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President
Franklin D. Roosevelt's State of the Union Message, 1944;
1945 video
Photos
Legacy
Lessons Brother
Can You Spare a Dime [Yip Harburg] Dr.John
& Odetta
United
Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted
December 10, 1948
March
on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963
President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, State of the Union Message to Congress,
1944
THE
ECONOMIC BILL OF RIGHTS
This republic had
its beginning and grew to its present strength under the protection
of certain inalienable political rights...They were our rights
to life and liberty. As our nation has grown in size and stature,
however--as our industrial economy expanded--these political rights
proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual
freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence....
People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which
dictatorships are made. In our day these economic truths have
become accepted as self evident. We have accepted, so to speak,
a second Bill of rights under which a new basis of security and
prosperity can be established for all--regardless of station,
race, or creed.
Among these are :
- the right to
a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or
farms or mines of the nation;
- the right to
earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
- the right of
every farmer to raise and sell his (sic) products at a return
which will give his family a decent living;
- the right of
every business man, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere
of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies
at home or abroad;
- the right of
every family to a decent home;
- the right to
adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve
and enjoy good health;
- the right to
adequate protection from the economic fears of old age
and sickness and accident and unemployment;
- the right to
a good education....
Annual Message on the State of the
Union, 1945, The Public Papers
and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, V. 13, Victory
and the Threshold
of Peace, 1944-45, compiled by Samuel I. Rosenman.[NY: Russell
& Russell, 1950), 503-505
I said then, and I say now, that these economic truths
represent a second
bill of rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity
can be established for all--regardless of station, race, or creed.
Of these rights the most fundamental, and one on which the
fulfillment of
the others in large degree depends, is the "right to a useful
and remuner-
ative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the
Nation."....
We have had full employment during the war. We have had it
because the Government has been ready to buy all the materials
of war which the country could produce--and this has amounted
to approximately half our present productive capacity.
After the war we must maintain full employment with Government
performing its peacetime functions. This means that we must achieve
a
level of demand and purchasing power by private consumers--farmers,
businessmen, workers, profssional men, housewives--which is sufficienty
high to replace wartime Government demands; and it means also
that we must greatly increase our export trade above the prewar
level.
Our policy is, of course, to rely as much as possible on
private entrprise to provide jobs. But the American people will
not accept mass unemployment
or mere makeshift work. There will be need for the work of everyone
willing and able to work--and that means close to 600,000 jobs.
Full employment means not only jobs--but productive jobs.
Americans do
not regard jobs that pay substandard wages as productive jobs.
UNIVERSAL
DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Adopted
by the United Nations General Assembly, December
10, 1948
Article 23. (1) Everyone
has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and
favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without
any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone has the
right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for
himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and
supplemented,
if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the
right to form and to join trade unions for the protections of
his interests.
Article 24. Everyone
has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation
of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Article 25. (1) Everyone
has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health
and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing,
housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the
right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability,
widowhood, old age or other lack
of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and
childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children,
whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social
protection.
MARCH
ON WASHINGTON FOR JOBS AND FREEDOM
 formerly at http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050415/the_late_great_income_tax.php
UPI August 28, 1963, reprinted in Washington Post,
June, 1998
Left to Right: John
Lewis, Mathew Ahmann, Floyd B. McKissick, Martin
Luther King, Jr Cleveland Robinson, Joachim Prinz, Joseph
Rauh, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph
WHAT WE DEMAND (partial
list):
7 A massive federal
program to train and place all unemployed workers--Negro and white--on
meaningful and dignified jobs at decent wages.
8. A national minimum
wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard
of living.
9. A broadened Fair
Labor Standards Act to include all areas of employment which
are presently excluded.
10. A federal Fair
Employment Practices Act barring discrimination by fed-
eral, state, and municipal governments, and by employers, contractors,
employment agencies, and trade unions.
Martin
Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience (New York:
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1967), 55.
In our society
it is murder, psychologically, to deprive a man [sic] of a job
or an income. You are in substance saying to that man that he
has no right
to exist. You are in a real way depriving him of life, liberty,
and the pursuit
of happiness, denying in his case the very creed of his society.
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