Bearing Witness

The phrase “bearing witness” has been used many times since Inauguration Day
2025. For some, bearing witness means providing evidence or testimony about
something, often to support or prove a claim. It can also mean sharing personal
experiences, particularly traumatic ones, with those around you. In my life, bearing
witness often means acknowledging and validating experiences or events, in an effort to
show that something is true. The Bible even explains the phrase as a Jewish legal
principle, namely that uncorroborated testimony does not count as truth. In John 5:31-
32, it is written, “If I bear witness about myself, my witness is not true. There is another
who bears witness about me, and I know that the witness which he witnesses about me
is true.”

Elie Wiesel, in his famous novel about the trauma inflicted by the Holocaust,
Night, described the vital reason being witness is necessary. He said, “for the dead and
the living, we must bear witness,” implying it does not validate an event occurred, but it
can also lead to healing trauma. Members of 12-step recovery programs share stories
not to validate pain, but to process an experience through words, actions, and physical
presence. Sharing trauma with others opens up a space where there once was none.
Bearing witness also demonstrates that one understands the often-repeated warning-
that those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are bound to repeat those
mistakes.

At funerals, we share stories of the deceased, knowing that a person is never
truly forgotten when others keep their memories alive. As an immigration attorney for
25+ years, I have had to bear witness to young children being separated from their
parents at the border, to horrific conditions inside federally-funded immigration detention
centers, to working with four political appointees in four years serving as Director of the
Office of Refugee Resettlement and more recently, to watching my community on the
Oregon coast come together to voice their opposition to an Immigration and Customs
Enforcement detention facility from being built in Newport, Oregon.

As a country, we have a front row seat to thousands of people across the nation
who are bearing witness daily to immigration enforcement across the United States.
Minneapolis, Chicago, Portland, Washington DC., New Orleans, and Los Angeles
residents have had to bear witness merely because they live in large cities that mostly
voted against the current president.

As we go through our day, we must ask ourselves, “how will I bear witness today
and what will I tell my children about my actions during this period in history?” For books
will be written, and movies made, about the actions of so many people in the United
States who were not afraid to stand up and bear witness.

– Kate Sinkins