Following the attacks in Paris, Republican Presidential candidate and Ohio Governor John Kasich said that he wants to set up an agency with a “mandate” to promote what he calls “Judeo-Christian values” overseas to counter Islamic propaganda. He later likened his idea to the Cold War “Voice of America,” meaning that he wanted to combat propaganda with propaganda. Sure sounds like a great way to get to the truth of the matter.

In some ways, what made Kasich’s remarks so inflammatory were not the values that he wanted to promote, but the way in which he framed them.

Kasich says he would create the new agency to promote the values of human rights, democracy and the freedoms of speech, religion and association. Kasich says the information would be distributed in the Middle East, China, Iran and Russia, to compete with the propaganda and misinformation purveyed by Islamic militants.

Promoting human rights, democracy and freedoms of speech sounds very familiar to me. Oh yes, I think that I’ve read a great deal about them in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It’s remarkable how much is included in this document of less than two thousand words. The UDHR was the brainchild of Eleanor Roosevelt following World War II. Her thinking was that, just as the original U.S. Constitution was incomplete without the Bill of Rights, the recently-ratified Charter of the United Nations was not complete without a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Roosevelt headed the UN Commission on Human Rights, which drafted the Declaration. This was not an easy task, especially since the just-concluded war was in some ways a conflict between fascism and democracy. What would Germany and Japan have to say about human rights? Additionally, the United Nations roster of members included a number of countries that had very little connection to or history with human rights as understood by western societies.

When the UDHR came up for a vote in December, 1948, it passed semi-unanimously. Forty-eight countries voted in favor, no countries voted no, and eight abstained (the Soviet Union, Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, People’s Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, People’s Republic of Poland, Union of South Africa, Czechoslovakia and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

The defeated countries of World War II (specifically Germany, Japan and Italy) did not vote on the UDHR because they had not yet met the United Nations’ criteria of being a “peace-loving nation” for admission to the international organization.

But what is remarkable is the number of non-western countries that voted for the UDHR. Many of these were predominantly Muslim states. They included:

1. Afghanistan
2. Burma
3. China
4. Egypt
5. Ethiopia
6. Iran
7. Iraq
8. Lebanon
9. Liberia
10. Pakistan
11. Syria
12. Turkey

Imagine: had the United Nations offered a proposal to its member nations to adopt a document on human rights called “Judeo-Christian Values.” Consider how inflammatory that would have been. Besides being clearly objectionable to all religious other than Judaism and Christianity, it would have left out in the cold individuals who do not subscribe to any religion.

Eleanor Roosevelt knew how to build a coalition without throwing insults at others and by considering inclusiveness to be a primary value. She favored understanding over a propaganda machine.

John Kasich is considered by many to be the most well-grounded of the Republican candidates for president. But his views on an agency to promote Judeo-Christian values is not only removed from what Eleanor Roosevelt stood for, but also from recent Republican presidents. Can you imagine Dwight D. Eisenhower favoring such an exclusionary strategy? Richard Nixon knew a great deal about foreign affairs and did not want to be provocative where not necessary. Ronald Reagan never seemed like a religious crusader, and even George W. Bush complimented Islam in the days after 9-11.

Should John Kasich wind up getting the Republican nomination because he is the least distant from reality among his competitors, he must learn more about living in a multi-cultural world. A good place to start would be to drop the crusade and accept the principles of an already implemented document. Republicans complain that President Obama needed too much on-the-job training, but if their best candidate is so offensive to non-Jews and non-Christians (and actually quite a few Jews and Christians), then he will give the term “on-the-job” training a whole new meaning.

The post Judeo-Christian values? How about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights instead? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Do you suffer from progressive-cause fatigue? Does daybreak reveal an inbox bursting with entreaties from progressive politicians and causes pitching the cause-du-jour and pleading for you to add your name and slide the cursor to “submit”?

If you immediately hit “delete” and don’t even bother to skim the offerings, read no further. But if you’re someone whose store of empathy is never quite full, read on.

Just a few days ago my inbox contained a petition of a different stripe. This one was forwarded by a friend whose passion for all things Greek is boundless. The petition addressed the clash between strict EU fishing regulations and a significant artifact of Greek culture—the caique, a painted, handmade wooden fishing boat beloved by locals and tourists alike. As part of their commitment to ensure the recovery of depleted fish populations in the Mediterranean, the EU has been offering cash subsidies to fishermen in exchange for stepping away from their livelihood. In Greece, the EU mandate has resulted in the confiscation and destruction of 10,000 of the traditional boats over the past decade.

The petition, calling on the Greek government to halt the destruction and find a way to repurpose the caiques, was just one of many posted on the website of Avaaz (a word that means voice in several languages), an international organization dedicated to using the fast-response capability of the Internet to funnel protest efforts and press for social justice, one local issue at a time.

Avaaz wants you to get involved

With over 14 million members in 193 countries and more than 74 million actions across the globe since 2007, Avaaz shines a light on issues you’re not likely to see on the nightly news.  Their focus is broad and ever shifting—from calling for an end to prison sentences for Honduran teenagers who take the morning-after pill; to demanding repeal of the Moroccan penal code that allows rapists to avoid prosecution by marrying their underage victims; to seeking information on the whereabouts of internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who has tragically been “disappeared” once again by the Chinese authorities.

Although at first glance Avaaz’s mission sounds like starry-eyed idealism—organizing “citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we have and the world we want”—their tactics are pragmatic and effective.

On its website, the organization explains the mission in this way:

Avaaz empowers millions of people from all walks of life to take action on pressing global, regional and national issues, from corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change.  Our model of Internet organizing allows thousands of individual efforts, however small, to be rapidly combined into a powerful collective force.

The Avaaz community campaigns in fifteen languages, served by a core team on six continents and thousands of volunteers.  We take action—signing petitions, funding media campaigns and direct actions, emailing, calling and lobbying governments, and organizing “offline” protests and events—to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform the decisions that affect us all.

The case for global activism

The tactics of Avaaz follow a now well-trodden tradition that was first formulated in the 1960s by British lawyer Peter Benenson, the founder of Amnesty International. Since Benenson’s first letter-writing campaign (which called for the release of two Portuguese students imprisoned for raising a toast to freedom), mobilizing international support for social justice through letters and petitions has become an axiom of progressive activism.

One perspective on the imperative for global activism was recently outlined by former British diplomat Carne Ross. In his just-published book, The Leaderless Revolution, Ross recounts the failure of governments and established institutions to address the most pressing problems of humanity in the early twenty-first century.  “It would be foolish,” he writes, “to place our faith in one form of management—government—to solve them.” Avaaz and its online community couldn’t agree more.  The strength of Avaaz’s mission lies in the belief that concerned individuals must step into the breach and defend the rights of other individuals around the globe.

The Internet and armchair activism

The Internet, with its immediacy and direct access to a wide community, has rendered the petitioning tactic even more effective than it was in Benenson’s time. One question that rankles, however, is whether signing onto an online petition, such as those on the Avaaz website, is just a facile substitute for direct engagement.

Theorist, historian, and social-activist hero Howard Zinn may have indirectly provided the best answer.  Shortly before he passed away, Zinn expressed his optimism to an audience of college students when he testified to his faith in the power of information to inspire.  He put it this way: “People are decent, and when the truth comes to them, they react. “

As always, Howard Zinn was right. Some type of reaction is better than no reaction at all. So when the truth shows up in my inbox, I recall his words and the words of others like him who dedicated their lives to fight for social justice and who not once allowed themselves to feel cynical, defeated, or fatigued.  And then I figure that the least I can do is to pay attention to the truth and offer something meaningful from my place of comfort. Yes, that means that more often than not I type in my name and then “submit.”

The post Avaaz: Global, progressive activism in your inbox appeared first on Occasional Planet.

When Eleanor Roosevelt helped draft and gain acceptance for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR], she started something big. Adopted by the fledgling United Nations in 1948, the UDHR’s 30 original “articles” still ring so true and are so clearly fundamental that they still form the moral foundation of U.N. resolutions and actions, and of constitutions and laws in many countries.

But although her work on the UDHR was progressive and forward-thinking, Mrs. Roosevelt probably could not have envisioned some of the ways in which international human rights have broadened recently.

The first big change came in July 2010, when the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution stating that access to clean water and sanitation are basic human rights. The resolution called on countries and international organizations to “provide financial resources, build capacity and transfer technology, particularly to developing countries, in scaling up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all.”

Although activists have long quoted UDHR Articles 3, 22 and 25 as implying the right to water, until the July 2010 vote, the right had never been officially ratified by the full General Assembly. The vote was 122 in favor, zero against, and 41 abstentions [the US was one, along with, primarily, other industrialized nations, except for Germany, but that’s another story.]  It took 62 years to get water as a human right on the books. But even though the most recent UN resolution is non-binding and has not been officially added, as some activists propose, as Article 31 of the UDHR, it’s probably safe to say that Mrs. Roosevelt would approve.

Mrs. Roosevelt would most likely also be pleased by discussions—on another expansion of human rights—that took place in Cancun at the recently convened [November 29-December 10, 2010] UN summit meeting on climate change. Inside and outside the meeting hall, diplomats and activists pushed hard to establish an even broader category of human rights: the right to a healthy environment.

On December 3, 2010, a Yes! Magazine report on the Cancun summit described the effort:

Activists in Cancún and Mexico City are rallying behind the idea of environmental rights. Many support a document called the “People’s Agreement on Climate Change,” which includes a “Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth.” It’s an idealistic name for a proposal that would sound either visionary or improbable, or both—if not for the fact that the declaration represents the work of representatives from 56 countries and of tens of thousands of people who attended a climate conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia last April. The document declares that everybody has rights to basics like clean water and clean air, but it also says something even more extraordinary: that the planet’s ecosystems themselves have rights.

Yes! reports that the conference in Cochabamba brought to the table “humanity’s relationship with Pachamama, or Mother Earth.” The issue, promoted primarily by indigenous communities focuses on some big questions:

“Can we really reach a sustainable relationship with the Earth unless we stop looking at it as something to be conquered or fixed that is outside of us? How would it change our lives and our struggles if we believed, as Leonardo Boff of Brazil said,  [translated here] “Everything that exists deserves to exist, and everything that lives deserves to live?”  Or if we understood the Earth as a living thing of which we are a part, or that  life is a moment of the Earth, and the human life is a moment of life”? The clear message coming through in Cochabamba is that we have to get right with nature.”

A look at the proposed Universal Declaration of Rights of Mother Earth reveals a document that, in tone and structure, echoes that of the Eleanor Roosevelt model. Its preamble offers a letter of appreciation and gratitude to Earth, as well as taking a direct swipe at the evils of capitalistic exploitation of the planet’s resources. The preamble also makes a thought-provoking statement about the interdependence of people and Earth, noting that the declaration’s framers are…“convinced that in an interdependent living community it is not possible to recognize the rights of only human beings without causing an imbalance within Mother Earth.”

While to the cynical, the declaration may sound uncomfortably “kumbaya,” it’s so earnest that one cannot help but pause and reflect on its unique point of view. The proposed declaration defines “Mother Earth” as “a living being, and…a unique, indivisible, self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings”

The declaration goes on to list the “inherent rights of Mother Earth, among which some of the most intriguing are:

• the right to be respected
• the right to regenerate its bio-capacity and to continue its vital cycles and processes free from human disruptions
• the right to clean air
• the right to be free from contamination, pollution and toxic or radioactive waste

Finally, the declaration spells out the obligations of humans to respect Mother Earth by:

• ensuring that the pursuit of human wellbeing contributes to the wellbeing of Mother Earth…
• respecing, protecting, conserving and, where necessary, restoring the integrity, of the vital ecological cycles, processes and balances of Mother Earth;
• guaranteeing that the damages caused by human violations of the inherent rights recognized in this Declaration are rectified and that those responsible are held accountable for restoring the integrity and health of Mother Earth
• guaranteeing peace and eliminating nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Far-fetched? Radical? It may appear that way now, but at least someone has said it, and raising awareness is always the first step. Of course, it’s unlikely that the Cochabamba proposals will end up in any formal agreements to emerge from Cancún. But the idea of environmental rights is already taking hold. In September 2008, Ecuador formally recognized the rights of nature in its new constitution. In the United States, a handful of local governments have passed resolutions recognizing that nature has rights, including, recently, the city of Pittsburgh.

Somewhere, Eleanor Roosevelt is smiling.

The post Of human rights, water rights and the rights of Mother Earth appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The current lack of bi-partisan cooperation in part reflects a polarity of ideas, but also a distressing amount of “boys and girls behaving badly.”

The current gap between the parties is reflected in part by the recalcitrance of Republicans to accept ideas of President Barack Obama, even when they agree with them coupled with President Obama’s “enabling behavior.”  Continually he goes back to the well, reaching across the aisle for cooperation, and repeatedly being rejected, even humiliated.  Common wisdom is if you’re being “gamed,” the wise thing to do is quit the game or find another one to play.  Republicans clearly do not want to give President Obama credit for anything, even if it’s consistent with their agenda and the president continues to be “community organizer in chief,” trying to answer Rodney King’s question, “People, can’t we all get together?”

It may be that the best way for us to break the decades-long grid in which we’re locked is to try new strategies to address the idea gap between the parties and the childish behavior reflective in both.

Children in kindergarten learn and practice basic elements of fairness and sharing.  Andre and Rebecca each get an opportunity to get their water color supplies first.  George and Serena each have days when they are responsible for sponging down the lunch table.  Small children learn that fairness means the same rules apply to everyone, and anyone who misbehaves can expect some sort of a consequence.

The American psychologist Abraham Maslow is noted for presenting his theory on the “hierarchy of human needs.”  He studied what he called exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass.  Why is this important to the ways in which Democrats and Republicans act?  Let’s start with something that Eleanor Roosevelt authored:  Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  She wrote, “All humans are born free and equal in dignity and rights.  They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”  I have discussed this article dozens of times with students, and the two key words are “reason” and “conscience” because the degree to which humans possess them is what separates us from other forms of life.

Bi-partisanship survives the first four stages of Maslow’s hierarchy.  The disconnect occurs trying to integrate stage five into the behavior of most political persona.  They often reach Stage 4 and feel good about themselves, but when it comes to exercising the reason about which Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, they fall apart.

The logical and unfortunate conclusion is that most politicians feel better about themselves when they do not exercise reason, empathy, and conscience.  Much more appealing than seeking solutions is playing the “blame game,” engaging in name-calling, acting with bravado, and turning a blind eye to the problems that face constituents.  The one exception to this pattern is when they can agree on ways to distribute pork among themselves to ingratiate themselves with voters and to deepen their campaign coffers.

Can this dysfunctional behavior stop?  Yes, but it requires an understanding of a basic concept: what goes around comes around.  While ideological gaps will (and perhaps should) be difficult to bridge, here are some procedural changes that are fundamental to breaking gridlock.  Each party has an equal interest in supporting these changes because the reforms loosen the grip that the ruling majority has over the minority, and each party spends about half its time in the minority.

1. Bag the filibuster.  It is a tool that blatantly suppresses the will of the majority.  The idea of an “up or down” vote on an issue does not favor one party over the other; it gives each group an opportunity to exercise the mandate that voters presumably gave to them.
2. Remove all special powers of committee chairpersons.  Currently the chairs of committees control what issues will be brought before their committee, what bills will be considered, what witnesses will be called to testify, and what votes will be taken.   This is the antithesis of democracy; the “lowest ranking” member of a committee represents as many people as the chairperson.  Committee decisions should be made by consensus, and when that can’t be reached then there should be a vote in which the chair has no special privileges.
3. Eliminate the practice of “senatorial holds” on nominations.  Right now a single senator can block anywhere from one to all presidential nominations before the chamber.  Recently we have seen Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama put a hold on 70 nominations from President Obama; his asking price to “release” the nominations was a slew of projects for his home state of Alabama.  The practice of senatorial holds not only obstructs the working of the body; it presents our legislators individually and collectively as selfish buffoons and undermines efforts to have the public look at Congress in a serious manner.  As an example, President Obama just reported, “My nominee for one important job, the head of General Services Administration, which helps run the government, was denied a vote for nine months. When she finally got a vote on her nomination, she was confirmed, 96 to nothing. … That’s not advise and consent. That’s delay and obstruct.”  But this is a game that both parties play.
4. Bring electronic voting into the Senate.  Each roll call vote takes at least fifteen minutes; electronic voting can be almost instantaneous.  Expediting the system is party-neutral.
5. Ensure that any proposal that has the support of at least 20% of the members of either house can have an “up or down” vote.  One reason why reforms in areas such as civil rights and health care is measured in centuries rather than decades or years is because many of the most creative and well-conceived ideas are not on our national radar because they never see the light of day when it comes to voting.  Why is it that the Senate has never voted on a “Medicare for all” proposal, or even a public option mixed with private insurance?  We know the answer to this question, but the bottom line is that each party has repeatedly stifled the ideas of the other party by not forcing on-the-record voting on the issues that are most important to the American people.

It becomes trite to say that “everything I needed to know I learned in kindergarten,” but trite is often true.  Perhaps the question should not be “what did you learn in kindergarten,” but “what did you forget since kindergarten?”  When it comes to fair play and the best interests of the group, our politicians act as if they were absent when kindergarten happened.  Maturity should not have a party affiliation.  Things will change, and only change, when the party in the majority thinks about what its own best interests will be when it inevitably is again is in the minority.  If politicians are blind to this reality, then we need more citizens to stand up and remind them.

The post What Republicans & Democrats can agree upon appeared first on Occasional Planet.