For the last few years, the monthly Second Sunday Dialogue public meetings of the Disability Justice and Rights Caucus of Workers World Party (DJRC) have been discussing the idea of a transitional demand: a “Disability Justice, Full Employment, Health care and Education Second Bill of Rights” amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The DJRC drafted the following, revised on Sept. 8, 2024:
- Everyone shall have a right to be educated to the best of their ability at no cost to themselves regardless of their income or the cost of their education. All student loan debts shall be abolished and do not have to be paid back. Education shall be a right, not a privilege.
- Everyone shall have the right to a job that their education and/or experience enables them to do. The federal, state and local governments shall provide such jobs and all necessary training to anyone who shall have the education and/or the ability and/or the desire to do that job, should other entities have failed to provide such jobs.
All workers’ rights shall be extended to every worker in the country, including precarious workers, such as incarcerated people, immigrant and migrant workers, domestic workers, gig workers, temporary workers, disabled workers, sex workers and other workers. These rights include the right to a minimum wage, the right to strike, the right to a retirement eligibility age to receive social security benefits, the right to a retirement pension and the right to representation by a union or other worker advocacy organization.
- This job shall provide enough income for adequate food, housing and recreation.
- The federal, state and local governments shall pay all medical bills, giving everyone a right to free and sufficient health care for themselves and their families. This includes free reproductive and gender affirming health care, including the right to choose to have an abortion or have a child and be able to raise them in a safe and healthy environment.
- People who want to start their own businesses shall be free of any type of unfair competition, and the right of community members and family members to create and own small businesses shall not be obstructed by much larger corporations and Fortune 500 companies.
- Anyone who cannot work shall have a right to enough income to afford adequate food, housing and recreation. Anyone collecting Social Security or other benefits shall have the right to seek and obtain employment without any risk of losing their benefits.
- Everyone shall have full free access to universal broadband and high-speed internet and all other modes of communication.
- Everyone shall have the right to live independently in their own home and not be involuntarily institutionalized in a prison, hospital, home, etc. because of their disabilities, age, illness, etc. or in retaliation for fighting for their rights. Solitary confinement, aversive conditioning and the death penalty shall be abolished.
- All accommodations shall be made to every disability and be either funded by or their funding guaranteed by state, city and local governments.
- The federal government shall be responsible for abolishing poverty and paying appropriate reparations to all oppressed peoples, including but not limited to people of color, all Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, women, LGBTQIA2S+ people, etc.