The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations, December 10, 1948.

PREAMBLE

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, Therefore, THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY

proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1. All human beings 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.

Article 2. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7. All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8. Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11. (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14. (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15. (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16. (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17. (1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18. Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20. (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21. (1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. (2) Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22. Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23. (1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. (3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. (4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24. Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25. (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26. (1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27. (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community,  to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28. Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29. (1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. (2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. (3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30. Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Where R.A.C.E. matters

By RICHARD BRAUN

Here in California where education is one of our governor's top three priorities, schools do not have all the resources they need to effectively educate California youth. Yet, groups of teachers from rural areas of Central America who stayed in Modesto for a year as part of a program through Georgetown University were awestruck when they compared what they had with the schools here.

These teachers came to Modesto from five Central American countries: Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama and Nicaragua. Each came from rural, forgotten areas. Each made the long journey from their home towns to their capital cities, then flew to San Francisco. For some, the journey from their towns to their capital city was actually longer than the 18-hour flight to San Francisco. They gave up a year of their lives away from family, friends and everything they knew to make this long journey to Modesto. Why make this incredible sacrifice? They made it in hopes of improving their schools and the opportunities for the youth of their communities.

The schools in each of these rural communities are nothing like the "underfunded" schools here in the United States. Some of these "schools" are no more than a couple of palm trees under which the children meet as long as weather permits. Most schools do not have adequate roofing, windows and doors to keep out the wind and the rain. Flooded rooms and inches of dust covering everything are common occurrences. Most have little if any land for playgrounds and those that do are full of rocks, holes and are not level. One "school" only has the use of an office porch loaned to them during the morning hours. This description may sound bleak, but so far only the facilities have been described.

In U.S. schools, new reading programs bring new reading texts for each child every three years in addition to other literature in each classroom and school library: math text books, social studies texts and science books. In rural Central American schools, kids are lucky to have 5 books for each classroom. Books must be shared. The reams and reams of paper used by U.S. students do not exist. In Central America, rural students must provide and conserve each of their pages. Each sheet is used top to bottom, front and back. Here pages are photocopied for each child to use in class and for homework. There, not only does the paper not exist, there are no photocopiers because there are no funds to purchase them. In some schools, even the funds would not help because there is no electricity. Here children collect multiple pencils and boxes of hundreds of crayons. There each pencil is saved and used to the last millimeter because they are in short supply.

Teachers in the United States rightfully say that they are underpaid. This in no way compares to the situation faced by rural Central American teachers. There teachers routinely teach classes of 50 or a 100 students. Most have to stay in a town away from their families while they teach because of where they have been assigned. Most also have to work additional jobs to support their families because their salaries are not enough to live on. Even then, pay is often delayed because of the isolation of their communities. In one community, teachers were required to row up-stream for two days to be able to receive their salary, then turn around and row home.

A non-profit group in Modesto called RACE, Rural Assistance for Central-American Education, is trying to help provide some of the materials and resources needed by these schools. RACE cannot do it alone.

Already many materials have been donated, but they cannot be shipped without financial support. Because this is a new non-profit group, all of its resources come from individuals. Presently, all of the donated materials are kept in the houses of the individuals that formed the group. High shipping costs have prohibited them from sending the materials to Central America (a typical box costs about $60 to ship).

This is where you can help. You can make a tax deductible contribution to RACE, and help send these much needed materials to their destination. None of the materials donated nor any of the funds will be shipped to the governments of these countries. Everything will be sent directly to the schools, and the teachers who spent their year in Modesto.

ACTION: For more information about RACE,  visit www.geocities.com/race4kids or contact the group's president, Richard Braun, (209) 524-1865.

Peace activists target war profiteers

Leading anti-war activists and organizations have launched a new campaign calling for an end to war profiteering by military contractors, challenging what they call the "second invasion" of Iraq by powerful corporate interests seeking to control the country's oil, water and resources.

The Stop the War Profiteers Campaign has been initiated by the North Carolina-based Institute for Southern Studies [www.southernstudies.org]

"A handful of Bush-connected corporations are poised to make billions in profits while U.S. troops are killed almost daily, and Iraq plunges deeper into a colonial nightmare," said Rania Masri, a campaign coordinator and program director at the Institute.

"Halliburton, Bechtel, MCI and other war profiteers are part of a larger invasion by outside corporate interests hoping to control the wealth and resources of Iraq — wealth and resources that belong to the Iraqi people," Masri added.

Veterans for Peace, New York Labor Against the War, Global Exchange, United for Peace and Justice, Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program have signed on to the campaign's founding statement, as have well-known activists Noam Chomsky, Jim Hightower, and Howard Zinn.

The campaign urges elected leaders to take steps to stop war profiteering at taxpayer expense and end the "corporate looting" of Iraq, including:

• Holding congressional hearings to investigate war profiteering and the secretive, closed-bid "reconstruction" contracts in Iraq given to a handful of corporations close to the Bush administration. The hearings would be modeled on those held in the 1930s by Sen. Gerald Nye to investigate the role of the "munitions industry" in warping foreign policy.

• Instituting an "Excess Profits Tax." to reign in war profiteering by military contractors.

• Halting the U.S.-led drive to hand over Iraq's industries, services and resources to powerful multinational corporations such as efforts by occupying forces to privatize public services and strip down rules on foreign investment, before Iraq's indigenous government is allowed to take part in decision-making.

"The U.S. is rushing to open Iraq to a flood of outside corporate interests, before the country's own government can take power," said Chris Kromm, director of the non-profit Institute. "If the Iraq war was really about democracy, why won't they wait and let the Iraqi people decide what to do with their economy?"

Tara Purohit, an Institute associate, noted that during World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "I don't want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this disaster," and then-Senator Harry Truman denounced war profiteering as "treason." Earlier in the century, Sen. Robert LaFollette called war profiteers "enemies of democracy in the homeland."

"Our country has a proud history of leaders who have stood up to the war profiteers," said Purohit. "Now it's time for today's leaders to stand up to the new merchants of misery and corporate war looters."

ACTION: to endorse the Stop the War Profiteers Campaign, visit www.southernstudies.org or contact the Southern Peace Research and Education Center, 919-419-8311 x27 or sprec@southernstudies.org

Prop. 54: PLC president addresses Board of Education

John Lucas, President of the Board of the Modesto/Peace Life Center and a teacher in the Modesto City Schools District, addressed the City Schools Board of Education on Monday, September 15, 2003.

The Center's board has voted to oppose the passage of Proposition 54. We view this as a peace & justice issue.

Proposition 54 will not lead to a colored blind society, but rather it will blind us.

Blind us to the problems that still exist with racial profiling.

Blind us to the fact that hate crimes are still being committed.

Blind us to the economic, social, educational, and medical disparities that still exist between people  of color and the majority of whites.

Finally, it would blind us to the historical legacy of 400 years of slavery, racist laws, and exclusion from opportunities that have created the conditions that many people of color find themselves in today.

We urge the board not to be blinded and oppose this deceptive, dangerous, and irresponsible initiative.

The Modesto City Schools Board of Education unanimously passed a resolution in opposition to Prop 54.

How to get rid of racism? Destroy the evidence.

By ESTHER DIAZ

Between Conan, Webster, and Barbie, the Recall Circus gets more decrepit by the minute, and in between attractions and distractions, Ward Connerly (the jack of the stable animals) drops his duties on the arena. Those who sit in the balcony of the grand spectacle do not smell this icky item, but it sure stinks for the ones in the floor seats.

I am talking about Proposition 54, written by the Pete Wilson-appointed UC Regent Mr. Connerly who also authored Proposition 209, ending affirmative action in California. Prop 209 yielded such results that year-by-year the minority population of UC students has steadily decreased. Obviously this does not look good so Connerly set out to fix this glitch. Here is where Prop. 54 the Information Ban comes in.

Proposition 54 prohibits classification by race in state and other public entities. We will never be bothered for our ethnic information if it is passed. But, as president Bush would say "This is a dangerous dangerous thing with dangerous dangerous powers."

Demographic information helps the state make choices in the allocation of funds by discovering inequality in social services (Institutionalized Racism) according to ethnic background. Recent studies using these statistics show the disparities of quality in social services in minority communities as opposed to where "the white folk" live.

For example, a recent report from the Public Policy Institute of California documents that California’s Asian and White students are taught by teachers more experienced, better educated, and more likely to be fully credentialed. The California Department of Education found that the higher the proportion of Latino and African American students in a school, the lower the percentage of trained and certified teachers. These students are also more likely to attend overcrowded dysfunctional schools and be offered less Advanced Placement courses in High School. What does this mean? Less opportunity and encouragement for higher education in the neglected community. A brown teen that lives in the wrong part of town is offered more opportunities to go to a vocational school than to a university.

Healthcare institutions have already raised red flags. Among them are the American Academy of Pediatrics, California District, California Nurses Association, Kaiser Permanente, Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California. Studies repeatedly prove that minorities face greater challenges in having access to healthcare and that certain health conditions vary according to ethnicity.

Contrary to health experts, Connerly would argue that Prop 54’s clause (f) covers medical research, but it does not apply to basic public health data systems like vital statistics (birth, death and marriage certificates) which are the number one source of much of the information used in medical studies.

What about Fair Housing? Demographic studies prove that if you belong to a minority you are most likely to live next to a waste dump, sewage treatment plant or the like. Modesto residents surely know that the lower income housing where a high concentration of Mexican Americans live also happens to neighbor the tallow plant where dead animals are disposed of.

Perhaps the funniest implication of Prop 54 is that it will erase racism within the state. If Prop 54 passes, California will keep track of every form of discrimination EXCEPT on the basis of RACE and ETHNICITY, which (just by mere coincidence), happens to be the number one source of discrimination reports. The State Attorney General and public agencies will have no way of tracking race and ethnicity-based hate crimes.

Connerly claims that Prop 54 will end racial profiling, but how will we know when it is against the law to collect the evidence?

ACTION: Read the complete text of Prop. 54 in your voter’s booklet, or online at www.voterguide.ss.ca.gov/propositions/2-3-prop-54.html. To find out more, contact the Coalition for an Informed California/No on 54, 2110 Artesia Blvd., #B354, Redondo Beach, CA 90278; www.informedcalifornia.org

Resisting the entirety of the spectacle

By DOUG GILBERT

Over the past couple of years, I’ve participated in more "direct-action trainings" than I care to mention. Usually participants were asked questions like whether or not we should destroy genetically engineered crops belonging to a big corporation to see what we thought about the media, property destruction, and violence. I would usually indicate that I viewed all of those actions to be non-violent, and worth while.

Usually quite a few people disagreed. One older woman said, "I just think that it would look really bad in the media. It would make the movement for getting rid of GMO crops look like a bunch of criminals."

"What if the media wasn't a factor," I asked her. "Would you then do the action?"

She thought a moment, "Well, yes, I guess I would".

People on the left and post-left do not like the corporate media, but often allow it to influence their actions. Such people argue that the ability of the corporate media to reach a wide audience can work to their advantage. Many conclude that tactical diversity must make way for forms of protesting and voicing dissent that will look good for the cameras.

But as capital becomes more homogenized in different forms of the neo-liberal agenda, and the state annexes more areas of our personal autonomy, we must ask ourselves, isn't it time we ditch the corporate media that we all claim to disdain so much?

Profit-driven media survives in the marketplace based on how entertaining its programs are. If programs keep viewers watching, the media can sell advertising space to interested companies. As with most large entities in a market system, mass media are controlled by powerful elites looking out for their own pocketbooks, not the interest of the community.

In past mobilizations, many people weren't concerned about shutting down corporate meetings but, instead, concentrated on conveying a message via the corporate media. With people's idea of a successful protest shifting from trying to destroy and dismantle power, to catering to the media, confrontations between activists trying to shut down institutions and those working with "media" goals happen often. The rift between revolutionaries and liberals has always been there, but now it seems more and more apparent.

When we hold massive protests and demonstrations, when we try to disrupt business as usual, the media is interested in sensation, not substance. In the case of the Sacramento Agriculture ministerial demo, the corporate media spent more time covering how well-prepared the police were for the protest than the issues at hand. Reporters referred to the protesters as people protesting against the world food industry, missing the whole point of the protest against biotechnology. The corporate media did not explain our message because it was not profitable to do so.

The issues that we want to talk about can't be discussed via sound bytes. Preceding the war with Iraq, if people with dissenting views did get into the corporate media news and newspapers, they were portrayed either as hippies rehashing the 60's, or as pacifists parading around with "baby killing" signs to frighten or place guilt onto others. Despite this, many of the traditional protesters were pleased that there was any coverage at all. They didn't care about how silly we seemed, how dumb and behind the times we looked to everyone. The movement was happy because we had made it into the paper, and at the same time came to disdain those brave enough to block streets and burn down recruiting centers.

We must ask ourselves, are we going to be able to build a movement to challenge power through the corporate media? The answer is obviously no.

At an Los Angeles ANSWER rally, some people started chanting, "The police work for us, the police belong to us!" If the police were a channel of revolutionary power, then we wouldn't have to defend ourselves against them sometimes. We should reduce the limits of our revolutionary scope to exclude mass media just as we should reduce our focus and exclude the State. Both are something to resist and abolish. Militancy is an ideal to be theorized and practiced. Make your actions count.

The channels of mass communication (i.e. news) are open. Indy media is the example. Don't hate the media, become the media. And get loud and louder, drowning out and abolishing its contradiction, corporate media. We have created the alternatives and continue to maximize their use. It's time to sabotage capitalist media and put in our own alternatives.

We need to do outreach and education in our own communities, not only on the shortcomings of corporate media, but also on the alternatives like Indy media. Before major actions, campaigns, or other endeavors, it is important to build up a base of community knowledge on the issues we work on. Teach-ins, workshops, film showings, speakers are all important, and will help us build up our support. Alternative media then, like Indy media, can be used for activism inviting a questioning public to come, learn and create.

We must keep in mind that the corporate media can be dangerous in large protest-type situations. They can give information to the police about what we are doing, misuse information to make us look bad and get better ratings, and can distract from demonstration's major goals. The corporate media are only concerned about covering the side of the story that has the power and wealth and supports free-market capitalist values. We must also help out Indy media workers and alternative news providers. We've created self-managed media and we'll destroy its opposite and, in doing so, give ourselves more room to develop this new medium.

We have a vibrant and ever-changing underground of resistance, thought, and action. We have an alternative. Since we know the kind of world that we want to live in, let's stop using the old and hollow artifacts of theirs.