Module 3

The question of human rights and how they relate to economic stability has and will always be one of the grayer areas of our democratic society. Yes, we all would agree that it is the government’s duty to protect and take care of its citizens. Naturally, we expect this to mean that the government won’t allow us to go hungry or to possibly perish because we don’t have the expenses to sustain life. However, it is clear that this is not the case. The hard fact, is that the government does not intentionally leave its people on the street with very little to sustain life, but that our economic practices have failed in certain aspects. This module looks at two very different causes of poverty with very different mandatory government reactions.
In the case of Dr. Martin Luther King’s campaign for economic and civil rights for African Americans, the government was in the wrong. By not allowing equal opportunity for blacks and whites to attain gainful employment, federal laws were literally taking food out of peoples mouths. These actions were clear violations of human rights codes set out by the constitution. Because these infractions on human rights were completely unjustified and rooted in illicit claims about the work ethic and worth of black workers, Martin Luther King’s crusade for democratic socialism and economic rights was completely legitimate. Through the Montgomery boycott Dr. King saw how important economic power was to the rights of all people. The boycott allowed “Montgomery’s predominantly working-class black population [to win] an economic battle with a wealthier adversary wielding a formidable arsenal” (Jackson, 62). This proved that equal opportunity for jobs and economic prosperity would allow blacks to have a say in the politics of their communities instead of being pushed around by the wealthy white elite. Martin Luther King’s movement for civil and economic rights was a valid fight for human rights because the government was intentionally holding an entire race of people back.
The struggle that the working poor has in our society to make ends meet on a daily business strikes me more as a public policy issue rather than that of human rights. We live in a free market capitalist society that applies a degree of laissez-faire to the fiscal lives of its people. Even though we have essentially reached the stage of development in which society can become a welfare state and help its people, the democracy we have created has not interpreted this as financially bailing out everyone who has fallen on hard times. It is certainly not a perfect system, but it does not seem like a violation of human rights. The situations that those in Barbara Ehrenreich book Nickel and Dimed find themselves are unfortunate, but not caused because the government has created laws that have taken away their options for work. Instead, this is an issue of economic structure. The poverty line is being raised because the cost of living is going up due to economic strains such as gas prices. The issues this book presents are rooted in our problems, as a country on the whole, not attacks on the human rights of a select demographic. She asks “how in particular…were the roughly four million women about to be booted into the labor market b welfare reform going to make it on $6 or $7 an hour?” (Ehrenreich 1). Her question proves the point that is it the economic issues facing the country at this time that is the source of hardships facing the working poor. It is not, like in the case of Martin Luther King jr. , a case of government condoned racism and oppression.