Remember the Ruckus Clause in the Constitution – the one that says if you create a ruckus in this country while legally visiting from another country, your permit will be revoked and you will be sent back? Ruckus, mind you, defined as voicing an opinion that is opposed to administration think, not a crime, a riot, a participation in illegal activities – simply making use of free speech? Free speech guaranties that apparently no longer apply to green card holders or other legal foreign residents?

Well, I don’t remember it either, but here is Marco Rubio on the specifics of PhD candidate Rumeysa Ozturk:

“We revoked her visa … once you’ve lost your visa, you’re no longer legally in the United States … if you come into the US as a visitor and create a ruckus for us, we don’t want it. We don’t want it in our country. Go back and do it in your country.”

This is, of course, was the Tufts woman who was snatched by plain clothed, masked goons pushing her into a car and abducting her to an unknown site, unable to speak to her lawyer for 24+ hours and not until after she was in Louisiana — despite a court order that she not be moved from MA. For having voiced an opinion in a student news paper as one of four co-authors, a year ago no less, about Israeli attacks on Gaza and university divestment from funding warfare in the Middle East, with no evidence produced that she did anything unlawful. Rubio claims that they are doing it every day, having revoked around 300 visas so far on the basis of disliked speech, not criminal action.

Then there is the Russian dissident, a scientist from Harvard medical School, who was arrested yesterday upon re-entry at our borders, returning from a research trip to France and having some undeclared items due to messed up papers in her luggage. If she is deported to Russia she will likely not survive as a known, outspoken critic of Putin and the invasion of Ukraine. some claim we are now helping to squash dissent as demanded by our newest ally.

Never mind all the tourists who have been detained, some under torture-like conditions, eventually needing medical attention.

I am trying to get the point across that many people shrug when “Venezuelan gang members” are shipped off to a gulag abroad without due process. That some people are more concerned when they are coming for foreign academics or simple tourists from western countries. That WE ALL should be frightened, however, for one and all, once the normalization of abduction, neglect of Habeus Corpus, and absence of any recourse that due process would allow, has taken place. Every single person can be snatched and disappeared, just as 1930s Germany or contemporary Russia model, with claims that the officials know what they are doing and punishing criminals – how can you prove that you are not, when sitting in a cell with 80 other women, unable to speak the language (some tourists) and no access to lawyers in Louisiana, if you are lucky, or El Salvador, if you are not?

Is it surprising that many countries in the world have now posted official travel warnings against visiting the United States? Or, more nightmarish to me, that prominent scholars of fascism have chosen to leave this country and teach abroad (historian Timothy Snyder and philosopher Jason Stanley of Yale among them?)Not counting the brain drain of our best scientists leaving for countries where their work is revered and can continue in contrast to here with all the department closures?

I was thinking about all this while watching how various wildlife traverse our garden, how freely they move, with no borders to stop them and certainly no ICE or Customs personal snatching them into custody, moving them to unknown locations or sending them back to places where there is existential threat waiting for them.

The deer come and go.

The coyotes come and go, blissfully ignoring my wildly barking dog.

The squirrel has claimed the owl house.

The owl has claimed the redwood where the crows nest. (That is a crow behind the owl, unsuccessfully yelling at the owl.)

The finches and sparrows and various other birds freely come and go, ready to snatch nesting materials.

One of the people detained upon entry to the US last week was composer Andrew Balfour, on his way to perform with the Amabile Choirs at Carnegie Hall, conducting selections from his work Tapwe: Songs of Truth. There was some mistake in his papers, and he was held for hours in isolation, phone and luggage taken from him, until he was given a choice: he could wait (for days) for an immigration judge to decide his detention, or he could take a flight back home to Toronto, to which he was then escorted by armed guards. He was lucky – some have been kept in detention for 2 weeks, completely clueless about what the accusations consisted of.

Anyhow, Balfour is a singular musician in the sense that he has two things that matter for his creative focus: his love for sacred music by Renaissance composers, particularly British ones, and his identity as a Cree, infusing indigenous spirituality into the music he creates. The music I am linking to today takes scores from Byrd and Tallis, and arranges them around Cree and Ojibway words. The project, called Nagamo , which means “sing” in Cree, is not a translation of the old texts, but an infusion of indigenous perspective. It’s quite something.

If you are interested in the whole composition, go here.

Below are some parts that I picked, demonstrating diversity of melodic and rhythmic approaches.

And at the very end you can watch a short video that introduces the composers and his biography.

Let the music fill you with a sense of resolve – people have overcome injustice and trauma for centuries.