In my reading today, I ran across the concept of “natural law”, something that is familiar to me as a philosophy major. For those of you who don’t know, the idea of natural law is something similar to that of inalienable rights: that there are some things rules and rights that are just so profound that they are self-evident. That they don’t need to be made by people, they exist in nature and can be discovered naturally.

A well off white man is likely to say that this is true, and give a variety of things that are supposedly available to all. Ask any person of color or homeless person if natural laws or inalienable rights exist and see how they respond. Find someone who has been sleeping on the street for a few months and ask them if they believe if they have the right to pursue happiness and see what they say.

Now some will likely argue that having a right doesn’t automatically mean that one has the ability, but that rather defeats the purpose of a natural law or inalienable right. Sadly, in our world, rights are exclusively the domain of the privileged. 

That is why $O$ works so hard. We use our rights and privileges for those who don’t have them. We fight for those who can’t fight for themselves.