The Dignitarian Foundation is an organization dedicated to promoting and protecting the intrinsic right to human dignity - the belief that as a person, one is automatically worthy, honorable, and deserving of respect, regardless of status, station or stage of life.
We believe we can and must find alternatives to practices that harm individual dignity, instead of continuing to convey the toxic residue of these indignities down the line, from those with the most power to those with the least.
Our mission is to overturn the consensus view that says it is acceptable to treat certain people and groups badly because other people are doing it or because you can get away with it.
We invite you to join us in raising awareness within families, schools, workplaces and governments of the enormous personal and public costs arising from everyday insults to dignity.
Collectively, we can dissolve unhealthy power imbalances and begin to create societies that not only acknowledge, but also actively celebrate, the inherent dignity in everyone.
Inaugural Poem January 20, 2009 Praise song for the day. Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair. Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice. A woman and her son wait for the bus. A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin." We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider. We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road." We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see. Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of. Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables. Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self." Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need. What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance. In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun. On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light. |
