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Interview with Chomsky about OWS and Housing Justice
Direct Action, Occupy Wall Street, and the Future of Housing Justice: An Interview With Noam Chomsky
Shane Burley interview w/Noam Chomsky
...
SB
In the language, when we are discussing the issue, we draw on the idea of housing as a human right. It’s the slogan we use. We call on the U.N. Convention on Human Rights (Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Why do you think this “human rights framework” is important for talking about housing?
NC
Well there is a kind of a gold standard on human rights. It’s the Universal Declaration in 1948. It’s important for American’s to understand the status of that declaration. It was not a Western imposition. It was arrived at by consensus over a very broad range, including input from elsewhere. In fact, much of the initiative came from elsewhere. Some from here, Eleanor Roosevelt in particular. But it was agreed upon and affirmed by congress. It has the highest legal status you can say. It’s got three parts, all of equal status. The first part is political and civil rights, so the right to vote and so on. The second part is social and economic rights, and that includes the right to housing, the right to healthcare, the right to education. All fundamental rights, and by world standards are easily as significant as voting rights. Maybe more so. The third section is cultural rights. The right to preserve your culture, to protect it and so on. Well the U.S. attitude from the beginning has been to dismiss the third component, not even talk about it. It’s never discussed. And to reject the second component. So U.S. officials have disparaged and dismissed the social and economic provisions. That’s true especially under the Reagan and Bush One administrations. Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.N. Ambassador under Reagan (1), just dismissed the socio-economic provisions with ridicule. It’s a letter from Santa Clause. That’s exactly the same as throwing out the civil and political rights and saying their nothing, just a lot of words. Paula Dobriansky(2) in the first Bush administration, she described social and economic rights as ‘a myth.’ That there are no such rights. The only rights are civil and political rights, and it’s just a myth to think that these are rights. Morris Abram, who was the delegate to the international U.N. human rights group (3), they were debating something called the ‘right to development,’ which basically paraphrased the Universal Declaration. He voted against it; I think the U.S. was the only country to vote against it, with, again, very disparaging remarks. Saying it’s preposterous. Incitement. You can’t talk about social and economic rights. They don’t exist.
So the U.S. has been one of the strongest opponents of social and economic rights, which is a core part, one-third, of the Universal Declaration. Actually the U.S. is opposed to two-thirds since it doesn’t discuss the cultural rights. We should know that our country is in the lead in undermining human rights. That’s important, especially given the standard rhetoric from political leaders, intellectuals, media, and so on about how we defend human rights all over the world. We don’t defend them at all in principle. We defend them against enemies. So we are all in favor of human rights in Easter Europe or Iran, and say that’s fine. But not in our domain. Not here.
Foreclosure is one case in point. The right to housing is a core part of the Universal Declaration. Its particularly obscene her, for the reasons I’ve mentioned, because in the foreclosure case these people were cheated. They were cheated by the big banks, who created the crisis on the verge of criminality, some of them actually criminal. They created the crisis; induced people to undertake obligations they couldn’t possibly fulfill, and are now throwing them out in the streets, even though congress legislated there should be assistance to the victims.
...
http://www.zcommunications.org/direct-action-occupy-wallstreet-and-the-future-of-housing-justice-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky-by-noam-chomskySB
In the language, when we are discussing the issue, we draw on the idea of housing as a human right. It’s the slogan we use. We call on the U.N. Convention on Human Rights (Universal Declaration of Human Rights). Why do you think this “human rights framework” is important for talking about housing?
NC
Well there is a kind of a gold standard on human rights. It’s the Universal Declaration in 1948. It’s important for American’s to understand the status of that declaration. It was not a Western imposition. It was arrived at by consensus over a very broad range, including input from elsewhere. In fact, much of the initiative came from elsewhere. Some from here, Eleanor Roosevelt in particular. But it was agreed upon and affirmed by congress. It has the highest legal status you can say. It’s got three parts, all of equal status. The first part is political and civil rights, so the right to vote and so on. The second part is social and economic rights, and that includes the right to housing, the right to healthcare, the right to education. All fundamental rights, and by world standards are easily as significant as voting rights. Maybe more so. The third section is cultural rights. The right to preserve your culture, to protect it and so on. Well the U.S. attitude from the beginning has been to dismiss the third component, not even talk about it. It’s never discussed. And to reject the second component. So U.S. officials have disparaged and dismissed the social and economic provisions. That’s true especially under the Reagan and Bush One administrations. Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.N. Ambassador under Reagan (1), just dismissed the socio-economic provisions with ridicule. It’s a letter from Santa Clause. That’s exactly the same as throwing out the civil and political rights and saying their nothing, just a lot of words. Paula Dobriansky(2) in the first Bush administration, she described social and economic rights as ‘a myth.’ That there are no such rights. The only rights are civil and political rights, and it’s just a myth to think that these are rights. Morris Abram, who was the delegate to the international U.N. human rights group (3), they were debating something called the ‘right to development,’ which basically paraphrased the Universal Declaration. He voted against it; I think the U.S. was the only country to vote against it, with, again, very disparaging remarks. Saying it’s preposterous. Incitement. You can’t talk about social and economic rights. They don’t exist.
So the U.S. has been one of the strongest opponents of social and economic rights, which is a core part, one-third, of the Universal Declaration. Actually the U.S. is opposed to two-thirds since it doesn’t discuss the cultural rights. We should know that our country is in the lead in undermining human rights. That’s important, especially given the standard rhetoric from political leaders, intellectuals, media, and so on about how we defend human rights all over the world. We don’t defend them at all in principle. We defend them against enemies. So we are all in favor of human rights in Easter Europe or Iran, and say that’s fine. But not in our domain. Not here.
Foreclosure is one case in point. The right to housing is a core part of the Universal Declaration. Its particularly obscene her, for the reasons I’ve mentioned, because in the foreclosure case these people were cheated. They were cheated by the big banks, who created the crisis on the verge of criminality, some of them actually criminal. They created the crisis; induced people to undertake obligations they couldn’t possibly fulfill, and are now throwing them out in the streets, even though congress legislated there should be assistance to the victims.
...