8 – 1% Participation for Eleanor Lives!

Now that we have thought together about mission, plan, program and perspective, it’s time to think about participation. Margaret Mead provides us a starting point. She famously said “Never underestimate the power of a small group of dedicated people to change the world, indeed it’s the only way that change has occurred.”

Following Margaret’s guidance, Eleanor Lives! is looking for 1% of individuals, nonprofits, and for-profits to show their support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for its 75th anniversary. Our goal is revive the UDHR and renew its intended trajectory as a set of enforceable rights. To reinvigorate the UDHR, we only need 1% of humanity and we hope that you will be one of them. This is why our goal is to have 1% of people, organizations and businesses become a light on the globe spinning on our home page.

I’d like to tell you a story to help explain why 1%.

Once there was a river that flowed through a town. One day bodies started coming down the river, some were  dead, others seriously injured. The people in the town were caring and compassionate. They started pulling bodies out of the river.  When bodies kept coming they built hospitals and other facilities near the river. Then one day while a group was taking another body out of the water, a young woman helping looked up and said “this is very important, we have to get this body out of the water, but shouldn’t somebody go upstream?”

She was right: Eleanor headed upstream. She had seen the bodies from war having personally visited every military hospital in the South Seas during WWII. Eleanor Lives! follows her upstream. It’s the climb up to where the bodies are being sent into the water from a flawed social order. It’s a steep climb, psychologically as well as physically, and at times financially difficult as well.  Most people and businesses will not bother to go upstream, at least not at first.

Eleanor Lives! does not begrudge those who want to keep doing what they are doing, and not go upstream. Valiant work is being done just getting the bodies out of the water. But for the 1% of people, organizations and businesses who are ready to go upstream, Eleanor facilitates taking this path less traveled by.

Of course there are naysayers. Those who tell generation after generation that humans are just war-like creatures, and it will always be so. A new book, Humankind, debunks this myth. The time has come when those of us who believe that we can live as an international community on Earth, surely with disagreements, but with Judges and the rule of law to resolve them, will challenge a worn out myth, particularly as we emark into space. We should go together with all of our strengths, rather than carry our outdated mentality with us. Eleanor called this switch from the rule of war to the rule of law “out with the old and in with the new.”

If you are one of the people willing to go upstream, you can start by signing to support for the UDHR on it’s 75th anniversary. We make it easy, less than a minute, on the Eleanor Lives! website.  When you sign your name and country a spark of light ignites on the globe wherever you are. You are a light for rights. After signing, the most helpful thing you can do is to encourage folks you think might be also be interested in traveling with us upstream.

When confronted with the unwillingness of people to discard the old and bring in the new, Dr. Martin Luther King said “people make better taillights than headlights.” Be a leader; be a headlight, others will follow you.

This does not mean that all the valiant people and organizations pulling bodies out of the water our should stop their work! Eleanor Lives! commends those pulling the bodies out of the river. It’s the hardest work there is, and it certainly matters to those who are saved.

But at some point if we do not also go upstream, then we are the institutionalizing the violation of rights by not stopping violations from happening.

It’s time to follow Eleanor upstream. For participation, let’s spend 99% of our time getting  the bodies getting the bodies out of the river, and 1% to go upstream!