This spring, at SPHR 2026, we dedicated time for an intimate, closed-door workshop and convened leaders for a participatory workshop to interrogate the past, take stock of the present, and envision an effort to build a new human rights movement in the United States. On July 20 at 12pm EDT, the Human Rights Center is pleased to launch a new initiative that emerged from this workshop: the National Table for Human Rights Strategy (NTHRSt). RSVP here to join us: https://tinyurl.com/nthrstlaunch.
For the gathering, organizers, educators, students, lawyers, and advocates visited from east coast centers, southern beacons, midwest outposts, and the borderland for an open and critical conversation. Folks came from multiple points of entry into movement work, a mix of elders and newcomers, and from various degrees of immersion in “human rights” as such. We coalesced around a shared idea to build honest, inclusive, accessible mass movements for human dignity and equality; collectively oriented and eyes-wide-open to the realities we confront.
In the opening session, we conducted an ecosystem asset mapping activity responding to the prompts: Where is human rights work happening in the United States today? Where is human rights powerful? Teams poured over maps splayed out on tables set with arts and crafts supplies to plot actors and agents of change; physical spaces and built infrastructure; sites of victory and sites of struggle; cultural knowledge, history, and ideas; and material resources. With metallic star stickers, these categories manifested as visual artifacts of the US human rights movement but the green stars - material resources - were scarcest. One participant, Asha Tillman, stood up in the back of the room and declared, “These maps should have green stars everywhere. We are the resources!”
We engaged in critical self-reflection of past approaches to human rights practice in the US by exploring and exploding core tensions and contradictions to reveal new insights: Non-governmental organizations are not and cannot be the movement, though they have a role to play. Philanthropic support is welcome as alternative economic models take shape. Sharing, coordination, and redistribution among and across formations can reduce competition and improve collaboration. In order to discover the radical, transformative possibility of decolonial and intersectional modes of leadership, it is crucial that we dismantle hierarchies within. Our organizations and movements are too white, too male, too enabled, too rich, and too straight. We are called to upend and recreate our internal structures to mirror the world we want to see: Democratic, courageous, and committed to repairing past harms.
We are the resources. We are determined to keep building a powerful human rights movement composed of people working together in a beautiful, wild, beloved community around basic principles common to all. Human rights struggles are happening everywhere ordinary people fight together to protect and promote human dignity in their communities, at work, and before their governments. Insisting on the internationalism of human rights can feature heavily as a force for democracy that recasts US national identity beyond exceptionalism and supremacy–as a political society embedded in the global system, subject to laws and norms, and committed to making a meaningful contribution to human flourishing and communal solidarity.
The National Table for Human Rights Strategy emerged from this collective effort as a space for continuing the conversation. We have established a web presence and published a zine, which is available online and for download, so it can be printed and circulated in your community. This summer, we began a research project to document the history of human rights movements in the US, which we intend to develop into an accessible online resource for teaching and learning. NTHRSt hosts monthly calls and has plans to broader programming and organizing to carry forward this spirit to reinvigorate international human rights organizing, education, and advocacy in the United States. We hope you can join the launch on July 20 and stay in touch as we build momentum together.
Joel R. Pruce is Director of Applied Research and Learning at the University of Dayton Human Rights Center where he also serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science.