2006 Creating Change Human Rights Speech 2006 -- LRoss
Building a movement for human rights
Human rights is a topic rarely discussed in connection with social movements in the United States. Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights cites numerous social rights that should be protected (such as the right to housing, health care or education), in this country, we primarily focus on political and civil rights. As a result, social movements, like the gay rights or reproductive rights movements, have been seen as secondary.
Loretta Ross, national coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective, believes this approach hinders the success of these related movements. The following are excerpts of a speech she gave on Nov. 12, 2006, to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force annual conference, Creating Change. In her speech she asserts that reproductive rights, sexual rights and reproductive justice are all connected under a broader umbrella of human rights. No one can fully enjoy one right without all the others; women can not take advantage of their civil rights (the right to equal treatment under the law) if they do not have access to education (one of the social human rights). Along those same lines, a movement for reproductive rights or sexual rights will not be as successful if it doesn’t acknowledge or embrace the broader range of human rights. As Loretta states below, “Freedom to marry doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have anything to eat.”
Despite this, Ross points out that movements for social justice in the United States have worked separately from one another, and even occasionally against one another. “We exist as separate and parallel social justice movements, often indulging in the excess of our identity politics, criticizing to a fault anyone who doesn’t look like us, act like us, talk like us and belong to us.” By not acknowledging the interconnectedness of social justice movements, she says, movements undermine their own effectiveness.
I come here today representing a lot of organizations, but mainly I am representing SisterSong, our national women of color reproductive health collective that was founded 10 years ago. SisterSong is a coalition of over 90 women of color and allied organizations that work on reproductive justice issues in the United States
Now when I talk about reproductive health issues, I actually talk about reproductive justice. This is not just a substitute word for pro-choice. Pro-choice is a very good word, it is an excellent word, for people who actually have choices.
But women of color, and gay people, and poor people, we understand that we don’t have those kinds of choices. Reproductive justice is a paradigm shift; it reflects an understanding that reproductive rights must be embedded in human rights and social justice frameworks to have any meaning in our lives.
People in these communities not only have to fight subjugation to population control strategies — and, like the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender (LGBT) community, strategies to control our entire communities — we have to fight for the right to have a child. We even have to fight for the right to parent the children that we have.
So when we talk about reproductive justice, we are talking about a three-way struggle, not just about the right to prevent pregnancy, not just abortion and contraception. It’s about a right to live life the way we choose, the right to live a life based in human rights. And beyond that, to have the social supports necessary to live that life we choose — and this makes us a little different from the reproductive or sexual rights movements. Because having choices without the conditions enabling us to exercise those choices just doesn’t make sense.
Right now, we operate as the divided and the conquered. There was a time when the civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights movements had to be forcibly separated. Now we exist as separate and parallel social justice movements, often indulging in the excess of our identity politics, criticizing to a fault anyone who doesn’t look like us, act like us, talk like us and belong to us.
When people think many different ideas and move in the same direction, that’s a movement. When people think the same idea and move in the same direction, that’s a cult. How much energy are we spending making sure everybody thinks exactly like us, rather than thinking for ourselves and figuring out how to work with people who don’t think like us?
Only a united movement for all of our human rights will save us. Now what do I mean by a united human rights movement? All of us have heard the phrase “human rights.” But few people in the United States can name the eight categories of human rights protections to which we are all entitled. Like freedom, we all have our own definition of it.
The first category is civil rights, the right to be treated as an equal to anybody in society. Obviously we in the reproductive justice or sexual rights movements are part of a civil rights movement. Why? ‘Cause we don’t have full equality yet, it’s that simple. But it’s possible to achieve equality and still be denied justice. All America has to do is treat you equally badly!
The second category is called political rights: our freedom of speech, our right to vote, our right to assembly. We have recently discovered our right to vote does not include the right to have our votes counted, but they exist nominally.
The third category is called economic rights, and that’s the right to have an economy managed in such a way that it meets the needs of the people. The group Queers for Economic Justice understand this very clearly. How can I fight for queer rights when I’m poor? Freedom to marry doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have anything to eat.
The fourth category is called social rights. These are the rights that are based out of our human needs: our right to food, our right to education, our right to health care, our right to social services. These are our human rights, not charity; it is the government’s obligation to provide these things. Therein lies why our government has never wanted us to know these are our human rights. As long as they can treat us like we are undeserving people claiming things that are not ours, they can de-fang our struggle.
The fifth category is called cultural rights: the right to practice the culture of our choice; the right to speak the language of our choice. The entire English-only movement is a violation of cultural human rights.
The sixth category is called environmental rights. Some bright soul figured out that if we didn’t have clean air and potable water, then the rest of our human rights might be a little short-lived. The right to have food that has not been genetically modified without our permission, that’s a human right.
But the seventh category, that’s a little bit harder to describe because it’s called developmental rights. These are the rights that people in developing countries have demanded to control their own natural resources. What a novel thought!
And the eighth category is sexual rights: the right to determine one’s sexuality, the right to determine if and when you will marry, if and when you will have children, if and when you will have sexual pleasure. Those are the rights that I like to talk about!
I want to emphasize that you can not fight for one set of human rights by violating another set of human rights. It doesn’t work like that. We have to do our work in a way that respects everyone’s human rights. We cannot work against homophobia in a racist way, we cannot do work against racism in a homophobic way. The extent to which you allow other people’s human rights to be violated, yours will be diminished too.
To be honest, once I understood that, it kind of pissed me off. I got up every morning, really energized by hating a lot of people: hating the Ku Klux Klan; hating fundamentalist Christian whatevers; I even hated people of color! Once I understood the human rights framework, I realized that the people I hated had the right to the same human rights I’m fighting for, so I cannot do my human rights work in a way that’s going to violate their human rights. Doesn’t that make things a little bit more complicated?
The other thing a human rights framework teaches us is that multi-issue work isn’t an option — it’s vital. We cannot build a human rights movement by leaving somebody out.
We’ve never had an election where we can vote for candidates that promise how many of our human rights their going to uphold rather than how many of our human rights they’re going to violate. How many will we send to college instead of jail? We’ve never had that kind of candidate to choose from. So, in the words of Thomas Jefferson (a slaveholder with no sense of irony), we have to be eternally vigilant.
As activists, we must do what Ghandhi, Malcolm X and Audre Lorde wanted us to do: build a movement for human rights in the United States. It’s never been done. We’ve had the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the queer rights movement, but if you want to put your mark on history and do what hasn’t been done before, let’s build a human rights movement for the United States, because that’s what we need.
I’m not saying that we have to lose sight of any of our separate movements. Even though we have many causes we have one struggle and we have to learn to be brave together. After all, if we can’t talk to each other on the same side, how will we ever be able to reach those who want us all gone?
I’m really glad that we were gifted this human rights framework by people who have come before us, because I believe we can create change by building a new movement and calling it the human rights movement of America.