"I left the United States."

Recorded yesterday (10 September): Morning Tinto podcast, episode 17

Author

Chris Musei-Sequeira
September 11, 2025

This photograph shows the upper half of the United States of America's Statue of Liberty in the foreground, and a partial solar eclipse in the background. The Statue of Liberty is completely black due to the brightness of the sun. In the mid-ground at the bottom fourth of the image is a dark cloud layer. In the background, the sky is colored a dark orange with a thin layer of cloud cover.

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Is it time to “up and leave” the place you call home? How do you even think through that question?

Morning Tinto Episode 17: “I left the United States.”

Recorded today, my friend Heather Luna of keduzi and I talk about national borders, social power, and what “emigration” looks like in the era of Donald Trump. Heather talks about her story of leaving the United States of America (USA) not long after September 11 of 2001. She discusses a bit of the privileges that the USA passport has granted her and how that has affected her work with people beyond borders, including refugees. I talk about my choice to stop identifying as an American or as a member of any nation-state, and how this choice is helping me work with people beyond borders in my own unique way.

We then talk about how some people in the USA are thinking through the question: “Should I stay, or should I go?”

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)

  • Episode 15: Does violence work? (33 minutes and 55 seconds)

  • Episode 16: Nonviolent use of force? (31 minutes and 45 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:Statue of Liberty Annular Solar Eclipse (51239095574).jpg - Wikimedia Commons. (2021, June 10). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue_of_Liberty_Annular_Solar_Eclipse_(51239095574).jpg