International Human Rights Day

Yesterday (December 10) was International Human Rights Day. We went to a demonstration put on by the L.A. Human Right to Housing Collective. I urge you to consider: Do you look at housing as a universal human right? It is an easy thing to keep out of mind, since basic shelter is so taken for granted in our lives. Yet, in L.A. County alone, over 50,000 sleep on the streets every night because of the incredible lack of affordable housing.

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, closes to home -- so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person: the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."

-Eleanor Roosevelt in remarks at the United Nations, March 27, 1958