Of human rights

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Where do human rights begin? Many would say they begin right here at home. Closing Guantanamo is a start but the fight for Human Rights goes much deeper. Catherine Powell, the author of Human Rights at Home: A Domestic Policy Blueprint for the New Administration and an associate professor of Law at Fordham Law School says that human rights should include access to health care, equal opportunity for education, a living wage, and the elimination of racial and ethnic discrimination in U.S. prisons. And Barack Obama can initiate a process of human rights reform through his appointments to domestic agencies, the Justice Department and by reestablishing the Interagency Working Group on Human Rights created under Clinton and abolished by George W. Bush. There are opportunities. Laura Whitehorn a political prisoner for fourteen years and the editor of POZ magazine says that the United States can no longer use the war on terror and the threat of terrorism to justify the abdication of human rights law. In essence, preventive detention has been legalized under the Bush administration.
But improving the U.S. human rights record will not necessarily come from the top down. Ajamu Baraka a leading human rights activist and the Executive Director of the US Human Rights Network says that it’s up to activists and the American public to push for more sweeping reform. And he thinks the public is up to it. Contrary to the U.S. record abroad and at home over the last eight years, the American public is very much in support of global human rights.