A video for your Sunday service

“Nice people made the best Nazis.

Or so I have been told. My mother was born in Munich in 1934, and spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves. When things got ugly, the people my mother lived alongside chose not to focus on ‘politics,’ instead busying themselves with happier things. They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.”

-Naomi Shulman, “No Time To Be Nice: Now Is Not The Moment To Remain Silent,” November 17, 2016

The terrified woman in the video below, and the picture above, is 30-year-old Rumeysa Ozturk, a PhD student and Fulbright scholar at Tufts University in Massachusetts. The cowards in masks are ICE agents. Rumeysa is a Turkish national with a valid student visa. She is not accused of breaking any laws, because she has not broken any laws. She, along with three other students at Tufts, wrote an op-ed criticizing the university for not speaking out against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people of Gaza. For that, she was abducted by the U.S. government.

Rumeysa Ozturk is like me, and like many of you. She cares about human beings who are being intentionally starved and indiscriminately bombed. Her heart is not small.

Rumeysa is currently in ICE detention in Louisiana, though she was abducted in Massachusetts.

You should care about her.

Your church should care about her.

If your church never mentions Rumeysa (or Mahmoud or Andrys or Gladys and Nelson or the 10-year-old girl with a brain tumor or anyone held at the Krome Detention Center or the thousands of names we will never know), you should ask the leaders of your church if they are on the side of Rumeysa or the cowards in masks.

If you don’t care about Rumeysa, you should read this quote again.

“Nice people made the best Nazis.

Or so I have been told. My mother was born in Munich in 1934, and spent her childhood in Nazi Germany surrounded by nice people who refused to make waves. When things got ugly, the people my mother lived alongside chose not to focus on ‘politics,’ instead busying themselves with happier things. They were lovely, kind people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away.”