…as promised to Truthdig readers today, May 2, 2018:
Article 22 says that “Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization… of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.” Article 27 says that “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.” Tell it to the tens of millions of U.S. Americans who are working multiple low-wage and no-benefit jobs – without health coverage or a pension – just to keep their heads above water in the U.S. Dignity and “cultural life” and the “free development of [their] personality[ies]” are luxuries that the vast swat of the U.S-American populace cannot remotely afford. Tell it to the nation’s giant army – 2.3 million strong – of prison and jail inmates, few of whom possess any significant access to literature, art, and music or to the nation’s 11 million “unauthorized immigrants,” few of whom dare take out a card at their local public library.
Article 23 says that “Everyone” has the right to “just and favourable conditions of work,” to “protection against unemployment,” to “equal pay for equal work,” to “form and join trade unions,” and to “just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity.” Many millions of U.S.-Americans and U.S. residents lack anything remotely close to these “universal human rights.” The U.S.-American workplace is structured for and by the wealthy Few and the elite professional and managerial classes, not ordinary working people. Workers’ receive the least employers’ can get away with paying them, regardless of the indignity imposed by low pay and weak or nonexistent benefits. Union organizing is close to illegal in the U.S. and employers regularly seek to rid themselves of unions and collective bargaining agreements. Women receive 80 cents for every dollar earned by men in the U.S. workplace.
Article 24 says that “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.” U.S. Americans are saddled with the longest working hours in the industrialized world, something that leaves million of U.S. citizens without the time and energy to participate in their supposed grand “democracy.”
Article 25 says that “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family.” Median household income in the U.S is lower than the EPI’c basic family budet for a family of two parents and two children. Half the U.S. population is poor or near-poor. More than 75% of U.S. households are living paycheck to paycheck, with zero to slight savings. And the great majority of new jobs created in the U.S temporary or contract-based positions, not traditional full-time jobs.
Article 26 proclaims that “Everyone has the right to [an] education” that “shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” U.S. education, K-12 and beyond is very primarily directed at the preparation of obedient workers and managers and not around the advancement of democracy, human rights, social justice, and the common good. Critical thinking is badly subordinated to narrow instruction and rote curriculum geared to high-stakes standardized testing and the dutiful completion of specialized tasks. This is particularly true for poor and minority students.
Article 28 proclaims that “Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.” The United States engages in a brutally imperialist foreign policy geared to advancing U.S. global dominance and the wealth and power of U.S.-based multinational corporations by any means, including the direct U.S violation of human rights (as for example, in the U.S. bombing, drone-attacking, and invasion of other countries and the maintenance of U.S. torture facilities in Guantanamo Bay and numerous “black sites” abroad) and U.S. funding, military equipping of a large number of regimes (ie, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Columbia, Honduras, Indonesia, Rwanda…the list goes on and on) that engage in egregious human rights violations in and/or beyond their borders.