Due process
Rounding up people and sending them to offshore concentration camps without due process is something everyone should be terrified of.
It sits neatly in the ‘how to build an authoritarian regime’ playbook.
Just because it is the ‘other’ today is no guarantee of our immunity tomorrow.
Due process is the right for everyone, everyone, to be heard, given context, and witnessed in context. Unless it is everyone’s right, it becomes no one’s right.
Yet we all, at the individual level, deny others due process. And are denied due process by others.
Making assumptions about another’s actions is a denial of due process.
Judging another without seeking to understand – a denial of due process.
Projecting all of our shit onto another – making them the ones to blame – without taking time to inquire as to why an action was taken – is to deny due process.
Talking over, not listening, being righteous. All denying due process.
I do it. You do it. We do it to each other.
I have reached a place in my life where I see the first Little Atrocity often live in any form of righteous superiority or a dominating worldview. When we impose our righteous superiority on another without giving the other the right of reply – the right of due process – we animate a world that thrives on domination, supremacy and us and them.
Everyone deserves due process. Or no one does. The first step is to allow the person sitting next to you the opportunity you would like to be afforded.
The opportunity to be heard and understood. In full. All of it.
This is the call of humanity. To seek the human in each other, even when we do not agree.
It is hard work.
Assumptions, judgements and projections are the warning signs that we are on track to reinforce a world that takes people off the streets and removes them to an offshore concentration camp.
Photo May 5th 2025, Article written May 6th 2025
