newjerseynewsroom.com

BY SALVATORE PIZZURO

COMMENTARY

On January 6, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. It was a time of world upheaval, and the President attempted to share some core values with the world. Roosevelt told the Congress and his radio audience:

“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.”

The President listed the four freedoms, which, he insisted, were the right of people “everywhere in the world.”

The four freedoms that the President listed were:

• Freedom of speech and expression
• Freedom of worship
• Freedom from want
• Freedom from fear

History is often forgotten, and we, as a society, often forget the painstaking sacrifices made to attain those freedoms. Within months of Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms Speech,” the United States was engaged in a World War to determine whether those basic freedoms could ever be truly exercised. Seventy years later, we are in danger of surrendering those basic freedoms. Free speech and expression appear to be the most vulnerable, as we engage in political rhetoric that suggests that others only have a right to free speech if they agree with us. Current sound bites between the New Jersey Statehouse, the Legislature, and the print and electronic media suggest that we are intolerant of differing opinions.

Freedom of worship is vulnerable, as we conveniently categorize entire religious groups, because we label them all as blanket terrorists because a few of them fraudulently represented the rest when engaging in violent acts.

Freedom from want is slowly disappearing as our Statehouse has decided that a segment of our society is expendable in order to save the rest of us.

Freedom from fear is the most vulnerable as fear is used to prevent people from exercising the first freedom: Freedom of speech and expression.

Now, as a society, we are prepared to deny women the right to basic health care, people with disabilities the right to housing, medical and educational treatment, and the opportunity for employment. Furthermore, the fiscal crises automatically destroy freedom from want and fear.

As a state, New Jersey has denied people the right to affordable housing, which has become an implicit message for them to live elsewhere. We, as a society have also suggested that it is shameful to be elderly, have a disability, or have modest economic means. Moreover, we have suggested that only the economically elite have a right to Franklin Roosevelt’s four freedoms.

Time and energy have been expended in figuring out ways for us to climb out of the current fiscal abyss. However, we can only be successful when we realize that any recovery can only be successful when it serves every citizen and places equal value in the rights and freedoms of every individual.

Dr. Salvatore Pizzuro is a disability policy specialist and civil rights advocate in New Jersey

AL