General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A shout out to "social issues" [View all]freshwest
(53,661 posts)The 14th Amendment didn't cost any famous candidate but Lincoln his life. But the Civil War fought to bring those rights to pass cost 625,000 to 850,000 lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War
And it's not over yet. More have died since then. Supporting the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act cost MLK, Jr. his life and that of Medgar Evers, the girls in the church in Birmingham, the Freedom Riders and more. The history of African Americans in America is one of bondage and terrorism for so many years that Americans ceased paying any attention to it. Untold numbers of African Americans died trying to live in peace and get their rights as human beings. For over five centuries.
Supporting reproductive rights have cost a number of people their lives. There have been so many incidents it has also been classified as terrorism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-abortion_violence
Roe vs Wade reduced the number of women lost to illegal abortions. Those were lives being lost and why others were willing to lose theirs for rights.
Supporting marriage equality has set up a firestorm of genocidal ideology and religious fanaticism that calls for gays to be put to death, and some have been killed by those who can't stand the idea they might get those rights. There is a cost in human rights for seeking them.
Those are the costs that matter. These things are about living things, not money. People did not fight and die for some candidates, but for their very lives. This is not a game.
It is social indifference that permits the people you think are in charge to cause these deaths and this misery. We must work from the ground up. Then they will have to give in, they always have from a unified front. Supporting civil rights is a major part of unity. Ignoring civil rights is a major divider and permits those in power to get away with what they do.
To think of human rights only in terms of money is what the most powerful have taught us to do to divide us. Each of us will leave our record here of what we think and what we care about in this online community.