Written and declared by me, Ramona Layli Herrera, on this 8th day of July, 2015.
As an adult, a former child, and a future elder, I hereby make this Declaration:
Equality has nothing to do with age. Freedom is for everyone. All people, from their first moment of life to their last, have the right to be treated as fully human, with all the attendant liberties and dignities that their human status implies.
Article 1 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10th, 1948, reads as follows:
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
We humans have known this about ourselves for more than 65 years. It’s time to much more fully act on it.
I myself have witnessed numerous indignities and coercions being forced on human people for no other reason than their age. I have seen small children being forced screaming into strollers and grocery carts, then pinned there with straps they could not remove. I have seen elder citizens in nursing homes being similarly controlled: people without the physical strength to leave their wheelchairs, pushed into a corner and left there while piteously screaming “Help!” or “I can’t breathe!”
Such experiences of horror and desperation in any human heart surely call for the most tender compassion, the most urgent and immediate help, from all who witness it. And yet, in the age-based “blindness” of so many people today, these vulnerable humans are too often merely ignored or insulted for their cries.
“Shut up!” and “You’re fine!” are not suitable answers to a person screaming for help with all their strength.
I have also felt the touch of age-based coercion and violence in my own life. At age three, I refused a painful medical procedure. The doctor and my father, outnumbering me two to one and vastly overpowering my small body, physically forced me down onto my back and bound me there with a terrifying system of straps from shoulders to feet. Then, through my cries of desperation, the doctor contentedly performed the procedure.
I am now in weekly therapy for my post-traumatic stress symptoms from that violent assault. My counselor agrees with my understanding of what happened:
I was tortured.
Such assaults and torture are horrifically common, perpetrated with impunity on the bodies and souls of our most vulnerable citizens: children and elders. Our society attempts to excuse these violent medical atrocities by claiming that such abuse is “in the best interests” of the restrained and helpless victims.
Is it in your best interest to be bound on your back and hurt?
Without help or hope of rescue? Without any possible legal or social recourse, even after the fact?
It isn’t in mine. It would be wrong for me now, and it was wrong for me then.
As Frederick Douglass said in his famous Fourth of July speech, “There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.”
Frederick Douglass also, twice in his Narrative, equated the situation of children to that of slaves. He described both groups as equally not being free, with the only difference being that the captivity of children was temporary.
In todays’s society, elders are often treated in just the same disrespectful, controlling ways as children.
Is it really fair to treat our youngest and oldest citizens, in and beyond the year 2015, in a way that the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass equated with antebellum slavery?
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WHEREAS:
Violence and coercion are not in anyone’s best interests;
Shame and domination are cruel and wrongful ways to treat any creature, certainly including any human;
Violence and control based on age are just as wrong and troubling as when they are based on race, gender, or any other characteristic;
Greater vulnerability is NOT a justification for greater oppression;
I HEREBY DECLARE THIS TO BE TRUE:
No one ever starts or stops being equal.
We are equal all our lives.
We have the right to equal freedom and dignity all our lives.
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I CALL ON HUMANITY TO IMMEDIATELY SHAPE UP!
In the past two hundred years, we have rejected African-American slavery.
In the past century, we have rejected the paternalistic and violent domination of wives by their husbands.
In the past few decades, we have started to reject wholesale, oblivious abuse towards our mother Earth.
In the past MONTH, we have rejected marriage discrimination!!!
Let’s keep the ball rolling!!!!
In the coming days, months, and years, let’s start to reject the domination and oppression of our precious, vulnerable, dignified children and elders. Let’s all start living by principles like these:
1. All people have the right to define their own best interests for themselves.
2. Advantages in physical or social power do not confer the right to forcibly control or punish others.
3. People’s bodies and health are their own sole property, without exception.
4. Any person’s cry for help, regardless of circumstances, must be urgently heeded.
5. All people have valuable knowledge, abilities, passion, and insight to contribute to our world.
I CHALLENGE YOU PERSONALLY!
Create one or more principles of your own to add to this list. Choose one or more, from my list or your own additions, and for one month, consciously choose to live by it as much as you can. Apply it to your dealings with everyone and everything: our fellow people, our Earth, and especially our children and elders.
See what happens!
You may love it so much that you decide to do it for the rest of your life. And that is how social ripples spread: one life full of change at a time.
Let’s create a world where freedom stretches from one end of life to the other; from the horizon at the beginning of our journeys to the horizon at the end; in the landscape map of each human lifespan:
“From Sea to Shining Sea!”
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I proudly, recklessly and publicly sign this Declaration:
Ramona Layli Herrera
6103 Havelock Avenue, Apartment 3
Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
68507
ramonaherrera@rocketmail.com
(402)202-3568
Let all people contact me who will!
