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AMY GOODMAN: We start at present in Massachusetts, the place over a thousand protesters gathered close to Tufts College Wednesday after masked, plainclothes immigration brokers snatched Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts Ph.D. scholar, from the streets of Somerville. Ozturk is a doctoral scholar within the faculty’s Division of Little one Research and Human Growth. She’s a analysis assistant at Tufts’ Youngsters’s Tv Mission. She’s a former Fulbright scholar who was born in Turkey.
Surveillance video from a close-by home exhibits brokers approaching her on the streets close to her residence Tuesday night. Within the video, you may hear her scream because the brokers transfer to detain her.
RUMEYSA OZTURK: [inaudible]
AMY GOODMAN: Rumeysa Ozturk was making her method with pals to a meal to interrupt her Ramadan quick.
Tufts College’s president mentioned the college had no prior discover of her arrest. Final March, Ozturk wrote a bit within the scholar newspaper criticizing Tufts’ response to Palestinian solidarity protests on campus which have been calling for divestment from Israel.
Democracy Now!‘s Hany Massoud and Ariel Boone have been in Somerville at Wednesday evening’s protest.
FATEMA AHMAD: When immigrants are beneath assault, what we do?
PROTESTERS: Arise! Battle again!
FATEMA AHMAD: When college students are beneath assault, what we do?
PROTESTERS: Arise! Battle again!
FATEMA AHMAD: I’m Fatema Ahmad. I’m government director of Muslim Justice League. I wish to begin with an legal professional assertion. To make clear, I’m not Rumeysa’s legal professional, however this can be a assertion shared from her legal professional, Mahsa Khanbabai, simply to begin us off. “Thanks all for popping out to help Rumeysa this night. I hope to talk along with her quickly, and we’ll be telling her concerning the outpouring of affection and help. Sadly, I lately acquired phrase that she was transferred to Louisiana.”
PROTESTERS: Boo! Disgrace! Disgrace!
FATEMA AHMAD: “I don’t perceive why it took the federal government almost 24 hours from her detention to let me know her whereabouts. DHS would have been made conscious of the habe submitting final evening. Why she was transferred to Louisiana regardless of the courtroom’s order is unfathomable. Rumeysa ought to instantly be introduced again to Massachusetts, launched and allowed to return to finish her Ph.D. program. Our nation is constructed upon a system of legal guidelines and accountability. We sit up for her having her day in courtroom.”
PROTESTERS: Battle again!
FATEMA AHMAD: Arise! Battle again!
PROTESTERS: Arise! Battle again!
FATEMA AHMAD: Arise! Battle again!
PROTESTERS: Arise! Battle again!
NICOLE: Good day, everybody. My title is Nicole, and I’m an East Somerville resident. And I’m one of many volunteer coordinators of the Somerville ICE Watch Community. The town of Somerville and plenty of different cities in Massachusetts name ourselves a sanctuary metropolis. However what does that actually imply if our neighbors are being disappeared by state violence for weeks and there’s been silence and inaction? What our group must know is that how horrifying this incident and Rumeysa’s kidnapping could also be, that is the fear and the threats that our immigrant neighbors dwell beneath each single day.
SAM ALTERMAN: My title is Sam Alterman. I’m a Ph.D. grad employee at Tufts College, and I’m proud to be one of many head stewards for the Tufts College Graduate Staff Union SEIU 509. I’m much more proud to name Rumeysa Ozturk a colleague, a union sibling and a good friend. Our union stands shoulder to shoulder with Rumeysa, with Mahmoud Khalil and Momodou Taal and with each employee in the USA who’s attacked for exercising their free speech rights. We imagine that every one employees, no matter citizenship, visa standing or documentation, have a proper to be secure of their office and of their communities, to talk their minds with out worry of retaliation or harassment, and to take part in civic life. 100 years in the past, through the first and second Crimson Scares, the federal authorities additionally tried to shamelessly and violently abuse immigration regulation to relax free speech and assault working individuals. The labor motion fought again then, and we have to battle again now.
ARIEL BOONE: Are you able to say your title and who you’re with?
LEA KAYALI: Yeah, Lea Kayali, and I’m with the Palestinian Youth Motion. We had tons of of Bostonians popping out right here at present as a result of they’re angered about what occurs when considered one of our group members was taken by armed brokers of the state, who kidnapped her from exterior of her residence. Persons are right here to face up for the motion that she was punished for supporting, the motion for a free Palestine and to finish the genocide in Gaza. And so they’re additionally right here to proceed to help our immigrant neighbors, who’ve been getting picked up by ICE ever since, you already know, not simply Trump got here into workplace, however Biden earlier than him and each administration. So we’re out right here to proceed to demand a free Palestine, to demand ICE out of our communities and to battle for collective liberation.
FATEMA AHMAD: I’m Fatema Ahmad. I’m with Muslim Justice League.
ARIEL BOONE: Are you able to describe what occurred to Rumeysa?
FATEMA AHMAD: Sure. So, so far as we perceive, you already know, Rumeysa was truly beneath surveillance perhaps for a day or two by ICE brokers. So, her neighbors truly reported seeing these automobiles parked on the road for about two days. After which, she was on her method to an iftar along with her pals. And you’ll see very clearly within the video that, you already know, these individuals simply encompass her and take her. They don’t clarify who they’re. There’s no indication on their — you already know, no vests, nothing, no badges or something. And so, neighbors who noticed this have been, after all, frightened and reported it, assuming that it was ICE. And it was ICE, the truth is, that took her.
I believe 9/11 and the “warfare on terror” was clearly an enormous escalation in not simply surveillance and policing, however the construction of the federal government — proper? — creating the Division of Homeland Safety, creating ICE, which at the moment are these large departments consuming up our budgets and coming for our group members. And each step of the way in which, you already know, many group members have spoken out and mentioned, “We will’t settle for this stuff. We will’t hold including increasingly more surveillance, increasingly more policing, increasingly more militarization. It’s going to finally come for all of us.” And I believe that is the second the place lots of people notice it’s coming for everyone.
AMY GOODMAN: A number of the voices from over a thousand protesters who gathered close to Tufts College Wednesday night, after masked, plainclothes immigration brokers snatched Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts doctoral scholar, from the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts.
Once we come again, we converse with Mom Jones voting rights correspondent Ari Berman and go from President Trump’s new government order to require proof of citizenship to register to vote to subsequent week’s Supreme Courtroom in Wisconsin election, the place the billionaire Elon Musk is backing a conservative candidate who might flip the courtroom. He’s promising to pay voters. Stick with us.
