"No one is free when others are oppressed."
Anon

I wrote a diary in 2010 over at DKOS on Human Rights. It got little to no interest. What interest there was concerned a perceived slight against Transgendered persons. Two years later I re-wrote that diary, adding to, and subtracting from the first one in hopes that folks would finally hear me. It didn't fly then either.

I am going to try again here.

I shudder to think of what our nation and our world will become if we continue to let ourselves be divided into special interest groups at odds with one another, only concerned about our own agendas.

It is imperative that our actions be centered upon securing Human Rights for every one of us.

Human Rights are under assault, both in the United States and around the world. Religious intolerance and hate are preached and practiced by Theocratic movements and threaten Democracy at every step. None of it is about Pro-Choice or the health of women. It isn't about the GBLTQ community or their right to marry, or even in some cases to exist at all. It isn't about the rights of people of color. It isn't about the rights of Labor.

The MegaCorps and their bought and paid for politicians are waging war against Humanity. They are forcing “austerity” upon us, even as they pad their own pockets. They are selling off public lands that belong to the PEOPLE. They are taking over our cities and states and running them as little Theocratic fiefdoms.

They are gutting agencies that protect the PEOPLE from abuse and unsafe condition in the workplace or which control the poisons being spewed into our air, water and earth.

House Republicans Pass Legislation Gutting Consumer Protection

How Politics Gutted Workplace Safety

The Koch-Congress Is Gutting The EPA While The Media Is Silent

I mean really, when some overpaid idiot actually says out loud that WATER, that HUMANS need to LIVE, is NOT a HUMAN RIGHT....what more proof do we need that Human Rights are under assault?

These things affect us all...regardless of age, color, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, or religion (or lack thereof) (Did I miss anyone?)

And, they are using OUR money, OUR taxes to do it.

They scream and holler about "balancing the budget".... but they spend like drunken sailors on shore leave. They spend on things that are not good for the PEOPLE, like war, and intervention into other nation's business. They try to run our government like a business, but it ISN'T a business...and EVERY DIME of taxes should be spent for the benefit of the PEOPLE...for the COMMON good.

Even the very basic genetic codes that make us who we are and of the food we eat are being patented and controlled by multi-national MegaCorps who’s ONLY purpose is to make money while enjoying the exact same freedoms that used to be reserved for living, breathing, bleeding and dying Human Beings.

Bill Moyers said about the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that ,

"Corporations were endowed with the rights of “personhood” but exempted from the responsibilities of citizenship."

Corporations are considered people now. Us, not so much.

They are taking steps that could force women to have as many babies as their bodies can tolerate, and then, once the children are born, give no help for their care and upbringing. In their world, a zygote would have more rights of not only the mother, but more than the living and breathing child they may well become. A nun, of all people summed this up better than I ever could....

They are refusing to follow the LAW regarding equal marriage RIGHTS.

They are gerrymandering voting districts to limit the voting RIGHTS of people of color and the disabled and aged.

They restricting the RIGHTS of working people to unionize thus reducing them to third world status.

They are taking steps that could remake The United States into a Theocracy.

They are taking steps that could completely shred our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, reducing them to nothing more than worthless pieces of paper.

Lives are at risk here. Women’s lives, men’s lives, the lives of our children and grandchildren, gay, straight, transgendered, religious or not, people of color, we ALL must face the fact that we are running out of the necessities of Life on a finite planet even as the MegaCorps and politicians seek to control what is left…in an effort to control all of Humanity.

It is nothing less than our very lives that are at stake here.

But here’s the thing….”They” are mostly white, middle aged obscenely wealthy men (and some women) who are scared to death that sooner or later we will understand what they are doing, and stand TOGETHER against them. A few are starting to see the pitchforks and torches and are speaking out...

Nick Hanauer writes;

The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats

They fear that we will draw a line in the sand and tell them “This far and no farther” . So, they work hard at keeping us divided in order to keep themselves in power. They know that they are outnumbered if we ever realize that we have a common cause. They fear becoming a minority (although they already are) and that should they lose control…lose the power they have over us, that they will be treated as they have treated us. They fear that because it is exactly what they would do if they were in our shoes.

Benjamin Franklin said, upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence,

“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. “

No truer words were spoken with regards to what is happening today… United we will stand, divided, we will surely fail.

Taking a deep breath and hitting "publish"..... again.