Insights/Action
Insight: Human Rights is a unifying framework capable of building connections across difference within a common vocabulary. We should use the power of human rights in every way we can to expand and strengthen collective action. We can build on-ramps with low barriers to entry for inviting in new people and communities while welcoming the ways ia bigger, richer movement will be changed in the process.
A Big Tent for Inclusive Organizing
Action: Launching the National Table for Human Rights Strategies to host a consistent space for convening.
Struggles for Dignity are on the March
Insight: While the challenges are profound and existential, defeatist narratives about Human Rights in free-fall are wrong. Human rights movements are highly active across the country and the globe doing things in novel ways that emerge from their contexts, generating models that deserve to be studied and replicated. An honest story of the moment must capture the creative, robust, and tenacious forms of human rights resistance actively building our new future.
Action: Maintain a map of US human rights work to capture ongoing activity, identify gaps, and assess scope of resources.
Solidarity Financing
Insight: Our movements operate within capitalist mandates and rely too heavily on philanthropy, which takes up outsized space and influence while serving as tax shelters for many of the same people, firms, and companies we target in our campaigns. Cooperative approaches - such as membership models, resource sharing, and redistribution - that challenge the competitive nature of civil society could wisely produce alternative economic forms that are both possible and necessary.
Action: Circulate a Community Agreement document to advance collectivist norms and practices.
Build Infrastructure
Insight: Powerful movements need physical places to meet, commune, and rest, as well as proprietary and safe communication channels. We must develop sustainable plans for a network of municipal, regional and national assembly spaces in order to stay and feel connected to one another. Digital architecture is necessary for exchanging ideas, sharing information, and advancing narrative power.
Action: Organize a series of local human rights reviews to coincide with the potential Fall 2026 appearance of the US government before the UN Human Rights Council.
Freedom Needs Fighters
Insight: We need to cultivate a base of support for Human Rights in the US by continuing and expanding popular education and organizing efforts. Students of all ages can be exposed to the basics of international law and norms, while opening up these processes as opportunities for local and individual sense-making and activism. Human Rights can provide a home for political belonging among fellow travelers, an adaptive container with certain contours that can also be reshaped from below. But learning and shared leadership is a two-way street: Young folks and people new to the movement bring fresh insights and a depth of knowledge that must inform the work.
Action: Establish avenues for broadcasting updates, issuing requests for support, and deepening relationships.
Pass the Torch
Insight: The legacy of Human Rights efforts in the United States must be included in our broader understanding of movements for social change in this country. Capturing the stories and strategies of our elders is essential for documenting our past and building a lifeline to future leaders and organizers. Intergenerational learning and mentorship are key to strengthening the roots that will sustain us.
Action: Assemble a timeline and anthology of documents from the history of the US human rights movement.
