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.
San Francisco Bay Area disabled activist Michael Karsh is the main architect of this proposal, which is an idea whose time has come. Karsh has written the following justification for such an amendment at this time:
> “The Disability Justice, Full Employment, Health Care & Education Second Bill of Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would transform the U.S. Constitution into a human rights document. Because Donald Trump’s big ugly bill violates human rights by taking away funding from social safety net programs we rely on, this amendment would make Donald Trump’s big ugly bill unconstitutional. This amendment would also ensure that the promise that with an education you will succeed is kept.
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> “I heard that the way to succeed in life is to stay in school, so I did as long as I could. I got a Ph.D., but I still cannot get a job in my area of expertise. This amendment would make your right to a job in your area of expertise inalienable, thereby ensuring that if you stay in school, you will succeed.”
### The First Sit-In
This proposal was first publicly announced at New York’s 2024 Disability Pride Parade and was first published at Workers.org on November 16, 2024. Also announced at that parade—and quoted below—is the commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the first sit-in for disability rights and jobs in U.S. history:
> “In 1935, six young disabled New Yorkers who were fed up with the Roosevelt administration’s public works jobs program, the Works Progress Administration or WPA’s policy of not hiring people with disabilities, decided to take their grievances directly to the city’s Emergency Relief Bureau and started raising hell and staging a sit-in, drawing widespread attention and support for their cause with the slogan, ‘We don’t want charity. We want jobs!’
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> “After nine days, the occupiers were dragged away and arrested. After the trial, the group formed a new disabled peoples organization and continued to hold demonstrations, picket lines and recruit more members. After three weeks of protests, the WPA was forced to offer jobs to 40 disabled workers.”
For more information and photographs about this historic protest, you can access: Disability history and League. Please note that some of the language used for people with disabilities in 1935 in these articles is no longer acceptable.
### Proposed 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 September 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 and 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, and others.
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This amendment seeks to enshrine disability justice, full employment, comprehensive health care, and quality education as fundamental human rights within the U.S. Constitution, ensuring that these rights are protected for all people—especially the most marginalized.
https://www.workers.org/2025/10/88759/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=disability-rights-are-workers-rights-2