The Community Of Rights

The Community of Rights provides a detailed explication of the fundamental rights of agency as derived from a single rationally justified principle of morality and develops the contents of economic and social rights as a basic part of human rights. A critical alternative to both "liberal" and "communitarian" views, this authoritative work will command the attention of anyone engaged in the debate over social and economic justice.

Less Than a Roar

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Examines community and human rights in a realistic way, by talking with those most affected.

Human rights advocates contend that the LGBT community has yet to achieve full equality and acceptance--in the United States and elsewhere. In recent years in the United States, state legislators have introduced more than 250 bills that limit LGBT rights--and twenty of these have become law. In other parts of the world, it remains shameful to identify as LGBT; in some countries, it is even punishable by death. These and other human rights concerns are examined.

A transformative model for community social work rooted in basic social and economic rights is the basis of this timely Brief. With specific chapters spotlighting the rights to health care, nutritious food, and adequate and affordable housing, the book describes in depth the role of community practice in securing rights for underserved and vulnerable groups and models key aspects of rights-based work such as empowerment, participation, and collaboration. Case examples relate local struggles to larger regional and statewide campaigns, illustrating ways the book's framework can inform policymakers and improve social structures in the larger community. This rights-based perspective contrasts sharply with the deficits-based approach commonly employed in community social work, and has the potential to inspire new strategies for addressing systemic social inequality. Features of Human Rights-Based Community Practice in the United States: A conceptual basis for a rights-based approach to community practice. Detailed analysis of legal and social barriers to health care, housing, and food. Examples of effective and emerging rights-based community interventions. Methods for assessing the state of human rights at the community level. Documents, discussion questions, resource lists, and other valuable tools.

The founder of the Communitarian movement--which has attracted the attention of Al Gore, Jack Kemp, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Lester Thurow--says that America needs to move from me to we. Former White House advisor Etzioni shows how Americans can work to rebuild the family, cultivate tolerance, encourage character education in schools--and strengthen communities.lustrated.

We the People offers powerful portraits of communities across the United States that have faced threats from environmentally destructive corporate projects and responded by successfully banning those projects at a local level. We hear the inspiring voices of ordinary citizens and activists practicing a cutting-edge form of organizing developed by the nonprofit law firm, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). Their methodology is an answer for the frustrations of untold numbers of activists who have been defeated time and again by corporate political power and legal entitlement. Instead of fighting against what we don’t want, this book can teach us to create from the ground up what we do want, basing our vision in local control and law. By refusing to cooperate with the unjust laws that favor corporate profit over local sustainability, communities can show the way forward, driving their rights into state constitutions and, eventually, into the federal Constitution. In communities from New Hampshire to Oregon, new forms of local organizing have sprung up to fight fracking, mining, dumping of toxic waste, and industrial agriculture, among other environmental assaults. These communities have recognized that the law has “legalized” the damaging actions of corporations, while providing no recourse against harm, and they have therefore decided to create a new system of law that makes local control and sustainability legal. Starting small, this process has spread from rural Pennsylvania to larger cities and towns, and has resulted in the creation of state networks seeking to amend state constitutions. This work is about finishing the American Revolution by giving up the illusion of democracy and forging a system of true self-governance. In addition, this is about recognizing in law, for the first time in history, that nature possesses legally enforceable rights of its own.