As highlighted in a recent blog by The Nation, farmworkers in Florida have much to celebrate. The migrant farmworkers of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) and their student, faith, and fair food allies have mobilized nationwide actions for more than a decade, making basic demands to the most powerful fast food corporations in the world: protect the human rights of farmworkers, put an end to modern-day slavery in the fields of Florida, and give farmworkers one penny more per pound of tomatoes they pick. This past week, East Coast Growers and the Compass Group (the world’s largest food-service company) have agreed to pass down the penny more per pound the farmworkers have earned in agreements with Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Subway. Although farmworkers and domestic workers are excluded from the 1935 U.S. National Labor Relations Act, which protects the right to fair working conditions, the right to join unions, and the right to overtime pay, these farmworkers have nonetheless fought for these inalienable human rights, and together with consumers’ demands not only for sustainable food, but fair food, they are successfully bending the arc of agriculture towards justice.

Photo by Scott Robertson:

As the state of California cuts funds in the face of the current economy and university regents meet to discuss drastic increases in student fees in the UC system, those most effected by these measures- the students themselves- are planning a walk-out today at 12:00pm. The students are exercising their right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression in demanding that their right to affordable education be fulfilled. The students recognize the problem posed by the economy, but are criticizing the priorities the state and regents have made in making the students and lowest-paid workers in the university system pay for the deficit. Rights organizations such as the Student Labor Action Project have noted how the administration has tried to co-opt student mobilization by making these important budget decisions in the summer months. So far, fourteen students have been arrested in demonstrations earlier this week. How do tuition increases in public education system impact racial and economic diversity on campuses? Will actions such as these in California spread to other colleges and universities around the country facing similar challenges?

Mexican journalist and human rights defender, Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, is facing increasingly dangerous threats for her work exposing organized crime rings and sexual violence in Mexico. Ms. Cacho Ribeiro received Amnesty International’s Ginetta Sagan Award on International Women’s Day in 2007 and was the laureate of the 2008 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. What is the role of the journalist in advancing justice? What does this reflect about freedom of the press and its relationship to securing other human rights? Most importantly, how can U.S. journalists support the work of colleagues in other parts of the world who often risk their lives by exposing human rights violations?

Human rights are often framed in the United States in terms of political and civil rights, such as equality before the law, the right to a fair trial, and the right to freedom of opinion and expression. However, the full spectrum of human rights recognizes the indivisibility of all human rights, which includes Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. These rights include the right to adequate housing, safe working conditions, and education, among others. These rights are not protected in the U.S. Bill of Rights, nor has the U.S. ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Some of the most pressing challenges in domestic policy today include the problems of unequal access to public services such as healthcare, abusive labor practices against undocumented workers, and forced evictions for the many who have been hit hardest by the economic recession. How does our understanding of these issues, as well as the possible solutions to them, change when we recognize them as human rights violations, and discard the age-old tactic of blaming the victim? On September 24th, 2009, the newly created Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights will be opened for signature and ratification at a ceremony at the United Nations in New York. How do you think the U.S. will participate, if at all? Should it?

On September 23rd, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law will be hosting a panel on the ‘Hope and Challenge of the Optional Protocol.’

We constantly have news of war and conflict, detentions and renditions, and all of that takes place in very high-flown language of law and international politics. My daily path to work takes me past a spot where homeless folks line up and wait for different churches and civic groups who bring meals there, and I cannot help but feel sympathy and a lot of uncertainty about the experiences that brought them to that same location in such different circumstances as me.

Do you think about rights when you read the Sunday paper? Maybe it’s through discussion with a friend or a random acquaintance? Is it while you’re waiting for the bus or stuck in traffic? At a coffee shop, bar, church, synagogue, mosque, the local swimming pool?

What makes you think about rights? Put another way, what makes rights relevant to you?

I read to find out what I think.  Since you’re here, reading, I know many of you do the same.

You’re reading a blog about human rights, so I also know you think a bit about human rights.  We intend this blog to be a place where people can speak up and participate in engaging discussion.  This given, I would like to start a bit of a discussion here…

What is the first right you think of?  Why do you think that is?

I was raised to expect certain rights. I also know many of us were raised to expect particularly different ones. We all know of rights being protected or limited because of all sorts of things, and we each have faced very different circumstances- ranging from war, to immigration, to just being raised in the same place as our grandparents. I don’t think it’s too strong for me to predict that we will be talking about different expected rights because of these different circumstances.

Let me give an example of what I have in mind.  For me, the right to vote first pops up.  On one hand, I think it’s because I live in the United States and voting is so central to this society. On the other hand, I know it’s because I do not face any immediate challenge to my rights–nothing threatens my life; I am free to move among society; I am free to speak as I see fit.

So, what right is the first to come to your mind?  Why?

“If we abandon the liberties we cherish, the terrorists will have won.”

-Senator Chuck Hagel, R-NE, September 12, 2001

The events of September 11, 2001, have had a direct impact on the relationship between the government of the United States and its citizens. The most basic civil rights are civil liberties; those rights that protect people from their own government. Civil liberties protected in the United States include the right to due process, the right to free speech and assembly, the right to privacy, and the right to equal protection under the law. One of the many tragedies of 9/11 has been the government’s widespread disavowal of these civil liberties. The Bill of Rights, the founding document of the U.S. government which speaks most directly to the issues of civil liberties and human rights, has been shuttered for nearly a decade now by the USA Patriot Act, passed one month after 9/11. Those rights which went unquestioned at the close of the 20th century have since been jeopardized with practices such as unreasonable search and seizure, government spying, closure of government proceedings and documents, and the encouragement of pointing fingers. Where they have taken place, these practices have largely been justified with reference to the USA Patriot Act, some of the provisions of which will expire at the end of this year. Both Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union have active campaigns for turning this into an opportunity for a revision of the Act in its entirety.

September 11 is now a national holiday called “Patriot Day;” let us not forget that true regard for one’s country means the preservation and defense of the rights we call civil liberties.

September 11 is a precarious date indeed. Since 2001, this date has entered into the realm of memory, both within the minds of individuals and in the construction of a collective U.S. narrative. I say this date is precarious because, in my own experience, my memory from that day- hidden within the sanctuary of my individual being- has come to signify something that is increasingly fractured from the narrative shaped in the mainstream media. I thus find myself almost dreading this anniversary, not only because of the pain I feel for those who suffered, but also because I must confront a dominant memory being forged that claims that this pain is uniquely ‘ours’ and exclusively ‘American.’

However, looking back, the memory of September 11th is also the day I felt the most human- by this I mean that I felt infinitely small, and on equal footing with the rest of the world to the raw vulnerability of human life. These feelings are not uniquely mine, nor are they monopolized by North Americans on September 11. Rather, they are genuine feelings of sorrow, humility, and empathy that human beings feel in the face of tragedy. Yet somehow, it seems that these individual memories are often silenced by the official collective memory, which makes claim to exceptional suffering as a justification for exceptionalism in foreign policy. Ariel Dorfman, the renowned Chilean playwright, captures in his essay “The Last September 11” the universality of pain and the lessons we must learn from the world’s many September 11s, including the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile on September 11, 1973. Dorfman’s argument for the fundamental respect for the equal dignity and value of human life, regardless of the borders in which one lives, is the foundation of universal human rights, and I hope that by rediscovering our individual and deeply personal memories of September 11, 2001, we as a nation of people will begin to remember that feeling of vulnerability and recognize our citizenship in the global community.

The Bombing of La Moneda in Chile; September 11, 1973