Effective Organizing in Terrible Times: The Strategic Value of Human Rights for Transnational Anti-Racist Feminisms

These are terrible times, and terrible times require those committed to social change to rethink our approaches—not only to ensure that we remain relevant but also to help sustain hope, both in ourselves and in others.

Recently, I've encountered hope in an unexpected place. After twenty years of activism, writing and teaching under a variety of mantles—primarily feminism and anti-racism, but also anti-militarism, anti-imperialism, and queer liberation—I've become immersed in the world of human rights. My turn to the human rights framework is certainly contextual: it is a response to the current political climate, as well as to the expansion and radicalization of the global human rights movement, both of which I will address below. But more fundamentally, it is a strategic turn, one that engages issues of naming and movement-building. While I passionately subscribe to the multiracial and transnational feminist vision articulated by radical women of color, indigenous and "two-thirds world" women, this is a difficult politic to package accessibly. Moreover, representing oneself as a feminist of any kind can trigger knee-jerk antipathy from a variety of quarters, even before one has a chance to begin the conversation. In the face of the intense and rapid consolidation of repressive forces globally since 9/11, it is obvious that if those seeking to upend the existing social order can't work together across issues and identity groups or make our messages meaningful to broader sectors of the dis-enfranchised and disenchanted, we simply can't be effective. The question of how we represent our politics is therefore more urgent than ever.

In light of these challenges, one of the most important strategic advantages of the term "human rights" for proponents of social change in the United States is its ubiquity. Barring religious extremists, there are few who do not profess support for human rights—at least in the abstract. Both government officials and their most radical critics are equally comfortable claiming the term, often, of course, to advance disparate agendas. But the overall goodwill that attaches to human rights only runs skin deep, since few are actually acquainted with either its specific principles or formal mechanisms. Despite the best efforts of human rights advocates, the vast majority of U.S. Americans remain unaware that every human being is entitled to a comprehensive and internationally accepted slate of rights, regardless of gender, race, nationality (or lack thereof), citizenship status, political or religious affiliation, or any other identity; that this slate includes the rights to an adequate standard of living, affordable healthcare, a life free from violence and discrimination, a culture, and even adequate time for rest; or that an increasingly elaborate system of legal tools and monitoring bodies has been designed to enable ordinary people to hold our government accountable for respecting, protecting and fulfilling these rights.

This disparity between the general favor directed toward human rights and the lack of concrete knowledge about it actually creates a raft of opportunities for activists working within a variety of liberatory traditions, because the relatively non-threatening language of human rights can function as the opening wedge in conversations with those who may be resistant to more pointed critiques. Re-framing issues through the lens of human rights can help garner support for all manner of progressive agendas. But this is not a politics of mirage, since all manner of progressive agendas legitimately fall within the domain of human rights. The drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or UDHR—the originary statement of principles adopted by the United Nations in 1948 from which all formal human rights instruments flow—sought to identify the conditions necessary for every human being to live a safe, fulfilled, and dignified life. This aim required a vision and a system flexible enough to address...