When One Person’s Rights Are Violated, It Becomes Everyone’s Business

Any time someone speaks up about a constitutional violation—whether it’s police using excessive force, the government overstepping its authority, or an agency targeting people who pose no threat—someone inevitably shows up to say, “Mind your own business.”

It’s always strange to me, because in a country built on watching, questioning, and checking government power, looking away is the fastest way to lose the very rights we say we cherish. The Constitution wasn’t written as a decorative document. It was written as a guardrail. And people only stay safe when all of us keep an eye on where the government decides to place its hands.

That’s why when I spoke up about ICE officers pepper-spraying citizens who threw handfuls of snow at their vehicle, I didn’t treat it like some isolated skirmish between annoyed officers and rowdy protesters. Pepper spray is not a toy—it’s a chemical agent. And the moment an officer uses it, the law treats it as a use of force, which means it must be reasonable, necessary, and proportionate. Snow is not a threat that justifies a chemical response. It melts. There was no danger, no emergency, and no excuse for escalation. That makes it a constitutional issue—not a personal one.

And this isn’t happening in a vacuum.

Concerns about how ICE uses its power have been raised for years. People have been detained based on pending charges they haven’t even been convicted of. Others have been arrested in immigration courts without warrants, pulled aside before they ever had a chance to stand before a judge. Policies have been crafted specifically to make it harder for certain people to get bond, even though existing law gives them a right to ask for it. Courts have had to step in and remind ICE that warrantless arrests require more than suspicion—they require a lawful basis and an actual risk of flight. Even interpretations of centuries-old laws, like the Alien Enemies Act, have been challenged because they threatened to strip people of a fair hearing entirely.

All of these issues revolve around one core principle: due process.

The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments make it crystal clear that no person—citizen or not—can be deprived of life, liberty, or property without it. Courts have repeatedly affirmed that this protection extends to non-citizens because constitutional rights don’t start and stop at citizenship status. They start and stop at government power.

So when someone says, “Mind your business,” what they’re really saying is, “Let the government do whatever it wants as long as it isn’t happening to you.”

But that mentality is exactly how rights erode.

Rights don’t disappear all at once—they disappear one ignored violation at a time.

And that same mindset pops up whenever people with platforms speak on issues of injustice. Suddenly the crowd shifts to, “Shut up and dribble,” “Stay in your lane,” or “Stick to entertainment.” It’s a silencing tactic, nothing more. It’s a way of protecting comfort, not justice. It’s a way of saying, “Don’t make us look at what’s happening.”

But speaking up isn’t drama—it’s civic responsibility.

If I see someone else’s rights violated, I’m not watching a show. I’m watching a warning. And warnings should never be ignored.

At the end of the day, you don’t have to be a lawyer to know when the government crosses a line. You just have to care that the line exists. Knowing your rights, staying calm during encounters, asking whether officers have a warrant, and seeking legal help when needed—those are the tools individuals can use. But the tool we all share is our voice.

So no—I will not “mind my business.”

If anything, this is my business.

It’s all of our business.

Because the moment we stop paying attention is the moment those rights stop belonging to us at all.