 |
|
|
Ask yourself - have you ever:
- gone without medical care or prescriptions because you couldn't afford it?
- gone into debt (including bankruptcy or foreclosure) due to a health crisis?
- had to work more than one job to pay rent?"
- had to choose between heat and groceries?
- paid more than 50% of your income for housing?
- been evicted due to inability to pay rent?
- been denied or cut off benefits like unemployment insurance, foodstamps, Medicaid, TANF, or SSI, despite the fact that you needed this assistance just to survive?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you're economic human rights have been violated.
These are just a few examples of economic human rights violations - click HERE to download our documentation form to tell YOUR story!
Or tell your story by taking POWER's
economic rights survey!
Southern Maine Labor Council President Peter Kellman
rallies with fellow POWER members for our human right to health care
Photo courtesy of POWER member Bryan Bourgoin
| home
| about
| contact
us | membership | donate |
volunteer events & activities | meetings | pictures | video | resources & links ECONOMIC HUMAN RIGHTS! | healthcare justice | tell your story |
ECONOMIC HUMAN RIGHTS
Economic Human Rights are the rights we all need to maintain a decent quality of life, including our rights to food, healthcare, housing, living wage jobs, & education - to name a few. These rights are outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an important international treaty signed by the United States and all other UN member nations in 1948. This declaration states that governments must do everything they possibly can to guarantee and protect these basic human rights for all of their people. If a country is capable of guaranteeing and protecting these human rights but fails or refuses to do so, that country is actively violating the human rights of its people.
Together we are working to educate fellow members of our community about these rights, and that these conditions of poverty we're experiencing actually represent human rights violations.
New
resources available:
--Read What Are Economic Human Rights?
*
--Read The Presence
of Justice: An Intro to Economic Human Rights *
[Word]
*Produced by POWER's
Economic Human Rights Taskforce.
Some examples of Economic Human Rights:
- Our
human right to FOOD!
No one should ever go hungry! We all need healthy, nutritious food to live!
- Our
human right to HOUSING!
Safe, accessible, affordable! We all need a roof over our heads! We all need adequate heat, electricity, & cooking fuel!
- Our
human right to HEALTHCARE!
Accessible, affordable! We all need good healthcare to stay alive! Including all the treatments, medicines, procedures, supplies, & equipment we need to stay healthy. And YES: that means dental care too!
- Our
human right to LIVING
WAGE JOBS
No to poverty-level wages! We all deserve jobs that pay us what we’re worth! - Jobs with good benefits & decent hours !
- Jobs that honor our right to organize unions!
- childcare! Accessible, reliable, & affordable!how can we get to work without access to childcare we can afford?
- transportation! Accessible, reliable, affordable!How can you find or hold down a decent job if you can’t afford to get there? Maine is a rural state – access to affordable transportation is vital!
- Our
human right to EDUCATION!
We all deserve the opportunity to learn! This includes ccess to all levels of training and education, from pre-school all the way through college & graduate school. Access to education should be based on our desire to learn, not on our ability to pay!
- Our
human right to GUARANTEED INCOME
for all who need it! Including: - Those who can’t work due to disability, old age, or widow-hood!
- Those who are under-employed/unemployed!
- Those who work at home raising children!
- Our
human right to COMMUNICATE!
We all need to be able to communicate to survive! This includes not only access to a telephone, but also access to sign-language interpreters & language translators for those who need them. For the deaf & hard of hearing, & for those who don’t speak English as their first language, communication is a basic necessity needed to live & function in our hearing/english oriented society.
HELP US BREAK THE SILENCE!
Have
you or someone you know experienced conditions of
poverty or economic
hardship?
We want you to know that you are not alone! There are over 38
million Americans living below the so-called *Federal Poverty
Level here
in the world's wealthiest nation. Millions more are just above the
poverty level, struggling and only barely getting by. These conditions
represent violations of our economic human rights - and we're
organizing to put an end to these conditions and abolish
poverty.
But the story of poverty and economic hardship in America is not being told! In fact, the issue of poverty, and of poor people ourselves, has largely been disappeared, our voices and struggles silenced... So it is up to us to make ourselves visible and break this silence. To this end, we are documenting our stories of living in conditions of poverty and economic hardship. Through the telling of our stories, we are showing one another, the rest of the country, and the world the TRUTH about poverty in America, and why we must abolish poverty for once and for all!!!
BREAK
THE SILENCE & TELL YOUR STORY TODAY:
Click HERE
to take POWER's online economic rights survey!
Download
the Word version of our economic rights survey.
NEW!!!
-2/24/08
Watch footage of POWER's
1st Economic Human Rights Truth Commission
now available on Google Video!
More about the Federal Poverty
Level
Courtesy of the US Department of Health &
Human Services...
2010 Federal Poverty
Level [Maine Equal Justice Partners site]
2010
Federal Poverty Level [official government site]
Poverty
Guidelines, Poverty Research, and Poverty Measurement
Poverty
guidelines since 1965
While we document evidence of economic human rights violations, we're also exposing the truth behind some of the most widely-accepted myths about poverty, economic injustice, inequality, and oppression. By revealing the true myths and facts about poverty, we are helping more and more people understand what poverty really is and why it exists, who poor people are and why we are poor, who benefits from poverty and who suffers, & why we are working so hard to win economic human rights and abolish poverty here in Maine, across the nation, and around the world. What do you say -- will you join us? Contact POWER today and get involved!!
( TOP )
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Conditions of poverty represent violations of our economic human rights. These rights are outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by the United States & all other UN member nations in 1948. Some examples of economic human rights include Articles 23, 25, & 26:
Article 23
Right to LIVING WAGE JOBS, to safe working conditions, and to form and join unions.
- Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
- Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
- Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for him/herself and his/her family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
- Everyone has the right to form and to join trade
unions for the protection of his/her interests.
( TOP )
Right to well-being of a person and their family, including: HOUSING, HEALTHCARE, & FOOD, CHILDCARE, & SECURITY for all those who are unemployed, unable to work, &/or working at home raising children &/or care-taking.
- Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of him/herself and of his/her 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/her control.
- 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.
( TOP )
Right to EDUCATION, including higher education & training.
- 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.
- 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.
- Parents have a prior right to choose the kind
of education that shall be given to their children.
( TOP )
( TOP )
Contact POWER
Winning our economic rights;
Putting poverty on trial;
Building a Maine that truly is the way life should be - for ALL of us!!!