Vernette and Joe, actors on stage, discuss the “rules” of the homeless shelter in their 2017 collaboration with Theatre of the Oppressed NYC.
Rights
In citizenship, we work with people to empower themselves to know and advocate for their rights. We mean legal rights as well as human rights.
In U.S. society, every person is legally entitled to certain things: privacy, equal protection, expression, the freedom to associate, and more.
However, for people in recovery, the arena of personal and political rights has been–and continues to be–a highly contested space in which body, mind, and spirit may be under assault. The power of the state to remove or diminish a person’s rights continues to have serious repercussions for individuals in recovery and their families and communities. Understanding one’s self as a person with rights and learning about those rights are essential steps in the journey toward full citizenship.