Five domains of rights

It is time to sketch out the basic premise of Change It Up.

The heart of the ideas here comes straight from a progressive form of inclusive feminism that is sometimes referred to as intersectionality (but please see Post 1). The structures of our society tilt the balance of power and wealth towards the people who designed them. Parallel to elsewhere, here in Aotearoa those people tend to share a long list of traits in common: they are mostly Pākehā, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, able-minded/neurotypical, and male. Thus, we have a political and social dynamic that subtly and unsubtly favours people in those categories, a situation that is respectively structurally racist, transphobic, heteronormative, ableist, and sexist. A few examples well-known examples: women are paid less for the same work as men, are less likely to be promoted into upper management, and are far more likely to perform work that is not economically recognised or rewarded; social services follow predominantly Pākehā protocols, making accessing them more difficult for others; most urban design and architecture considers only the able-bodied, creating "disability" where none need exist; and queer youth have far higher rates of self-harm, suicide ideation, and suicide attempts than those who are cisgender and identify as straight. These examples highlight systemic problems that demand solutions. On many of these issues, a great amount of work has been done already both from inside and outside of the sociopolitical power system. However, when the system gives consideration to such issues, it treats them as isolated problems that do not have general, shared causes. In fact, many rights movements have also at least tacitly treated them as isolated problems, by focusing on single issues. For this reason and others, such approaches are unlikely to ever be completely successful.

Even if there was no further "tilting" as described above, the inertia of the past would mean imbalances of power and wealth would continue, as these imbalances are self-reinforcing. The children of one privileged generation share the formal and informal benefits passed on from their parents in various facets of their life from infancy. And even without the raft of cultural advantages that can be offered, wealth is also self-reinforcing because the returns to capital outstrip economic growth: those without wealth simply cannot, on average, catch up with those who do. This creates an elite class with concentrated political and economic power. Nominal members of privileged groups (e.g., straight white men) who themselves lack wealth might not be a part of this elite class, however many such people overinterpret this to suggest they have no privilege at all. What this perspective--and all non-intersectional perspectives--fails to recognise is that a primary disadvantage such as a lack of wealth is multiplied for those without access to other privilege. For those who are privileged, so ingrained is privilege, that it appears more-or-less natural to those that have it, and is easily reinforced with simplistic rhetoric: reward comes from hard work, therefore we all deserve what we have. The first struggle is to get the privileged to acknowledge their privilege, and the injustice that goes along with it. This struggle is not new, and contemporary rights movements benefit from the civil rights movements, indigenous rights movements, women's rights movements, and LGBTQI movements that begun in generations past, albeit with the caveats that intersectionality has highlighted, and will continue for generations yet.

These power imbalances are seen throughout the world, both within countries, and through colonisation and oppressive economic policies, between countries (e.g., see dependency theory, especially with regards to the point about about wealth accumulation). I see the impact of the power imbalance dividing into five domains. I will present these domains in from those order from least contentious to most contentious for their inclusion in a movement that stems from human rights activism. Note, this in no way implies an order of importance. Each of them will be the subject of much greater scrutiny later, but for now I will simply outline them briefly:

1. National, and subnational human rights. In the first domain, there are above issues of human rights and their intersections that occur both within and between the communities in a society or nation state. This domain contains what are the most basic tenets of human rights movements, and of intersectionality--the singular and multiplicative effects of privilege. 
2. International human rights. In the second domain, the same issues are projected on a global scale--reflecting power mbbalances between nation states, and perhaps more specifically between classes of people in different nation states. This domain reflects that global economic liberalism has been enforced through colonisation and institutions such as the World Bank, resulting in a raft of economic, labour, and resource exploitation. In other words what happens between the relatively powerful and less powerful individuals within a country is also replicated at a different scale between relatively powerful and less powerful nations. This domain might be given less consideration by some activists in reflection of its difficulty: if it is hard to work on the issues of the first domain, scaling from domestic to international levels adds a number of challenging dimensions. 
3. Transgenerational rights. In the third domain, is the issue of future rights and sustainability: specifically, the needs of future generations, and the burdens of economic and environmental debt we place upon them by our current decisions. By definition, we the living have power over those who are yet to be born. This domain offers further difficulties: there is a fundamental tension between meeting the basic needs of many currently living people, and maintaining the ability of future generations to meet theirs. The tension is resolved if the sacrifices can come from the wealthiest people who are most able to afford it, and not the poorest. However, the wealthiest are of course the most privileged, and in the best position to resist change that they perceive is not in their interest. 
4. Environmental rights. In the fourth domain are environmental issues, representing the tensions between our own short-term interests and those of the ecosystems we exploit for our benefit. We modify and co-opt enormous tracts of land, resources, and energy for our own use, and these come at the expense of naturally occurring ecosystems. Our actions modify the climate, cause extinctions, and place species under all kinds of additional risks (reduced genetic diversity, and habitat fragmentation for example). I list this as a relatively contentious issue because the extent to which this is a problem is viewed from a range of perspectives, even amongst those who agree that something ought to be done. For example, do we have full rights to exploit the environment maximally for our own benefit so long as we do so sustainably, or are there additional intrinsic values in the environment that are of themselves worth protecting?
5. Animal rights. The final domain is the rights of sentient animals to be free from exploitation and violence. The inclusion of animal rights will leap out for some people as being out of place alongside the other domains. I understand this, but allow me to explain my reasoning. Violence and exploitation are cyclical. When we permit them, we accept there are circumstances when their use is legitimate (outside of defense of our other rights). Violence and exploitation of animals including having their reproductive cycles co-opted for food (milk, eggs) and being killed for meat; in doing so, we accept that harm to others for our own benefit is permitted. This is not so different from capitalism. This topic is difficult to unpack for many, so will be discussed in more detail by itself in the future.

When we look to these issues of the environment, human rights, and animals rights it is easy to feel paralysed by the bewildering and diverse array of problems ahead of us. The strength of an approach that draws on intersectionality is that it finds commonality in what could otherwise be seen as an intimidating set of problems to be tackled individually. As such the Change It Up approach will be to develop a framework to address all of these issues concurrently, by correcting the core injustice at their centre. With that said, no approach will be successful as a political movement simply by seeking easy answers; each issue is complex in its own right, and as intersectionality teaches us the issues also interact in complex ways. Further, there are a diversity of opinions within rights movements about what the core issues are and, of course, how to address them. For example, as I've noted above, many ardent human rights activists will fundamentally disagree on placing animal rights within the same framework.

All of these issues are caught up in a whole lot of social, political and cultural baggage. In Aotearoa as in other places, much of this baggage is linked to cultural imperialism and colonisation. Closely intertwined with this is capitalism and our version of representative democracy that we inherited from Britain. These form the system that concentrates power and wealth for the privileged. Capitalism is not compatible with an equal  distribution of resources or power, nor with forward planning for environmental sustainability. At the very least, severe interventions are required into the functioning of market capitalism, such as welfare systems, public education, health, and regulation. The problem is if these interventions are provided under an ostensibly capitalist system with a power imbalance, they are only provided minimally--that is, to the extent that they pacify the majority without substantially affecting the continuing asymmetric accumulation of wealth. This is an empirical truth: as we watch the rich-poor divide grow, the changes in climate caused by our actions increase, and systemic racism continue to disproportionately affect Maori and Pasifika peoples, we know that the nominal interventions that have been put forward to date do not offer the solutions we need. Moreover, what else can we reasonably expect from a system that maximises exploitation in all its forms?

So, how do we get from here to somewhere better? Well, this is an open invitation to anyone to participate in deciding on the answer. For now, I have a few proposals that seem to be good starting points. I propose that in the long run we need to radically reform our political system. To do that, we need to convince an enormously, and justifably, jaded population that a reformed politics can offer real change, and rise out of the muddy depths it's currently wallowing in and give them something to vote for.  We need to transition to a post-capitalist economic system that is not centred on rapid exploitation. We need to consider measures of national success beyond GDP growth. We need to reverse a culture of rampant consumerism. We need to become more community-focussed. We need to address the poisonous attitudes in our cultures that glorify an unreaslistic and probably desirable masculinity, and portray femininity as weak and undesirable. The good thing is I think the seeds of these things are around us.