By ERWIN FREED
“Due process” is an essential term for the working class to understand. Under capitalist rule, our rights are always under threat. In the United States, we are “guaranteed” due process by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Both were won through revolutionary struggle—first against the British feudalism and second against the Southern slaveocracy. Due process is the right of people being charged with a crime to have access to the charges and evidence against them and to be allowed to present their own facts and witnesses in their defense. It is a basic democratic right.
The Trump administration is attempting to destroy popular support and legal precedent for due process. If they are successful, it would mean a major setback for organizations of working-class and oppressed people all over the country. Losing due process as a basic norm, however it might be unevenly applied now, is the larger threat beneath cases such as kidnapping and shipping immigrants to the CECOT torture center in El Salvador and detaining Palestinians for speech the government finds unsavory. The loss of this right generally underlies the propaganda offensive that ensues whenever the far right sees an alleged crime they think fits their racist narratives.
Think about the clips and videos that come out every day, with Karoline Leavitt, Steven Miller, Tom Homan, and the rest of the MAGA clan asserting and doubling down on lies against people being held in ICE and CECOT detention. They are carrying out a propaganda offensive to attempt to shift discussion toward a debate in the court of public opinion on whether or not certain individuals are “guilty.” To do this, they make baseless accusations—for example, that Mahmoud Khalil is antisemitic or that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13.
These claims are then repeated and further distorted by an army of right-wing peoples and bots that “flood the zone” in both social media and the mainstream press. Their goal is to whip up a lynch mob-type atmosphere in which anyone whom they deem to be a threat to “national security” can and should be imprisoned, deported, and even tortured without a trial.
The general logic of the offensive goes like this: First, accuse the victim of violence or supporting violence. Next, say some version of “this person is violent and therefore anyone who supports their right to due process supports violence.” And all the while, push as fast as possible to put the accused outside of normal U.S. criminal jurisdictions or processes (e.g., ICE detention, CECOT, Guantanamo Bay).
Democratic rights occupy a contradictory position in the United States. On the one hand, they are hard won through wars and revolutions worldwide, working-class militancy, and struggles against social oppression (racism, settler colonialism, sexism, etc). On the other, as long as the legal system is controlled by a small ruling class of billionaires and their supporters, no rights are really guaranteed. The thousands of undocumented immigrants put through ICE detention, of mostly Black and Latino people held in “pre-trial” jails indefinitely, and of the whole history of sites like the infamous Homan Square facility in Chicago are all testament to these unfortunate facts.
All community activists, trade unionists, and supporters of democratic rights must stand up and mobilize against the Trump regime’s flagrant attack on due process and all our civil liberties. There is important movement in this direction with fiery statements from IUPAT and SMART General Presidents Jimmy Williams Jr. and Michael Coleman in defense of Mahmoud Khalil and Kilmar Abrego Garcia respectively.
But we need to move beyond statements to organizing massive defense campaigns and mobilizations for civil liberties. This perspective will be discussed at the April 26 Mass Meeting in Defense of Civil Liberties in New Haven, Conn. (see advertisement elsewhere on this website).
