This essay by Lewis Pitts was originally published in the March 2007 edition of By What Authority, the newsletter of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD). Lewis is a POCLAD principal, and heads Advocates for Children’s Services of Legal Aid of North Carolina, in Durham.
Those who wield the power and wealth of corporations rule every institution of our economy, electoral system and culture, and shape each critical issue we face: war and catastrophic climate change; the gap between rich and poor; privatized and cash-starved social welfare services and health care. These challenges and more affect everyone to some degree, but none more than the country’s children.
In The Great Turning, David Korten puts it this way: “The struggle for the health and well-being of our children is potentially the unifying political issue of our time and an obvious rallying point for building an Earth Community political majority.”
A telling indication that our society is not even close to being there is the fact that the United States is the only government that has not ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, opened for signature in 1989 (nor for that matter, has it ratified the Social and Economic Covenant of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights).
It has been said that we eventually grasp the subtle; the obvious takes a bit longer! So it is with the need to understand the institutional pathology denying children their birthright of developmentally appropriate services and care. …
To read the entire essay, click HERE.