Principled Experiments in Just Being: From Police Oversight to Community Intersight

ABSTRACT This article compares ideals and practices of police oversight in two very different contexts—settler colonial North America and “post” colonial South Asia—to interrogate fundamental principles underlying police oversight globally and to imagine new ways of working toward transformation. The analysis ultimately asks: how might we conceive new modes of engagement around community safety and governance in line with ideals of social justice as a global humanistic principle? Drawing inspiration from (1) a Gandhian ethics of “fidelity to being” and “unconditional equality” in Satyagraha praxis as a “religion of resistance” to sovereign command and (2) Haudenosaunee principles manifest in the Kayaneren'kó:wa (Great Law of Peace), I suggest we move away from demanding more or better police oversight bodies and turn instead toward creating institutions that foster “intersight” as spaces of exchange among community members, government officials, legal experts, and other stakeholders. Intersight may provide good‐faith forums for critical self‐introspection by all parties involved and, crucially, open‐minded and compassionate listening to others regarding what kinds of policing or other forms of collective action geared toward security, safety, and justice, may be needed in a particular community.