In America there are none poor, and none even that can be called peasants. Each citizen has some property, and all citizens have the same rights as the richest individual, or landed proprietor, in the country.
Rights
When poor people get involved in a long conflict, such as a strike or a civil rights drive, and the pressure increases each day, there is a deep need for spiritual advice. Without it, we see families crumble, leadership weaken, and hard workers grow tired.
Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.
In a few decades, the relationship between the environment, resources and conflict may seem almost as obvious as the connection we see today between human rights, democracy and peace.
If the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement made demands that altered the course of American lives and backed up those demands with the willingness to give up your life in service of your civil rights, with Black Lives Matter, a more internalized change is being asked for: recognition.
The theory of rights enables us to rise and overthrow obstacles, but not to found a strong and lasting accord between all the elements which compose the nation.
As a human rights issue, the effort to end violence against women becomes a government’s obligation, not just a good idea.
The goal of the revolution is to achieve the people’s rights, but during the course of the revolution, we must stress military power – and the two are mutually contradictory.
Legally speaking, there are no such things as ‘public rights,’ as distinguished from individual rights. Legally speaking, there is no such creature or thing as ‘the public.’
It is not natural or inevitable that half the world goes hungry; that the freedom of markets trumps protection of the planet; or that citizens’ rights come second to those of corporations.