Human Rights Politics

One of Argentina's 30,000 "disappeared", Alicia Partnoy was abducted from her home by secret police and taken to a concentration camp where she was tortured, and where most of the other prisoners were killed. Her writings were smuggled out of prison and published anonymously in human rights journals. The Little School is Alicia Partnoy's memoir of her disappearance and imprisonment in Argentina in the 1970s.

Mildred Jeter Loving and Richard Perry Loving wanted to live out their married life near family in Virginia, but the state refused to let them. The reason: Richard was white and Mildred was black. After being arrested and charged with a crime, the Lovings were forced to leave their home—until they turned to the legal system. In one of the country’s landmark legal battles, Loving v. Virginia, the Lovings secured their future when the Supreme Court struck down all state laws prohibiting mixed marriage.

Sabine Heinlein spent almost a year reporting at "The Farm", a program for mental patients at the notorious Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. Originally designed to teach its "members" confidence and skills by caring for animals and plants, the Farm had long become a dysfunctional hoarder's den. The patients sat idly on chairs in a grimy dayroom filled with the therapist's "collectibles" and garbage.

En janvier 1789, bravant l'interdit qui leur est fait d'exprimer leurs doléances, les femmes osent faire entendre leur voix. De Normandie, Madame B. B. écrit : "Étant démontré, avec raison, qu'un noble ne peut représenter un roturier ni celui-ci un noble, de même les femmes ne pourraient être représentées que par des femmes." Après 1791 et la Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne, d'Olympe de Gouges, les femmes, toujours exclues de la citoyenneté, exigent leurs droits et les fondent sur les principes mêmes de la Révolution.

Congress and the Constitution are under attack all around the world. Muzzled and muffled are the voices of virtue and reason under a medical face mask. All that remains is confusion, chaos, and COVID.

During my Scholarly Writing course in law school over the summer (2021), I was "free-writing" on this topic to see if this would be my topic for my paper—instead, I had a conversation with myself, and this is the end result!

In this personal, moving essay, youth activist Hannah Testa shares with listeners how she led a grassroots political campaign to successfully pass state legislation limiting single-use plastics and how she influenced global businesses to adopt more sustainable practices. Through her personal journey, listeners can learn how they, too, can follow in Hannah's footsteps and lower their carbon footprint by simply refusing single-use plastics.

We live in a time where controversy seems to be the currency of conversation. People disagree not because they truly hold opposing views, but because they feel compelled to take a side, any side, simply for the sake of argument. Discourse has become a battlefield, where winning is prioritized over understanding. It’s disheartening.

The idea of universal rights - rights shared by all citizens, regardless of nationality, creed, wealth, or geography - has a powerful grip on the way many people feel about justice and global politics. No one should be subjected to torture or disappearance, to starvation or sex trafficking, to economic exploitation or biased treatment under the law. But when it comes to actually enforcing these rights, the results rarely resemble the ideal.

"La Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen" est adoptée le 26 août 1789 par l'Assemblée nationale, constituée deux mois plus tôt. Ce texte fondateur de la Révolution française, et plus largement de l'Histoire de France, affirme que "Tous les Hommes naissent et demeurent libres et égaux en droits", et pose les bases de république et de démocratie. Ses principes sont réaffirmés au sortir de la Seconde Guerre mondiale dans le préambule de la Constitution française du 27 octobre 1946.

On March 2, 1955, a slim, bespectacled teenager refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Mont-gomery, Alabama. Shouting "It's my constitutional right!" as police dragged her off to jail, Claudette Colvin decided she'd had enough of the Jim Crow segregation laws that had angered and puzzled her since she was a young child.

Was wäre, wenn jeder von uns Monat für Monat 1200 Euro überwiesen bekäme? Vom Staat. Einfach so. 1200 Euro, mit denen jeder von uns seine existenziellen Grundbedürfnisse wie Nahrung, Wohnen, Wärme - abdecken könnte. Ohne jegliche Bedingung. Zu schön, um wahr zu sein? War das eben Ihr erster Gedanke? Ist es nicht erschreckend, dass man sich nicht einmal in Gedanken dem Traum eines bedingungslosen Grundeinkommens hingeben kann, ohne sich selbst einen Fantasten zu schimpfen? Wie aber soll dieses "Menschenrecht" jemals Wirklichkeit werden, wenn wir uns schon den Gedanken an dieses Grundrecht verwehren?

The Dreamer's dream is deeply rooted in the American Dream. This dream is the result of arriving to the United States as children through no fault of their own. An unintended consequence of good people who simply wanted a better life for their children. There is one thing that unites Dreamers and non-Dreamers alike: We are working hard to better ourselves and our communities. We all want a better life for our kids and family. As we look back throughout history, what is just and right becomes evident. I don't want the next generation to look back and wonder why good people stood silent.

Through declassified documents and various other sources, we further explore human experimentation. This time we zoom in specifically on mind control and the top-secret government projects that examined this realm. We name the names. This compelling book is sourced throughout. You'll find out about how the US ferried Nazi scientists into the country after World War II and how that single operation became the catalyst for the creation of multiple experimental projects.

Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, Earth Guardians Youth Director and hip-hop artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez shows us how his music feeds his environmental activism and vice versa. Martinez visualizes a future that allows us to direct our anger, fear, and passion toward creating change. Because, at the end of the day, we all have a part to play.

A lot of people are not happy with politics. In many family gatherings, politics (and religion) are often frowned upon during conversation, and is usually the cause of much heated debate, incensed arguments, and possible disfellowshiping. But even if the topic of politics is taboo, we all agree that it's an important part of our every day lives. Everything we do, everything we buy, everything we wish to avoid has to do with politics.