Surrendering our rights for the sake of politics

By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff

In the four years I attended Sandpoint High School many of my peers took their own lives — in 2015 we lost three in one year. The administration and the community came together to attempt to counteract bullying and create a kind, welcoming environment to protect kids from an unknown and often unseen threat.

During my junior year, in 2017, when the presidential election truly divided us, a fellow student said to me, “My family doesn’t believe in human rights.” He explained that he didn’t know why, but his mother taught him that human rights were “evil” and “unchristian.”

That same year, another peer told me to, “Stop thinking about immigrants as human beings.” This belief was passed down to her from her father.

The Greatest Generation — the ones who fought and died to protect the world from the Nazis, whose hate-speech white supremacists now parrot across the U.S. — saw the institution of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Some of the rights outlined in the UDHR are the right to life, liberty, security of person and to be recognized as a human being, as well as freedom from slavery and torture. Read the UDHR alongside the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Bill of Rights and you’ll see that human rights are the foundation of this country.

When I think about all the kind, vibrant teenagers who took their own lives, I have to ask: How can we beg our children to live, and yet teach them that human life is meaningless? How can someone read Jesus’ command to “Love each other as I have loved you,” and call it unchristian?

Political extremists want to convince us that human rights are “liberal lies,” because if they prey on party affiliation, they can manipulate people into willingly forfeiting their lives. Republican, Democrat or Independent, we must agree that everyone is entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

If we want our community, our nation, our world to survive, we must hold human rights above political affiliation. No one should go to the polls to vote for politicians who, no matter what, will always enjoy the rights they force us to abandon.