Human Rights Now

Something We Can Learn from our Southern Neighbors

Once upon a time – a long, long time ago – American communities were democratic. At least New England towns were.  Residents exercised their power over government officials and in all matters that affected them, practiced the art of self-governance, and enjoyed social equality. At least this is how Alexis de Tocqueville described small town democracy in early America. There were public hearings, forums, and always discussions at the town square, bars and cafes.

 

The democracy that Tocqueville described is now called “participatory democracy,” or at least elsewhere in the world. In the United States, participatory democracy is a theory, the topic of scholarly articles and even a few books, but its practical significance is zilch.

 

I went to vote last Tuesday. I had searched out some North Carolina candidates’ websites, newspapers, and blogs. All of them were bland and virtually undistinguishable. I am a registered Democrat. (There are only two parties in this off-year election.)  The one thing I knew was that I didn’t want to vote for Democratic candidate, Lindy Pendergrass for County Sheriff since he implemented 287(g), a law that deputizes local law enforcement to ensnare and entraps undocumented Latinos. So I voted for the person running against Pendergrass, What about the other races? Their platforms did not distinguish them, nor did their personal statements. I admit that if an African American, Latino or a woman was running for a particular office, I voted for that person. Diversity, I justified to myself, is a social and political good. Still, that is not the best way to go about voting.  

 

Let’s face it. Local elections are as banal as county elections. Setting aside national politics because of their greater scale and complexity, there are many reasons --in this age of the Internet, to have participatory democracy -- at the local level. Participatory democracy ensures that all have a voice in decisions that affect their communities, that the powerless are empowered and those now marginalized are included. In communities with participatory democracy people vote on substantive issues, such as making decisions about the budget. Participatory budgeting was first introduced in Porto Alegre, spread to hundreds of Latin American cities, and recently, amazingly, introduced in Chicago’s 49 Ward. Direct democracy, long practiced in Switzerland, is a variant of participatory democracy. It is voting by referendum.

 

What appeared to be a pathway for national discussions leading to substantive democracy, Obama announced on his first day in office, on January 20. 2009: the Open Government Initiative. It implies more than it can actually deliver.  It’s about accountability, not participatory democracy.  I am aching to vote to end the wars, to dismantle the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal, to grant amnesty to immigrants, and to tax the rich at high rates. According to opinion polls most Americans support most of these policies.

 

If our government is now more “open,” why don’t we have referendums? As Abraham Lincoln famously proclaimed in 1863 that America is by, for and of the people. Why then are we still stuck with such an undemocratic government?  At the national level, we could vote electronically on priorities, vote on individual bills, or citizens could write their own referendum and vote on them. We could eliminate political parties. There is no end of possibilities.

 

Local participatory democracy brings even more possibilities. The reason, as New Englanders long ago recognized and as those who participate in any social movement recognize, democracy best takes root in social formations. Just to mention some current hot button issues that could be engaged by local participatory democracies:  fair trade, solidarity with immigrants, local food, green jobs, energy efficient cars and homes, GLBT rights, eliminating racial disparities in income,  and so forth. Unless proved otherwise, political parties are probably a hindrance to participatory democracy. Yes,  we need experts. But do we need as many politicians as we have now? Probably not.

 

Judith Blau is Director of the Human Rights Center of Chapel Hill & Carrboro. Her email address is jrblau@email.unc.edu

Roguish Exceptionalism

In an article published in the Chicago Journal of International Law  (posted on Global Policy Forum), Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, writes: “Washington pretends to join the international human rights system, but it refuses to permit this system to improve the rights of US citizens” He explains that when the US  occasionally does ratify a treaty, it adds that the treaty is not-self-executing without special legislation, and then Justice Department lawyers state that US law already protects Americans and special legislation is therefore unnecessary.  

 

Treaties are posted on the page of the Human Rights Council.  First to note, there are only 15 “core” human rights treaties that are in force. In the case of 7, the US has neither ratified nor signed them. In the case of 3, the US has signed, without ratifying, them. These include the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). In the case of 5, the US has ratified them, but declared them to be “not-self-executing.” These include the Convention against Torture (CAT) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). 

 

This arrogance fuels distrust and apprehension around the world. Recently the Obama Administration further antagonized the international human rights community when it  decided to sit out the World Conference against Racism, held in April 2009. Earlier, in April 2007, a US delegation presented a self-serving, self-congratulatory report to the CERD review committee .Many US human rights organizations challenged the US report, and the Human Rights Network facilitated the preparation of 28 Shadow Reports, which included critical reports on forms of structural racism in the US.  

 

Famously, John Adams stated that the US is not a nation of human beings (“men”), but a nation of laws, and the Framers further insisted that the US Constitution is the established, superior law of the land, and therefore that the role of the Supreme Court is to interpret it, more or less shielded from popular opinion and changing circumstances. This presumes that Americans have all the rights they could possibly want or use, and these are spelled out as civil & political rights in the Constitution. This brings us full circle. An explanation for why the US Congress never ratifies human rights treaties is identical to the reason for why it never amends the Constitution to include human rights.

 

Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed in 1948, human rights made their dramatic appearance on the world stage beginning in the 1980s. . Many countries wrote or revised their constitutions to include, for example, language rights (e.g., South Africa), women’s rights (most constitutions), cultural rights (e.g., Poland), health care (e.g., Finland), the right to work (e.g., Denmark); protection of domestic workers (e.g., Brazil); and rights of indigenous people (e.g., Paraguay). Critics say that since no country strictly adheres to its constitutionally-mandated human rights provisions there is no point in adopting them. That misses the point.  Such provisions embody principles, are broad agreements that include government as well as citizens and businesses; set constrains on government and economic elites; and engender processes that enliven and engage civil society,  

 

The same can be said for human rights treaties. Most countries have ratified a majority of them, except for very recent ones (such as the 2006 Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities). The one for which there is near consensus is the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Only two countries have not ratified it – the United States and Somalia. While Somalia might be given some slack for lack of a stable government, there is no excuse that the US has not joined the 191 countries that have ratified it.

 

In the last few years Americans have initiated many national discussions that center on human rights, such as a living wage, universal health care, food security, and the rights of gays and lesbians. Therefore, its time to link these discussions to human rights treaties and to the US Constitution. Thomas Paine would surely approve. So would Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who in 1944 proposed an economic bill of rights,  and so would Martin Luther King, Jr. who in 1967 linked the civil rights campaign with a campaign for economic rights and human rights, generally. And, so would Eleanor Roosevelt, who played a leading role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  

 

Judith Blau is president of the US chapter of Sociologists without Borders, and director of the Human Rights Center of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. She teaches at UNC, Chapel Hill. http://www.unc.edu/~jrblau/

This blog entry was published in Huffington Post. June 2009.

 

In Pursuit of Human Rights

 

I’m increasingly convinced that the reason why human equality, human dignity, and social pluralism are illusive in American society is that we do not have what Miguel de Unamuno called “el público” and Alexis de Tocqueville called “the public spirit.” Instead, American communities, towns and cities are segregated by race, class, and citizenship status, with withered downtowns, and with no spaces for people to discuss, argue, and talk across those divides of race, class and citizenship. It is sometimes said that Americans live, worship and work in their individuals silos, with a silo for each neighborhood, each church, and each workplace. There can be no deep shared conception under these circumstances of collective solidarity or the common good, and of authentic pluralism.

 

True, within each community, parishioners in dozens of churches may celebrate one another’s equality every Sunday, and during the week, co-workers in hundreds of work settings may affirm one another’s dignity, but these celebrations and affirmations of shared humanity are within tiny homogenous clusters of people, and do nothing to advance collective solidarity, the common good, and social pluralism. In these silos people simply affirm the equality and dignity of people who are just like themselves. It is far from the cacophonous el público that Unamuno described and the vibrant   public spirit that Tocqueville found in American communities early in the 19^th century.

 

As a scholar-activist, I have run repeatedly into constraints to spark conditions that would promote deep forms of equality, publicness, inclusion and social pluralism. Part of the problem has to do with local governments and people themselves viewing human rights as political and potentially divisive, but for the most part the fractionalization of the population by race, class, and citizenship is the major obstacle.

 

Where is the public space anyway? To distribute fliers on a city plaza, one needs two permits, one from the Police Department and another from City Hall. At least this is the case in Chapel Hill, and I suspect it is widespread practice. Most residential communities and all shopping malls prohibit the distribution of fliers to announce an event. There are no free spaces in town to hold a community-wide meeting, although there are abundant sports fields that are free. Therefore, having a public meeting about, say, the rights of migrants or the rights of members of the GLBT community, is not easy. The constraints are: first, the silo problem; second, anxiety that these are “political” issues and therefore inherently divisive; and, third, city ordinances and property rights.

 

Once we have cleared all these constraints our events have been successful, small, but attracting a broad cross-section of the community, including immigrants and people of color. The Human Rights Center of Chapel Hill & Carrboro, is unique in that it is a community-based, not a university-based human rights center. There are now quite a few university human rights centers, but their priorities are research and scholarship, whereas ours are advocacy for marginalized groups and to provide popular education in the community. The Center officially opened in Carrboro in February 2009, in the poorest immigrant housing community in the county, although it has been functioning, thanks to undergraduates, for nearly a year. By adopting the Center’s proposal on April 21, 2009, the Town of Carrboro became a "human rights city. "

Specifically this declaration by the town accompanied the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The significance of this decision will become clearer over time, but for the Center it means legitimacy and that we can now get to work in a focused way, to pursue our twin objectives of advocacy and popular education.  

 

What is the larger context? Carrboro is one city among seventeen in the world that has declared itself a Human Rights City, and the second in the U.S., after Washington, D.C. on December 10, 2007. This is part of a global movement, spearheaded by Shulamith Koenig, recipient of the 2003 UN Human Rights Achievement Award and president of The Peoples Movement for Human Rights Learning. By adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Town of Carrboro explicitly embraced the principles of equality, inclusion, social pluralism, and the recognition of universal human dignity. Moreover, by adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the town has elevated human rights to uncontestable superior standing and depoliticized their content. This is the place to start. That is, it is the beginning of the pursuit of human rights.

 

 

Published in Commondreams.org on April 27, 2009

 

 

Shovel Ready Projects

 

We sociologists should be ready with our shovel-ready projects since; after all, the economists have let the nation down. In fact, there is a national economic emergency that has been triggered by predatory lenders, greedy financiers, banks with sub-prime mortgages, CEOs with astronomical salaries, investors (who put their funds in derivatives, credit default swaps, hedge funds, and tax havens).

 

Did economists say anything over the past two decades while this was happening? To their credit, some did, including Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Pollin, and William Tabb. For the most part economists who dissented cast their arguments at the macro-level, that is, opposing neoliberal global capitalism. Yet, most economists defended unregulated markets and multinationals’ freedom to do what they wanted, go where they wanted, and produce what they wanted, all in hot pursuit of cheap labor and of places without environmental or other restrictions.

 

Yet what does a world and national economic crisis mean for societies and communities? What do sociologists know that would help a general understanding of how people can collectively engage shared projects and common endeavors? I am somewhat wary of the term, “civil society,” since its focus is on the buffer between people and the state, and what I have in mind are social relations in neighborhoods, community activists, social mobilization, thick democracy, the advance of human rights, NGOs, and pluralistic ties that cross ethnic and racial lines, as well as cross communities of faith.

 

Sociologists know that American communities are like a collection of many silos. People are trapped in ghettos and barrios, the rich choose to live behind walls and gates, and churches are as segregated as neighborhoods. This has been the perfect setup for creating the astronomical rise in the levels of economic inequality we have witnessed over the past two decades. It has also been the perfect setup for the growing concentration of developers’ power at the level of local governments. 

 

Shovel-ready projects that sit on the desks of sociologists (or in their heads) include the following: social and cultural pluralism, gender equity and gender equality, school and neighborhood integration, decent work for all, participatory democracy, participatory economies, inclusive social institutions, universal healthcare, universal housing, protection of members of vulnerable groups (the elderly and disabled), expansion of parks and recreation areas, local food, and.

 

I would call these shovel-ready projects “human rights projects,” but others may call them, “sociology projects.”

Contradictions of the Enlightenment

#009

Modernity has been a western phenomena. It started with the Enlightenment and embraced the ideals of reason, rationality, and scientific thinking. Then, when these Enlightenment ideas found expression in the French and American Revolutions, they  instead took a new form, embracing emancipatory and humanistic ideals of freedom, equality and solidarity -- Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

Thus, the Enlightenment embraced two sets of ideals – one very practical that easily found expression in capitalism, hierarchical institutions, and representative democracy, and the other libratory and grassroots. The latter had difficult emerging because of communications and transportation problems. By default, capitalists run businesses and production sites, and politicians rule without much input from citizens.

There is indication that this is beginning to change. What are your thoughts about this? What would it mean for societies and work organizations? What would it mean for people?

 

Bailing Out a Leaky Boat
#008

As the sub-prime mortgage crisis spread to all financial sectors of the U.S.economy and quickly to the rest of the world, the media  heaped praise on governments for bailing out financial institutions. The media have also been uncritical in their assessments of high-level meetings to save capitalism itself:  a meeting of European leaders on October 1, a meeting of western leaders at Camp David on October 18, and the Asia-Europe Meetings (ASEM) held on October 24-25. Throughout the Fall, governments have been furiously bailing out banks and financial institutions, outdone only by the International Monetary Fund’s attempt to bail out Iceland’s economy to the tune of USD 2.1 billion, and its emergency assistance of .USD 16.5 billion designed to bail out Ukraine.

Prior to an international Economic Summit planned for sometime late 2008, the G20 will meet in Washington in November. Hardly representing those who bear the brunt of the international financial crisis, the G20 is made up of the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, and  the president of the European Central Bank.

Talks at the November G20 meeting will no doubt be a continuation of the talks already held in October: how to protect and save the key financial institutions on which western capitalism and western governments depend. It is not clear now, of course, what financial institutions and, even countries, will ask for a bailout before the G20 meetings, and then before the Summit. Currently IMF is in talks with Belarus, Ukraine, Serbia, Pakistan and Turkey

Nevertheless, it is safe to conclude that the G20 meeting and the Economic Summit meeting  will continue on the same path of the October meetings --- a rescue operation of western capitalist institutions in order to rescue world capitalism itself. While the excesses of neoliberal free-market capitalism are being repudiated, there is no talk of fundamental reforms that will make capitalism more just, more equitable, and more inclusive.

Excluded so far from any of the talks, from the G20 meeting, and no doubt from the  Economic Summit are representatives of the great majority of the world’s 192 countries. The people of these countries have born the brunt of the world economic crisis because they have experienced skyrocketing prices in food and because they often live on very small incomes. They face dire consequences when food is costly, and therefore stand the most to lose if the world economy continues its downward spiral.

 One response to Third World exclusion is the “Statement on the ‘Proposed Global Summit’ to Reform the International Financial System.” Drafted by civil society organizations (NGOs) from Third World countries, the Statement calls for a international summit organized by the UN that would include representatives from all countries. It states that any summit must meet five objectives: 

1. be inclusive of all governments of the world;
2. include representatives  from civil society, citizen’s groups, social movements and other      stakeholders;
3. have a clear timeline and  process for regional consultations, particularly with those most affected      by the crisis;
4. be comprehensive in scope, tackling the full array of issues and institutions;
5. be transparent, with proposals and draft outcome documents made publicly available and      discussed well in advance of the meeting.

In short, the Statement proposes an inclusive and participatory summit that ensures that all affected by the current crisis be represented. It also implies that issues such as trade, foreign aid, labor protections, and land rights not be excluded from the agenda. The statement also reflects a longstanding concern that international financial organizations, especially the International Monetary Fund, do not operate with transparency. The USmedia have paid little, if any, attention to this Statement, its context, or the implications of the issues that it raises.

 Also unnoticed by US media is the release this month of a three-volume report on human rights crimes published by Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), an independent institute that monitors corporations and multinationals. Its Report on Corporate Complicity in International Crimes chronicles human rights and labor abuses committed by corporations and multinationals. The authors - eight jurists - draw the conclusion that there are widespread human rights abuses committed by private companies against people in Third World countries and these abuses are criminal – they violate international human rights treaties and labor conventions.

 “The Statement on the Proposed Global Summit” and the BHRRC report taken together have powerful implications. The Statement does not advance an alternative to world capitalism. Rather it makes two procedural points: first, that those who are most affected by the world economic crisis must be represented at any world summit, and second, people, generally, need to be represented by civil society organizations as well as by governments. The Statement will undoubtedly be ignored because economic elites have always excluded Third World countries in their high-level deliberations. However, excluding them now, when all national economies are both interconnected and imperiled, is fool hearty.  The BHRRC Report confirms what human rights activists and labor unions have been saying for several decades -- corporations and multinationals are guilty of horrendous abuses and widespread exploitation of Third World people.

 Economic elites from rich countries who gather for the Washington economic summit later this year will be happy enough left to themselves. The last thing they want to hear is that the boat they are busy bailing out has a big and gaping hole.

Judith Blau teaches at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is president of the US chapter of Sociologists without Borders. judith_blau@unc.edu

Huffington Post, October 31, 2008

The Economy, Economists, and Collective Goods

#007

In an earlier post (#6), I began, “Why we leave trade up to the economists is worth exploring.” In contrast with most economists, I concluded that (1) Trade cannot be a private good; (2) Trade is a collective good, and beyond that has social and cultural dimensions , embedded in social practices, norms, culture, ritual, beliefs, social institutions (such as the family), and communities; (3) Trade can, though not necessarily, enhance the cultural and social distinctiveness of trading partners.

It was August 16 that I posted that blog entry. On September 7 the crisis erupted. Federal Housing Finance Agency put Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship. From then on it was chaos. -- the bankruptcy of Lehmann Brothers, a forced merger of Merrill Lynch with Bank of America, the US government’s bailout of American International Group, and now involving international banks. The crisis has been widely discussed in terms of attributed “causes,” namely, the sub-prime mortgage debacle, excessive speculation on commodities futures, and the proliferation of exotic financial instruments. 

 Yet these are not causes, but merely symptoms. As I pointed out earlier, trade – whether trade involving commodities, products, currency, collateral, debt or credit cannot be a private good. All trade should be embedded in social life so that all are stakeholders and recognize the gains that others stand to make, and recognize the risks and losses that the others incur. That is, for example, the mortgage holder should know what the mortgage lender stands to gain from the mortgage payments just as the mortgage lender should understand whether the mortgage holder can make regular payments or not. So far the mortgage holder has had to disclose everything about their economic worth and livelihood while the mortgage lender discloses nothing about the profits that it stands to make.

 Yes, this will be cumbersome for international investments. Yes, this will be cumbersome in mass markets. Yes, this will be cumbersome for the owners of money. Yet it is only asking the owners of wealth to do what borrowers have always done. My plan has the merits of restoring the social function of markets and trade, including notably markets and trade that involve money. Economists are welcome to my proposals. No charge!! 

 

TRADE, COLLECTIVE GOODS, AND ECONOMISTS

# 6

Why we leave trade up to the economists is worth exploring. The purpose of trade is to promote the well-being of people and to advance the prosperity of communities and society in ways that benefits the present generation as well as future generations. The purpose of trade is not to enhance the wealth of multinationals, investors, shareholders and financiers. We have slid so far down the slippery slope that we must catapult ourselves back up to safety. By “we” I mean all of us, the world’s peoples.

The slide down the slippery slope started in the Thatcher-Bush era, accelerated with NAFTA when Clinton was president, and became treacherous and steep in the George W. Bush era. There are three main points I wish to consider before making a proposal about the training of economists.

(1) Trade cannot be a private good that benefits particular persons, particular economic actors, or particular political elites. Trade is a collective good, with collective benefits. Trade and trade regimes are like clean water, democracy, biodiversity, knowledge, internet, technology, rail and road systems, international, national and local laws, subway systems, and transparent governance. That is, trade is indivisible and has indivisible benefits.

Imagine excluding some or most from access to clean air, allowing only a few to live in places where the air quality is good, leaving the rest with pollution! Or imagine requiring that each and every person who wishes to cross a river must build their own personal bridge!

Clearly collective goods should not be privatized. When they are, it creates extreme inefficiencies (the private bridge example) and unjust inequalities (some with access to clean air, most without). The rampant privatization of collective goods that has occurred in the United States- medical care, pensions, prisons, the military, schools, natural reserves, parks, and internet access – has fueled extraordinary inequalities. This is well-known and well-documented. What is less well known is that privatization of collective goods also creates inefficiencies. This is intuitively clear when we recognize the unchallenged empirical fact that privatization creates inequalities, which in turn, create inefficiencies.

Trade, being a collective good, should therefore not be privatized, and, again, by that, I mean appropriated for the benefit of private parties – multinationals, investors, and so forth. Rather than serving the collective good, international trade deals have fueled joblessness, landlessness, inflation, and economic inequalities. Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton contend in their recent book, Fair Trade for All, that poor nations themselves must set the terms of trade and of trade agreements in which they participate. That is, trade and trade agreements cannot and must not be set to serve the interests of, say,U.S.agribusiness, through its proxies – the US Treasury, the World Bank, IMF and WTO.
I will put this a little differently from the way that an economist might. For all people to achieve dignity, well-being, social and economic security, and to nurture and grow democracy, they must be self-determining.

The North has badly botched it up, and it’s not the North that is being especially punished for it, but instead the Global South where people confront food shortages, contaminated water, runaway fuel prices, dumping of agricultural products, degradation of nature, impoverishment, unemployment, forced migration, and population displacement.

(2) Trade is not only a collective good, it also is more broadly social and cultural, embedded in social practices, norms, culture, ritual, beliefs, social institutions (such as the family), and communities. Because trade is reciprocal exchange, it is a vehicle for inter-group relations, helps to forge ties of mutual understanding, and besides that, allows information flows, the diffusion of ideas, and the exchange of knowledge. Being more or less reciprocal, people come to recognize their ethical responsibilities. No sweatshops. No child labor. No unsafe working conditions.

(3) Trade can, though not necessarily, enhance the cultural and social distinctiveness of trading partners. Americans’ lives are enriched by coffee from Guatemala, tea from India, rugs from
Morocco and Turkey, cotton from Egypt, wine from France, music from Ghana, nuts from Senegal, ballet from Russia, and sushi from Japan

The exemplar trade market of all times was the Silk Road, which beginning in around 330BC, became the cosmopolitan network for diverse peoples -Turks, Iranians, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Malays. The Silk Road attracted traders, merchants, nomads, artists, and royalty. Its exuberant cultural vitality was matched by equally exuberant exchange relations involving silk, of course, but also rare plants, precious objects, medicines, spices, gunpowder, and printing devices.

Trade Basics 

Those who use trade for their own naked self interests – to make a profit - are free riders. They have enriched themselves while two-thirds of developing countries have been turned from producers of food into importers of food. The WTO, the IMF, the US and European countries have demanded that poor countries open up their economies, demand that governments reduce their supports and cut back on spending, and demand privatization of services. The U.S. and European countries dump their subsidized products on poor countries. They force farmers to use GM seeds, making farmers buy seeds year after year. Agribusinesses appropriate the lands of peasant farmers.  US monetizes food aid –that is, it sells food to NGOs, bypassing government and thereby destabilizing local prices for consumers and harming food producers.

 What is to be done? The WTO talks have just collapsed, to the great relief of poor farmers around the world. The rich countries are baffled, according to the WTO. But now is the time, with the food crisis painfully self-evident, for the representatives of WTO to venture into the countryside and learn why it is that farmers are greatly relieved that the talks collapsed.

CHANGE
#5

What might the American people ask Barack Obama to tackle on January 21st? I am assuming here that the members of the Electoral College elect him. I am also taking him at his word when he says, “I’m asking you to believe not just in my ability to bring about change in Washington, I’m asking you to believe in yours.”

What changes do we Americans want? Like everyone else, I have a list, and like many others, ending the war is at the top of my list. My next priority is that Obama initiate public hearings all over the country, with the goal of revising the US Constitution. Fundamental changes in the Constitution would take care of many other things on my list.

No other constitution in the world is as old as America’s is. Few are as skimpy. In fact, I know of none that is. The eighteenth-century conception of citizens’ rights embraced in English Common Law, the US Bill of Rights, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen drew from peoples’ determination to curb the arbitrary power of tyrannical monarchs, and thus the emphasis on Civil and Political Rights. Since the eighteenth century, conceptions have changed and there are few tyrants left in the world (well – a few), but the US Constitution has changed little. Additional amendments liberated slaves and gave African Americans and women the right to vote. That’s all. Nothing even about the rights of indigenous Americans, whose life expectancies are comparable to those in many Third World countries.

The English and the French, along with around 161 other countries, have moved right along, expanding citizens’ constitutional rights to encompass much more than Civil and Political Rights. Contemporary constitutions typically encompass provisions for decent jobs, economic security, women’s rights, rights of race and ethnic minorities, and cultural pluralism. Not the US Constitution.

Globalization accompanies practices that put people at risk, and, therefore, countries have rapidly undertaken constitutional revisions that will better protect their peoples. On the face of it, this idea might seem quite remarkable to many Americans. The government protect us? The government does protect CEOs, lobbyists, multinationals, pharmaceutical companies, military contractors, banks, and hedge fund managers, but we citizens are left to fend for ourselves.

Let’s take a few examples of provisions in State Constitutions:

+ Gender equality (Mozambique): “Men and women shall be equal before the law.”

+ Right to work (Spain): “All Spaniards have the duty to work and the right to work,”

+ Right to health care (Belarus): “Citizens of the Republic shall be guaranteed the right to health care.”

+ Environmental rights (Angola): “All citizens shall have the right to live in a healthy and unpolluted environment.”

+ Right to leisure (Brazil): “Annual vacation with compensation at least one third above the normal salary.”

+ Right to housing (South Africa) “Everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing.”

+ Minority rights (Slovakia): “Citizens of national minorities or ethnic groups in the Slovak Republic shall be guaranteed their full development…..”

+ Security (Belgium): “The right to employment…. decent accommodation; the right to enjoy the protection of a healthy environment; the right to enjoy cultural and social fulfillment; the right to social security, to health care and to social, medical, and legal aid.”

Readers can explore more on their own. Constitutions can be found on the website set up by the Richmond Law School, “Constitution Finder.” A main thing here is that all constitutions have civil & political rights, but beyond that nearly all constitutions also encompass positive rights that people have. Such rights rest on the assumption of equality, that the interests of all the people harmonize with the interests of the State, that people themselves care about their fellow citizens, and, that citizens’ wellbeing is the object of the State.

Things are tough, with many Americans losing their homes, the collapse of many college lending programs, the rapidly escalating prices of fuel and food, layoffs, businesses and factories closing, stagnant wages, exorbitant healthcare costs, a weak dollar, failed retirement plans, and always deeply sad news from Iraq.

We deserve a new constitution! No better time for CHANGE.

This entry was also published on July 4, 2008 on the Huffington Post.

The Best Class Ever!

#004

Yes, I know that I wrote somewhere earlier that the students in my two Fall classes, Soc 131 and Soc 273 were the best ever, so now (hmm) it is a wee bit awkward to write that the students in my Spring class, Soc. 290 are the best ever. Never mind; what is remarkable is that the Spring students took what they inherited from the Fall students and launched an amazing project -- the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Human Rights Initiative (CH-CHRI)!!

In the Fall students studied international human rights law and the human rights provisions in other countries’ constitutions. They were shocked to learn that the US  lags behind the world and the majority of countries by about fifty years. They decided to hold a mock Constitutional Convention, which is documented in a blog  maintained by then-undergraduate student, Cynthia Trinh, and in an article written by graduate student, Beth Latshaw. The Convention was a smashing success, attended by NAACP representatives, community activists , labor representatives, and the mayors of both cities.

Americans can protest that their government fails to ratify human rights treaties. It will take, however, great public support as well as broad-based coalitions of lawyers, determined scientists, civic leaders, church leaders, and representatives of major nonprofits to lobby and persuade Congress and the president to make this a reality. No US president, with the exception of Carter (and he failed), has been supportive of the US ratifying international human rights treaties (or for that matter, the human rights treaties of the Organization of American States.

What do we do in the meantime?

Why Not Cities?

Locales are where people engage one another -- ethically, responsibly, while recognizing others’ dignity, cultures, and identities. It is in locales where residents find solutions for universal housing and health care, gender equity, nondiscrimination, quality education, green power, migrants’ rights, the rights of gays and lesbians, local farms, and (even) redistribution of wealth. And, its in locales where inclusion and pluralism are nurtured and celebrated.

Soc 290 picked up where Soc 131 and Soc 273 left off. Only the scale is different – a shift from the international/national to the local. The students were encouraged by both mayors’ saying that they would support Chapel Hill and Carrboro becoming Human Rights Cities.They were also empowered by the knowledge that there is one other HR City in North America –  Edmonton - with others in the making, and quite a few around the world. This is the background for why we decided to launch the CH-CHRI. (For a background, with links to other cities, see my article; Excellent sources of information on Human Rights Cities are PDHRE and the John Humphrey Center of Edmonton. 

A Citizens’ Steering Committee was formed at the beginning of the semester, and will continue to grow in size and diversity. At their meetings (about monthly), the students presented their work and updates. As things move forward, the Steering Committee will propose projects for the students to tackle.

To make a long story short – the 19 students in Soc 290 did amazing work. In a sense, we were “all over the map.” We went to town hearings (taking our message about the priority of human rights with us), met with university researchers, met with people in the nonprofit sector, went to a Law School conference, proposed changes in the police department’s work with minority kids, attended sessions in a black church on environmental racism, went to meetings for developers and “gave them a piece of our minds,” went to health care meetings, worked on a clean-water initiative, consolidated connections with an end-the-homelessness coalition and met with some homeless people. We felt we wanted and needed this "all-over-the-map" approach in order to better understand how human rights are situated in the two cities and where the weak and strong spots are. (None will be surprised that the challenges will be building solidarity across racial, ethnic and citizenship lines, and overcoming the divides of wealth, ownership, and privilege.)

I will not say more here, but let the 19 students describe their projects. See two blogs, one by Bernard Worthy, which captures the core theme of our course, and another by Meredith Austin, which includes entries by students and is an excellent summary of our semester.

Let me end by saying that it takes courage for a college student to speak at a public hearing, telling developers that their classy projects are an assault on the well being of near-by African Americans because they will be forced out of the community that their families had lived in for generations. That’s just one reason this was the Best Class Ever. (There are 18 other reasons)

Spring Term

Toolkits

#003

Albie Sachs, prominent South African jurist, sums up the logic of human rights this way: when we celebrate human rights we celebrate human equality, but at the same time we celebrate that each and every one of us is different from all the rest. Sachs captures the essence of what human rights are: human equality and human difference. By implication, too, humans have responsibilities to one another to ensure equality and difference. If these are the principles, where do we go next? Surely we need tools, but there are different kinds of tools, and therefore different toolkits.

There are three.

The International Toolkit

In the international toolkit, there are three tools. The first are human rights laws agreed to by nation-states and “housed” within international agencies: the United Nations, UNESCO, and the International Labour Organization (ILO). The second are Nongovernmental Organizations – NGOs -  that mobilize and coordinate human rights actions transnationally. NGOs are diverse, including “whistle blowers,” such as Human Rights Watch, and mobilizers, such as Via Campesina. The third  are networked movements that span the globe and unite people in opposition to oppression, economic exploitation, war and militarism. At the center of these movements is the World Social Forum. In different ways, human rights laws, NGOs, and networked movements are advancing equality while upholding peoples’ distinctive cultural rights.

National Toolkits

Toolkits of nation-states are constitutional provisions for human rights. The range is extraordinary. Just to illustrate, Brazil has detailed labor provisions; Finland, South Africa and Spain have provisions for language and cultural rights; Paraguay protects the rights of its indigenous peoples; Belarus, among other countries, has provisions for universal medical care; and Argentina and other countries have constitutional provisions for the rights of women.  In spite of great variation, the trend is towards uniformity and enhanced protections because citizens and NGOs everywhere are demanding it, and this includes socioeconomic rights and provisions for the rights of particular groups, such as women and minorities. 

 Local Toolkits: Learning with Others

It is only at the local level - in neighborhoods, communities, towns and cities - that people existentially learn, feel and understand the significance of equality and difference. By this I mean that people discover these principles themselves, through engagement with others, not abstractly through laws and constitutions. Black Americans and white Americans sort through their shared and different histories; citizens listen to migrants and, in turn, migrants to citizens; and  farmers and city folk come together and have discussions about what they have in common and how they are different.

The local toolkit of human rights is messy and disorganized, but it is the most significant of them all.

Please see my students’ blogs: 

 
http://humanrightscity.blogspot.com/

http://www.unchumanrights.bigbig.com/