Working Proposal from Outreach Work Group: Human Rights Focus
Chris Mason
Proposal for an Occupy Pittsburgh Human Rights Agenda
[NOTE: As we prepare for the actions on December 10, some of us in
outreach have been thinking about how to sustain the engagement of
folks we attract to Occupy Pittsburgh around our Human Rights Day
message. We would like to present a few different invitations for
people to engage in concrete and sustained actions supporting the
goals of the OWS movement, building on the ideas and momentum we'll be
creating on that day. Here's a proposal we'll be discussing at our
next outreach meeting, but it is one that may warrant more general
discussion by participants in Occupy PGH. Please share with other
working groups and folks as you see fit.]
Recognizing that:
Economic inequality is a leading impediment to the enjoyment of
basic human rights by all people;
The framers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights saw
economic and political rights as fundamentally connected and therefore
indivisible;
The universality of rights means that violations of rights
anywhere is a threat to human rights everywhere;
Despite decades of selective affirmation of some civil and
political rights, the United States has repeatedly rejected the
urgency of economic, social, and cultural rights—the very rights which
our national and local officials have targeted most viciously in
recent months; and
Existing international mechanisms have proved incapable of
creating an economic and political order in which universal human
rights can be realized, as called for in Article 28 of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights;
Further recognizing that:
All of human history confirms that powerful groups never give
people their rights—oppressed people must come together to demand
those rights;
Occupy Wall Street protests around the country and supporters of
the movement worldwide have organized in support of universal human
rights on December 10, 2011;
Organizations in this country and around the world have been
increasingly coming together around the agenda of “human rights
cities”;
The city of Pittsburgh passed a Proclamation in 2011 declaring
itself a “Human Rights City”; and
We therefore call upon participants in Occupy Pittsburgh to embrace a
human rights agenda in its organizing and outreach work, thereby
“occupying” the public discourse to encourage creativity, dialogue,
and mobilization around human rights, particularly as they relate to
the economic and political inequalities that have been the focus of
the Occupy Wall Street Movement. We urge Occupy activists in this city
and elsewhere to use opportunities contained in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the Human Rights City initiatives, and
other initiatives, such as that advocating for the rights of Mother
Earth, to advance our struggle for fundamental economic and social
transformation by demonstrating the inherent incompatibilities between
respect for human rights and the privileging of corporate power and
greed.
[To explore the potential and to develop a strategy for integrating a
human rights agenda into the work of Occupy Pittsburgh, the outreach
working group proposes to collect input from participants in our
International Human Rights Day action on the question of “What would
Pittsburgh look like if it was run based on human rights principles?”
A task force will analyze this information and supplement with
appropriate online surveys in order to develop an appropriate follow-
up action that can be announced at the Occupy Pittsburgh teach-in in
January and at Martin Luther King Day actions on January 16, 2012.]
[SPECIFY MORE HOW THIS WILL BE DONE—Urging outreach, education,
action, and other OP working groups to make connections to human
rights…]