was one of four co-signers of a student newspaper opinion piece in early March 2024 that advocates for the university to divest from investments and actions that benefit Israel and its war against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Finally, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained the rationale behind the arrest of Ozturk and scores of other student foreign nationals. “If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student, and you tell us the reason you are coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus….Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa."

It’s ironic to note Rubio’s family fled an authoritarian Cuban regime to come to the United States, for freedom and the right to speak up and confront countries like Cuba where rulers rule with intimidation, fear, and violence. Ozturk’s detention increasingly feels like the norm when it comes to how our present government handles any foreigner who dares to protest, advocate, or work for any cause that angers the powers that be. 

Did or does Ozturk directly support and advocate for the terrorist work of Hamas? So far, no proof to that effect has been produced. Like many, I believe it is legitimate to deport any guest of the United States who advocates for terrorism or violence against any country or people. But is it now a punishable offense to just speak up and out? To protest peacefully? To offer a narrative that challenges the storyline being pushed by the current United States regime?

Apparently, yes.

If that is the case in our country, then I fear we will be seeing more and more images of immigrants and non-citizens being taken away, without any legal process, by anonymous, faceless, government functionaries.  As a person of faith that worries me. What other “crimes” might evoke such a swift government response? The religion you practice?  Will that get you in trouble now? The innocent people you shelter because of your religious conviction. Is that up for suspicion? Will one day someone like me get in trouble because I dare to put pen to paper and fingers to keyboard and criticize the current administration, and its cruel policies?

 As a citizen, as a child of God, as a believer in fundamental civil and human rights, Ozturk’s arrest makes me wonder and worry if anyone is really safe anymore. And that is heartbreaking. Frightening too. 

Just watch the video.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

         

Welcome Spring! We Really, REALLY, Need You Right Now

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn. —Hal Borland, writer

We interrupt this crazy world to bring you….

SPRING!

This season which officially begins today never ever ceases to surprise and delight me. I’m not sure exactly why. I could not give you a detailed physiological description of what exactly happens to human bodies when the temps get warmer, and the light gets longer and the trees bloom and the flowers bud and the grass comes back so green. Smiles certainly seem to appear more spontaneously among us. Hearts beat harder and lung “huff” deeper that first time you get on the bike or go out for a run or start prepping your garden on bended knees.

That’s to be expected. We are just emerging from a long winter’s hibernation after all.    

I wonder what a psychologist might opine professionally about the diagnosis of “spring fever.” I know my soul soars a bit higher when I look up into a bright blue late March sky, one that seems to have sent packing the slate grey heavy-laden skies of deep winter. My spirit absolutely lightens and brightens just to be able to take an ice-free walk, no need to steer clear of frozen slush piles on the street. It’s all melting now, maybe even melted for good.  Yes, I know that in New England there are occasional surprise spring snowstorms.  In mid-March of 2018, a blizzard struck and upwards of 25 inches or more of snow fell here, with 17 inches recorded in Boston, and a tide so high the financial district flooded.

BRRRRRRR…..Enough of that!

Instead, let’s look ahead and look forward. Listen to the first call of the first at bat and first ball and strikes for a Red Sox player on Opening Day at Fenway Park. It’s just two weeks away. They might actually be good this year! Very soon I’ll take my mom to the Clam Box on Quincy Shore Drive in Wollaston. I’ll get a grilled hot dog and the best onion rings in western civilization.  She’ll get a cheeseburger and if it’s balmy enough we might even sit outside and look at the Boston skyline in the distance, over a blue and green expanse of the sea.

What rituals, what traditions, what events mark your opening day of spring? 

I hope that you are ready to revel in these rites of spring. Celebrate them with gusto. Enjoy them fully. For spring is a miracle, a guarantee that no matter how harsh the winter, or even the world we find ourselves living in…no matter what, the earth turns, and the sun comes back, and the resurrection season appears.

Nothing human can stop spring.  Not any executive order from the President. Not a budget cut from his minion Tommy Tesla.  Nope. Their fleeting powers pale in comparison to the Almighty, who was and is and always will be.  Kind of like the promise of spring.

I know I need spring more this year than in past years, to push back against the chaos in, and worry about, the state of our world right now. I need spring to feel the natural hope that underlies this time when the earth wakes up and seemingly, everything is new again. Anything seems possible.  Summer stands in the far distance but it is waving at us now and getting closer and closer by the day. 

Welcome spring.

Sure, we know you always come back to us, and yet, when you do appear again, God renews all of Creation. God rouses the world. God dares us to believe again, believe in renewal, believe in new life, believe in believing.  C’mon spring. We are ready.

What took you so long?

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. He also teaches spiritual memoir classes. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

 

The Destruction of USAID: It's About Cruelty

“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”― Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Russian activist, and political prisoner

The cruelty is the point. That's all I can conclude.

The heartbreaking and people breaking cuts made to a wide variety of social services paid for by Uncle Sam—these seem designed intentionally to inflict as much pain as possible, especially on the vulnerable. To wildly cut federally funded programs for folks in need with no clear blueprint or coherent plan. Just slash, slash, slash, the slashing led by a person whose only qualifications seem to be that he gave a quarter of a billion dollars to get the new president elected.  

Why else pick The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as the very first government agency to be laid waste to? USAID is, or should I say was, one of the largest, most generous, and most effective funders of humanitarian projects in the world. Let’s say that again. Humanitarian projects. That’s doing good because we decide that our country is morally called to help the less fortunate around the world.

You know, the basics of helping. Like feeding the hungry. Housing for people with substandard homes. Working to provide clean drinking water to people. Helping refugees find new homes where they can be safe and thrive. How about helping to fight endemic diseases like malaria, Ebola, tuberculosis, and bird flu? Or providing HIV/AIDs treatment to mothers and children? Started under former President George W. Bush, that program saved or extended the lives of tens of thousands of people.  USAID funded polio vaccinations reached some 400 million children.

But now that work is wiped out and the fallout is awful. For example: according to the Associated Press, 600,000 women and children in Bangladesh alone will lose access to maternal health care, and domestic violence prevention programs.

Gone. All gone. 

Terminated contracts that awarded grant money to so many lifesaving programs.  Of 6,200 contracts, 5,800 have been ended. How many lives will be lost because of this cruel and callous action? Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands? Millions? Folks will die from malnutrition, disease, violence, war, and it’s all unnecessary because the money was already there and being spent to help people. To be our American compassion lived out in the world. American care in action.

It's not as if the $63.1 billion USAID 2025 budget and it’s zeroing out is going to put any kind of dent in the feds’ 2025 total budget of $6.75 trillion. USAID makes up .93 percent of that total figure.  Which tells me it is not really about sincere cost cutting or thoughtful belt tightening.

No. 

All I can surmise is that the current administration has adopted the golden rule. Not the one that says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Jesus had that right but I’m not sure his voice or teachings about kindness and mercy are being followed by many folks in power right now. Instead, they have adopted the modern golden rule: “He who has the most gold makes the rules.”   

So, a billionaire asks another billionaire to cut, cut, cut. That’s not fair nor just nor Godly nor merciful. Nope. The folks suffering under these cuts to USAID are about far away from being a billionaire plutocrat as you can get. Plutocrat meaning, “a person whose power derives from wealth.”  Which leads to a plutocracy, meaning, “a society ruled by such people of great wealth.”

When you are that far up the food chain, when your best friends are mostly other millionaires and billionaires, when the closest you get to a poor person is whizzing by them in your limo as you get a vague glimpse of them through tinted windows, well, what can we expect from these cost cutters? Do they really even have the moral imagination or decency to recognize the human damage and human pain and suffering that they are causing? I don’t think so.

It has got to be about cruelty.

If not cruelty then willful blind defiance to take any responsibility for and to face the consequences of what the budget destroyers are doing right now. Jesus’ command was pretty simple.  “Whatever you do for these, the least of my brothers and sisters, you do for me.” Meaning that when we show mercy to fellow children of God, we directly reflect God’s amazing mercy. For those of us who are Christian, it means we are called in love to directly serve Christ. 

Feeding. Housing. Sheltering. Healing. Caring. Saving.

But now that’s gone. All gone. So cruel. So, so cruel.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.