In the movie “King Richard”, the father of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, Richard, has them put up a hand painted banner on a chain link fence around a delapidated tennis court in Compton, California. The sign reads: “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. That’s where humanity is now: by failing to plan, we are failing.
The invasion and war against Ukraine may leave humanity with athoritarianism expanded. China, itself athoritarian, is aiding Russia by increasing its purchases of oil so that Putin has funding for his war. Between the war and social forces, the climate crisis is not being addressed, with emissions actually increasing, and there is an ongoing mass extinction on Earth due to the actions of human beings.
In 1984 there was a hamburger fast food advertisment with a simple question: “Where’s the beef?” The tiny hamburger patty that was shown was inadequate.
Today the question is “Where’s the plan”. The post WWII implementation of enforceable human rights is inadequate. It’s been worthwhile, but is a hodgepodge that for the most part is unenforceable in courts.
There are over 2 million nonprofits internationally – and over 260,000 foundations – it’s time to stop traveling in parallel and dancing on the periphery claiming that human rights are enforceable when they are not. We need a plan to collect our clout, make them truly enforceable, and achieve most of our missions.
We do not need to construct a plan from scratch. If we take Eleanor’s work after WWI (the first entry in her FBI file was collected when she was working for a World Court after WWI) and combine it with her work, with others, on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after WWII, we have a plan for humaity. That plan rests upon a set of fundamental rights for all people in all countries, enforceable in the courts of all countries.
That plan is embodied in the booklet you can flip through just to the right of the sentence you are now reading. It’s right there; dare to read it. Using the standard that Rousseau set forth in Social Contract (1762) “To take people as they are, and write the laws as they might be”, this little booklet contains the best plan for humanity ever written.
Do you think you have a better one? “Where’s the plan?” Present it, whether you wrote it on a napkin, or found it in any written piece you may have read throughout the history of humanity. We’ll pay you for it: Eleanor Lives! will give 5,ooo dollars for any plan for humanity that is better than the one in the booklet, which includes the draft International Bill of Rights in the booklet.
Every breakthrough, be it in law or physics, needs to be tested. So far, over the past 10 years that a $1,000 award has been offered, no one has presented a better, secular, plan – so we are raising the award to $5,000 – and we may raise it higher. The standard is what is optimum? – not what will the North Koreans or the Russians accept at this moment. What can we all do to organize as an international community? – just prior to our heading out into the stars, our destiny.
If you do not have a better plan that you have written yourself, or found written by someone else, then please become a “light for rights” on the globe on the website and support Eleanor’s plan. It takes less than a minute and will be one of the most powerful things you do in your life. Some things, like a plan for humanity, can never be done by one person, or a few people – it takes collective action. By joining with others, you help create something you could never do yourself, no matter how wealthy, or powerful, you may be.
If you do have a better plan, thank you, we will pay you $5,000 and join you, as Eleanor would, – humanity needs a plan to free us from the failure in which we find ourselves.
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