Written by Ron Rabatsky   

Human Rights.

“Taxation without representation” was one of the founding concepts of our country, and lead directly to the original Boston Tea Party. But this is no longer the case in Benton Harbor, Michigan, where the Governor has chosen to ignore the will of the voters and appoint his own administrator to manage the finances of this 90% African-American city of 11,000 residents. Whirlpool Corporation, with a factory located in Benton harbor, does not hire residents from Benton Harbor—why not?

Let’s start with a basic look at the numbers. In Benton Harbor, the annual debt/citizen is roughly $600. Nationally it stands at over $47,000/citizen. In Benton Harbor 70% of FY 2010 revenue is required to pay the annual debt. In the United States of America, that same number is 648% of FY 2010 projected revenue. So while Benton Harbor is doing better financially than the country as a whole, its basic right to no taxation without representation has been stripped by an executive action of the Governor.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that “Everything has been stripped from Benton Harbor’s residents. The industrial jobs that used to provide a ladder into the middle class have been shipped abroad. The call center jobs that replaced them employ few at a poverty wage. The failing tax base means that public services are starved. The schools struggle to educate children from mean streets; these children are often hungry and without adequate health care or stable homes. The good teachers flee; the schools fail or are taken over, a shuffle that substitutes motion for real action on poverty.”

The Sun-Times continues: “the state has stripped its residents of their democracy. In what is accurately termed “fiscal martial law,” the state has named a czar to run the city. That appointee, Joseph Harris, has issued an order essentially stripping the elected city council of all powers. No money can be spent, no taxes raised or lowered, no bonds issued, no regulations changed without his approval. Benton Harbor’s residents now live in a dictatorship imposed by a Republican governor famous for his belief that the poor should be punished and the rich rewarded.

“This appointed dictator claims breathtaking powers. He can sell public assets, dismiss pension boards and take control of public pension funds and revoke labor contracts. What triggers this takeover? The law is remarkably vague. The governor may act if a payroll is missed, if there are complaints of late bill payment, if pensions are underfunded, if there is a significant budget deficit, a term that goes undefined.

“This takeover is a recipe for the worst abuses of oppression, cronyism and corruption. And here, too, Benton Harbor is the example. One of the few citizen treasures in Benton Harbor is the Jean Klock Park, a half-mile of sandy dunes on the edge of Lake Michigan. It was bequeathed to the children of Benton Harbor by the Klock family in 1917 in memory of their daughter.
“But developers backed by Whirlpool now want to appropriate a large portion of the park to turn it into a Harbor Shores golf resort with a 350-room hotel, two marinas, a 60,000-foot indoor water park (for dues paying members only), and a fancy golf course open to all who can afford a $5,000 entry fee and be approved by club members. The town’s citizens have resisted this development, which is under litigation.

“But the new czar’s first act was to take over the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority, most likely as a way to proceed with the development and sidestep the lawsuits. Why be suspicious? Because the law that the new czar is operating under was introduced by Republican state Rep. Al Pscholka, former staff aide to U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, an heir to the Whirlpool fortune.
“They’ve shut down the jobs, and taken over the schools. Now they want to shut down the democracy and turn the public parks into a rich man’s playground. But in Benton Harbor, as in Selma and Montgomery, they forget even the poorest people have a sense of dignity. Dr. King wrote, “the ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” In Benton Harbor, it is time for the good people to make themselves heard.

We have seen gains in the area of human rights when it deals with the rights of our minority (for now) citizenry, but there is still so much inequity to deal with. The new way to disenfranchise these people, along with Senior Citizens and Students—Democratic constituencies all—is to limit their access to the voting booth. These are variations on old southern aristocratic themes that the Supreme Court has already declared unconstitutional.

In Florida, for example, the registration process is particularly difficult for senior citizens. Many need help to understand what they are supposed to do to register correctly as they want to vote against the governor who makes people take drug tests for no established reason other than to enrich his own drug testing company.

According to the Brennan School for Justice at NYU Law School:

“Restricting 54 million eligible Americans...is to disenfranchise more than 25% of voting-age citizens. Among minority groups, this percentage is even higher - more than 30% for African Americans and more than 40% for Hispanics.

“In the 2004 election cycle, non-profit organizations registered millions of Americans to vote, many for the first time. In 2004, 49.6 million voter registrations were submitted - 4 million more than in 2000. A large part of this surge was due to non-profit groups, who ran voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts to get new voters interested and engaged in politics. At least ten million new registrations were submitted by larger groups alone, over 20% of the total number of registrations. The total impact of voter registration drives was likely higher; for instance, in one Florida county, almost half of new registrations came from voter registration drives.

“Voter registration drives help citizens who face the greatest barriers to voting. Many non-profit voter registration drives target groups like the elderly or disabled, who may find it difficult to travel to a government office to register to vote or to obtain a voter registration application online; low-income populations and minority communities who have been traditionally disenfranchised; and students who may find it difficult to establish residence and vote where they live. These groups have traditionally faced the greatest barriers to registration and voting.

“Many states have recently enacted burdensome restrictions on voter registration drives, enforced with heavy fines and criminal penalties. Many non-profit voter registration drives target groups like the elderly or disabled, who may find it difficult to travel to a government office to register to vote or to obtain a voter registration application online; low-income populations and minority communities who have been traditionally disenfranchised; and students who may find it difficult to establish residence and vote where they live. These groups have traditionally faced the greatest barriers to registration and voting.

“These laws require voter registration groups to go through complicated procedures before conducting voter registration drives.

“Many of these new laws have shut down or substantially impeded voter registration drives. These new restrictions often have hidden costs for voter registration drives. Many groups are simply unable to comply with the new laws without abandoning or cutting back on their voter registration efforts. These groups review forms for completeness and accuracy. They monitor their volunteers and follow up with voters if they need more information, and with elections officials to guarantee that voters get on the rolls. Tight deadlines can stop this review process, and even a longer deadline is a problem when it is enforced with heavy penalties. For instance, the League of Women Voters of “Florida had to shut down operations rather than risk that state’s penalty fine scheme: just 14 forms lost in a hurricane or car accident could have bankrupted the organization.

“Voter registration drives do not address any real problems. Some state lawmakers claim that these new laws protect against “fraud” and help voters by ensuring that their forms are submitted on time. The evidence shows that voter registration drives do not change the patterns of when and how voter registration forms are submitted, except by increasing the number of voters who register. In lawsuits in Ohio and Florida, the states have been unable to show that voter registration drives cause any real problems. The unified Republican push for photo identification cards carries echoes of the Jim Crow laws — with their poll taxes and literacy tests — that inhibited black voters in the South from Reconstruction through the 1960s. Election experts say minorities, poor people and students — who tend to skew Democratic — are among those least likely to have valid driver’s licenses, the most prevalent form of identification. Older people, another group less likely to have drivers’ licenses are also democratic-leaning swing voters.

We cannot, however, not talk about the Congress while on the topic of human rights and the historical methods being used to suppress voting. For more than 200 years the various political parties in Congress have been able to work together to forge national legislation--with one notable exception 150 years ago. The acceptance of negotiation for the greater good was the key. But today we bear witness to a new reality, where one party simply refuses to cooperate with the other party and attempts to obstruct and then threatens to repeal proposed legislation. It is interesting to note that while the two parties have not really negotiated, president Obama—against the widespread opinion of his political base—has tried to infuse a sense of bipartisanship into his bills. Many call this giving away things that might not be lost in negotiation. Others say that when you accept the position of the opposition, you should be able to expect them to vote for their own legislative proposals.

But with the onset of the Obama administration came a new reality—Obstruction for the sake of Obstruction. Disagreement among congresspeople at the cost of complete reversals on original positions. For example, the “individual mandate” for the Affordable Care Act was a foundation of republican dogma on health control reform for more than 20 years. So why then did republicans reverse themselves en masse once President Obama accepted their concept and built it into the ACA?

Looking at the total picture the answer is obvious—republicans are not going to accept legislation from an African American President, even if it means breaking their political promises, reversing long held positions, and in the process destroying their own country.

Racism is insidious and is manifested in many forms today. Human rights includes letting gay Americans have the same rights as straight Americans—including the right to marry. While different states vehemently do not want to support gay marriage, all states must recognize the marriage licenses issued in other states of our country. While President Obama has decided that the Attorney General’s office will accept DOMA, the attack has been picked up by Republicans.

Human rights include the right of women to have adequate health care. Planned Parenthood is not the “Lenscrafters” of abortion. Nor does it spend 90% of its money on abortions. PP probably stops more abortions through counseling, birth control, and education than they perform abortions. We are not here to advocate for or against abortion—almost all of us would much prefer to see a highly concentrated effort on adoption—even if inter-racial--rather than watch Americans go overseas to adopt Chinese or Russian or African children. But we support a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body. To force the victims of rape or incest to carry pregnancies to term is a hideous punishment to one who has endured a physically and psychologically horribly damaging crime. Fortunately, the courts have just struck down this attack on the health care of women, who can once again go to Planned Parenthood for cancer screenings and other health care.

Human rights include the rights of children to be protected against those who would harm them in any way.

Human rights include the rights of the handicapped to be able to get work in a place they can access.

Human rights affords all Americans with the rights as stated in our Constitution, with these rights being interpreted the same for a member of the “top 2%” or a person collecting welfare.