Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman's Invictus Film Release Kicks Off New Campaign For Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman's Invictus Film Release Kicks Off New Campaign For Universal Declaration of Human Rights
By Linda Milazzo | AlterNet

The launch of Invictus will hopefully set of a wave of renewed interest in a proposal to recognize and protect the rights of humanity.

Los Angeles gets a bad rap. It's assailed for being shallow and rarely acknowledged for its good heart. But Los Angeles has a huge heart - at the center of which is pulsating non-stop activism dedicated to ensuring all people are granted human rights. Just name any of the 30 human rights designated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and I guarantee you there are groups and individuals in Los Angeles who are working to enforce them - locally, nationally and globally.

Too often Angelenos are ridiculed for overindulgence and unacknowledged for their efforts to better humankind. Yes, there are divergent communities in Los Angeles of extreme wealth and poverty, but this affliction of extremes isn't endemic to L.A. It's endemic to our world. Most nations are home to the hungry and the overfed, to huts and palaces, to the ill and the well-tended, to the free and the enslaved. These are our planet's inequities - the casualties of a world that finds convenience in ignoring when rights are usurped, and dwells on achievers of power. There's more interest when Tiger Woods falls from grace than when a child dies from hunger.

There is apathy here in Los Angeles as well, but not in the community I'm part of. Not in the community of heart-workers I watch give their lives to the service of others. I bear witness to their goodness everyday. They're the hub of love in Los Angeles - the palpating heart of the activist community that works to bring peace, sustainability and equality to this planet we share. Read more.