Happiness is the Declaration of Human Rights

From the South Bend Tribune
Michiana Point of View
12/12/08

I was sitting in the Local 5, United Auto Workers, hall for the 60th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 6 and I was feeling proud. I had a smile in my heart. I was smiling because my dear mother was so proud of being a union member all of the years that she worked at Simplicity Pattern Company. I was proud because my daughter is a current member of Local 5. The unions make it possible for working-class people, people of color and women, to live well -- good decent independent lives. Honest money.

I was proud of the Indiana University South Bend students who provided us with slapstick between speakers. I smiled at the adorable little girl, now a teenager, who I remember sleeping in the brown rocking chair that I bought from her mother during the West Washington Street yard sale 10 years ago. I smiled at all of the people in the room who I have known for years who, like me, are gray, wrinkled, pot-bellied and committed.

I smiled to think about the article in The Tribune that said Eleanor Roosevelt was instrumental in getting the Universal Human Rights Declaration passed and how Hillary Clinton stood up for women's rights in Beijing 13 years ago.

When it was my turn to speak, I was in good company as I stood up once again for individuals' long overdue human rights. A person's right to file a complaint with the South Bend Human Rights Commission if that person believes he or she may have been discriminated against because of sexual orientation or gender identity in the areas of education, housing, public accommodations or employment is a human right. I smiled because the South Bend Common Council came within one vote in 2006 of amending the ordinance that would allow this very basic human right: justice.

The late, beloved and former council member Roland Kelly and I held hands under the table as the ordinance was being debated. I always smile when I think of my sweetheart.

It seems so pitiful, so embarrassing and so sad that people today in this great country would have to beg for a basic human right, justice. Indianapolis passed the same ordinance in December 2005. South Bend can also.

The boogeyman accusations are, "where will this stop, we are going down a slippery slope, and these are special rights."

In the USA we don't stop. There is nothing slippery about this slope and the only thing special about these rights is that we openly deny them to some people while we give them to others.

I continue to run into people who are shocked that these rights are denied to some of our citizens. Those shocked are old and young, people of all races, and Christians and non-Christians.

Our Declaration of Independence talks about inalienable rights ... "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." We don't stop until we fulfill the promise of the president that President-elect Barack Obama most admires, Abraham Lincoln, who stated in the Gettysburg Address, "Dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

I smiled. I smiled inside; a smile of pride, hope and the confidence that we will do the right thing ... we always do. Happy birthday, Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Happy birthday to ya!

Charlotte D. Pfeifer lives in South Bend.