Declaration of Protest by the People of Georgia

We gather here today in protest of the series of destructive bills being rammed through the Georgia General Assembly, and in support of a more vibrant, desirable vision.

These bills before the Georgia General Assembly violate our basic rights and sensibilities:

• They call for drug tests as a condition for receiving marginal financial support to keep one’s family fed, clothed, and sheltered in times of hardship. The “drug war” that has been fought with military might, police forces, and now intrusive drugs tests has failed to affect addiction’s devastating influence; it has succeeded only in criminalizing poverty and in creating a “new Jim Crow” through the disproportionate arrest and incarceration of people of color. These bills will not save money or stop drug use. They will simply hurt children and perpetuate division in our society.
• They disenfranchise the residents of South Fulton County in discussions about MARTA and transportation – transportation that low-income people of color rely on much more so than their northern neighbors. The incorporation of new cities in the north that prompted this bill can further perpetuate segregation based upon race and income in the Atlanta metropolitan area. We should be moving away from the injustice of our past towards equity – not moving backwards.
• They call for the exclusion of undocumented immigrants from Georgia’s colleges, even those individuals who came to the U.S. as minors who have worked hard to earn good grades and pay hefty out-of-state tuition rates to pursue the American dream. This bill will not make our classrooms less crowded or push people away from Georgia who have lived here their entire lives; it will only further discriminate against low-income immigrants of color, people who are trying to make a better life for themselves and their families.
• They call for the criminalization of public picketing for economic justice, the de-funding of many of Georgia’s unions, and gross penalization of political non-violent civil disobedience. In the birthplace of Martin Luther King, Jr., elected officials are doing the bidding of corporate interests by launching a full-scale assault on our fundamental and democratic rights. This bill will help keep corporations safe and profitable, but it will not make any person in Georgia safer or more prosperous. It will simply chip away from rights that have long been the foundation of our democracy.

We believe our government has become destructive of our fundamental rights and liberties. We contend that the direction of this legislation is unacceptable, and we demand that our government take steps to reverse this legislation.

We insist that, instead, our government work to serve the 99%, not corporations, by embracing a new vision – a vision we believe many people share. To this end, we offer the following Declaration of Rights for the People of Georgia as a framework for our elected representatives to better serve the people of Georgia.

Declaration of Rights of the People of Georgia

We, the People of Georgia, declare that we as human beings have certain fundamental rights. In addition to the Bill of Rights of the United States of America, we declare the following rights:

1. All people have the unconditional right to ample, nutritious food.
2. All people have the unconditional right to adequate, assured housing.
3. All people have the unconditional right to comprehensive, affordable healthcare, including but not limited to reproductive health services and counseling for addiction and mental illness.
4. All people have the unconditional right to high-quality, affordable higher education and should have decision-making power proportional to how much they will be affected by the decision in the schools where they attend, teach, or work.
5. All people have the unconditional right to extensive, affordable transportation and should have decision-making power proportional to how much they will be affected by the decision in the public transportation systems they use.
6. All people have the unconditional right to freedom from systematic discrimination based upon race, class, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, or immigration status in every facet of public and private life.
7. All people have the unconditional right to desirable, adequate work that allows them to meet the needs of themselves and their families, with the unrestricted ability to collectively bargain and have decision-making power proportional to how much they will be affected by the decision in their workplaces.
8. All people have the unconditional right to adequate, consistent, 24-hour, outdoor and indoor public space for the exercise of their right to protest, freedom of assembly, and redress of grievances, and have decision-making power proportional to how much they will be affected by the decision in their public space.

We hold these rights to be self-evident and we invite the Georgia Legislature to better serve the People of Georgia by embracing and legislating for these rights. We reserve the right to alter or abolish our government if it continues to be destructive of these rights.