Things I think ought to be considered basic human rights:
* Right to affordable/free shelter. Nobody need be homeless in our society, with the resources we have at our disposal. This right includes adequate heating in cold weather and adequate cooling in hot weather.
* Right to adequate food. Nobody need go hungry, when we can prevent it. Food stamps is a good start but doesn't go far enough; after all, you have to have a permanent address to get food stamps.
* Right to affordable/free health care. The medical profession has been getting away with charging absolutely absurd amounts of money for everything, making a hell of a profit in the process, and the injustice of it needs to end NOW. The better off the poorest among us are, the more it raises everyone else up.
* Right to safe, well-maintained bridges, roads, and other city infrastructure. American cities are slowly, literally falling apart without enough funding to keep the infrastructure together. We could also create many jobs by investing more in our crumbling infrastructure.
* Right to affordable/free college education. High school education doesn't cut it anymore. We need public colleges, or something. Colleges have been getting away with charging absolutely absurd amounts of money for everything, making a hell of a profit in the process, and the injustice of it needs to end NOW.
* Right to an education system that encourages creativity, critical thinking, and the universal values underlying our basic laws. Our current educational system is an obsolete, festering pile of horse shit, designed at a time when the country needed lots of mindless, patriotic worker drones to be churned out as quickly and efficiently as possible. But the world has changed; we have such an overabundance of mindless, patriotic worker drones that we don't have enough jobs for them all. We need an education system that can actually create the kind of people we need in this new age.
* Right to safe working conditions, adequate breaks, etc. Labor unions keep getting pushed aside, and we keep creeping closer back to the era of heartless, soulless, greedy robber barons who didn't give a damn whether workers lived or died so long as they didn't inconvenience the robber barons too much, and if we don't stop this revolution of lowered expectations soon, we may all live to regret it. The United States is becoming a fascist third-world country, and we must stop that trend in its tracks before it's too late.
* Right to be protected from police brutality and police racism, sexism, homophobia, and/or transphobia. For too long, we have had to deal with horrible people being hired onto the police force, people who can't seem to keep their prejudices from interfering with their job. We have also far too long had to put up with the consequences of the State using the police in unconstitional ways, making up all kinds of bullshit excuses to punish people - often violently - for practicing their Constitutional rights. The US government has made a bad habit of using violence against peaceful demonstrators, becoming the tools of the super-rich and their corporations, which is the fast road to fascism. The US government has also gotten away with impeding free speech, even going so far as to burn the books of people they deemed a threat to them (Google "Dr. Wilhelm Reich" for starters). We need to force our government officials to abide by the Constitution, especially if they don't want to.
* The right to vote without absurd limitations. Many states in the USA have been enacting legislation which essentially cuts off a large percentage of voters - mainly "minorities" - from voting; absurd things like voter IDs with photos on them. The lame excuse they use is prevention of voter fraud, which has been shown to be a lie.
* The right to know our vote WILL be counted. Electronic voting machines are a farce to begin with, since electronic devices can be hacked. They should, at the very least, be taken out of the control of the wrong people. Anyone running for any political office should be barred from owning any interest in voting machine companies. If voting machines will not be banned completely, as they ought to be, there ought to at least be steps made to ensure they will not be tampered with to fix elections. Furthermore, any politician accused of voter fraud should be immediately investigated and tried, if there is enough evidence; if brought to trial for voter fraud, s/he should be suspended until found not guilty. If found guilty, s/he should be fired and a new election held. It should not matter how important the position; even if it's the President. Especially if it's the President.
* The right to be given as many voting options as possible. Too long we have been under the tyanny of two political parties that look very similar to one another. Third parties (as many as have a large following, without prejudice) should be allowed equal airtime in the media, and should be allowed into Presidential debates and similar events. As many options as possible should be heard by all Americans, not just the ones who can afford the most TV ads.
* The right to be able to vote AGAINST specific candidates, not just FOR them. In Australia, they have the option to say "not this person, no matter what else" and I think they can even put candidates in order of preference. This should be adopted by the United States, so that people no longer need fear that a vote for a third party candidate will help any other candidate. How many more people would have voted for Ralph Nader if they could have also said "never in a million years" to the Republican candidate of the time? He could possibly have won, in that case.
* The right to be informed, far in advance of the election, that a candidate is running unopposed. This way either a second candidate can have time to oppose them, or voters can discuss who to do as a write-in. (Though I suspect the right to vote "no" on a candidate might help that issue a bit. If a majority vote "no" to him, they'd have to go for whoever had the most write-in votes.)
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