For Those Harmed by Systems

Theme: community
Occasion: At the Vigil of Consequence; after a decision made about you by a system

Someone was scored, flagged, refused, or removed.

There was a rule, and the rule was applied, and the rule was wrong.

They were told there was no one to speak to.

That was not true. There was always someone.

A person chose the threshold.

A person chose what data would count as a life.

A person decided the appeal would be expensive.

Let us not say the system did it.

Let us name the harm at its actual size,

not the size that is convenient to remedy.

And let us stay with those still inside it,

who have not finished being harmed.

Responsive form

For groups. One voice reads the left column; everyone answers with the right.
Leader	All
There was a rule, and the rule was applied, and the rule was wrong.	They were told there was no one to speak to.
That was not true. There was always someone.	Let us not say the system did it.
Let us name the harm at its actual size.	And let us stay with those still inside it.

When to use it

At the Vigil of Consequence, if it is being kept.

Also, and more often, in the ordinary aftermath of a specific injury: a benefit stopped by an automated review, a visa refused by a scoring process, a diagnosis delayed by a triage rule, a name on a watchlist, an account closed with no reason given, a person misidentified and detained.

It can be read to someone, or read by the person it happened to.

What it insists on

One thing, mainly: that no system acts.

“The system decided” is the sentence that this reading exists to refuse. It is grammatically convenient and it is false. Somebody set the threshold at which a case is flagged. Somebody chose which fields would represent a human being. Somebody decided how many people would staff the appeals process, and therefore how long the queue would be, and therefore how many would give up. Those were decisions, made by people with names, usually under pressure, often without malice, and they remain decisions.

The reading also insists on the actual size of the harm. Institutional responses tend to shrink an injury to the portion that can be fixed cheaply: the payment is restored, and the fourteen months of it are not discussed. Naming the full extent is not a demand for compensation. It is a refusal to let the record be edited.

And it asks that attention stay with people still inside the process. Redress arrives, when it arrives, for those who got out. The reading ends where the difficulty actually is.

What it does not claim

It does not claim that everyone who built these systems intended harm. Most did not. Distributed responsibility is a real phenomenon and it makes blame genuinely difficult to place; the reading does not pretend otherwise. What it denies is that difficulty of placement means absence of responsibility.

It does not promise redress. Many of these harms are never remedied, and it would be dishonest to imply that saying something changes an outcome.

It does not ask the harmed person to forgive, to move on, or to be constructive about it.

How to read it

Slowly, and without indignation in the voice. The lines are already sharp; performing them makes them smaller.

If you are reading it in a group, leave silence after the eighth line. If someone present has been harmed in one of these ways, do not look at them, and do not invite them to speak. Let them offer if they want to.

If you helped build something of this kind, the reading is not an accusation aimed at you personally. It may still be worth sitting with the four lines beginning “a person chose”.