Human Rights Matters

Human Rights Matters

By: Llenda Jackson-Leslie

For the next ten days through December 10, International Human Rights Day, our Comm in the Storm blog will be all about human rights. To learn more about International Human Rights Day click here. For too many Americans, human rights is a discussion that happens once a year at the UN or when the State Department releases its annual report about other people in other countries.  But as our president, Gwen McKinney says- human rights is no foreign affair.

We’re going to spend the next ten days talking about human rights, because human rights are fundamental, all inclusive and universal. Human rights can’t be stratified by county, ethnicity, gender, race, sexuality, ability, religion or class according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They are the basic and fundamental rights to which we are all entitled simply by virtue of our humanity. The one quality we all share. 

American exceptionalism leads some to believe that human rights are a foreign affair. A yardstick by which we can judge others, without ever checking our own reflection in the mirror.  But the real measure of human rights is the extent to which we treat the most vulnerable, marginalized and powerless members of our communities.

Sometimes the international headlines depicting ethnic and regional violence, and fraudulent elections, starvation and the corruption of megalomaniac leaders can lull Americans into believing that we are in a position to offer the world a lesson on human rights. Don’t be fooled.

Ask yourself --how do we treat our homeless, our prisoners and the formerly incarcerated, the poor and unemployed. How do we treat those who suffer from mental illness or physical disability? Why do race and ethnicity and gender and zip code affect the length and quality of our lives?

McKinney & Associates is proud to work with a coalition of civil rights, labor and community groups  led by the NAACP who will march from the Koch Brothers corporate headquarters in New York City to the UN Plaza on December 10^th International Human Rights Day in determined defense of our most preservative right—the right to vote. You can learn more about the rally here .The Koch Brothers, have provided much of the financing to undermine that right by financing restrictive voting measures in 14 states, the Brennan Center for Justice estimates that as many as five million voters may be prevented from registering or casting ballots in 2012. And those five million will most likely be disproportionately older, poor, African American and Latino.

Not by accident, the unprecedented turnout in 2008 was a watershed moment, the largest number of young, African-American and Latino voters cast ballots in the history of our nation. Exercising our right to vote is still the most basic and fundamental way we can expand the human rights of all Americans.