Does violence work?

Recorded today (30 July): Morning Tinto podcast, episode 15

Author

Chris Musei-Sequeira
July 30, 2025

This photograph shows a person wearing a black mask and holding a long, thin, dark object in their right hand. The person is facing the camera and is in the foreground. They are wearing a dark-colored jacket and dark blue pants. Behind the person is a parking lot with scattered papers and objects on fire. Several people are standing on the parking lot on the far right of the photograph. Behind the parking lot is a building with the text "SODASO" in blue on the right of the photograph. DESCRIPTION FROM SOURCE: Protesti ispred zgrade Sodaso Vlade Tuzla 2014 AUTHOR FROM SOURCE: Irfan Brkovic SOURCE: File:P1190777.png - Wikimedia Commons. (2014, February 6). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P1190777.png. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

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Does violence work?

You think you know the answer to that question. But what if you have no idea?

Morning Tinto Episode 15: Does violence work?

Recorded today, my friend Heather Luna of keduzi and I discuss the effectiveness of violence… but maybe not in the context you’re expecting. Heather raises various contexts of violence and explores whether violence appears to work in each context. I talk about “dictionary bros,” the word “violence” itself, and how definitions of words are subject to social power dynamics.

Take a listen and tell us what you think!

Previous Morning Tinto recordings

  • Episode 1: The Trump Administration and DEI (23 minutes and 59 seconds)

  • Episode 2: Do not obey in advance. (21 minutes and 16 seconds)

  • Episode 3: An illiberal intervention (23 minutes and 7 seconds)

  • Episode 4: Who Are “We, the People”? (19 minutes and 22 seconds)

  • Episode 5: Off the spectrum? (32 minutes and 1 second)

  • Episode 6: The mask is off (28 minutes and 58 seconds)

  • Episode 7: Meeting each other’s needs (33 minutes and 18 seconds)

  • Episode 8: Survival and community (27 minutes and 6 seconds)

  • Episode 9: Being relational in resistance (31 minutes and 52 seconds)

  • Episode 10: Is hoping waiting? (32 minutes and 29 seconds)

  • Episode 11: Do Human Rights Matter? (30 minutes and 14 seconds)

  • Episode 12: Touching Grass (25 minutes and 33 seconds)

  • Episode 13: The F Word (41 minutes and 39 seconds)

  • Episode 14: Palestine Action (23 minutes and 55 seconds)

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My name is Chris Musei-Sequeira, and I use he/him pronouns. My mother was born in Trinidad and Tobago as a descendant of African slaves brought to the islands during the time of European colonization. She came to the United States of America (USA) at the age of 10. My father is Goan and was born in India, in Mumbai, and raised Catholic and English-speaking. He came to the USA for his graduate studies, where he met my mother.

My sister and I were born in the USA and lived a middle-class life in the suburbs of multiple American cities. I studied aeronautical engineering and technology policy in university, then worked at the Federal Aviation Administration and as an aviation consultant. I've lived in cities up and down the USA East Coast since the age of 18; I now reside in Queens, New York with my wife.

I thank Heather Luna and Lavinia Muth for showing me the importance of publicly expressing our positions. Because of our positions, all of us are very familiar with some aspects of the world while having no idea of other aspects. Positionality expresses how our individual positions affect our relationships with other people and with the world as a whole.

Image source: File:P1190777.png - Wikimedia Commons. (2014, February 6). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P1190777.png. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.