…and guns are a problem, not a solution.
Organizers of the new Day One Movement announced in the Black Hills yesterday say they want to wipe the slate of 250 years of American injustice and start anew on July 5:
“In order for us to build a path forward, we have to acknowledge the past,” said Nick Tilsen, a community organizer in the He Sapa.
Organizers described the movement as a response to what they called a false narrative dividing poor, working class, Indigenous, Black and immigrant communities. They said they will not be celebrating July 3 or July 4, instead focusing on the changes they say need to happen starting July 5 and over the next 250 years.
“We know that there has been a division, a perpetuated false narrative between poor folks, between working class folks, between Indigenous folks, Black folks, and immigrants,” said Brenda Pérez, an immigrant labor rights organizer. “And we know that our struggles are one, but we know that those in power continuously work towards pushing us apart.”
Organizers also framed the movement as an act of resistance and vision-building.
“So we’re here to build something new. So, as we resist the rise of authoritarianism and fascism in the United States and around the world, we’re also here out of love, to radically envision a nation that would work for everybody,” Tilsen said [Regan Duceman, “Day One Movement Launches in South Dakota, Calling for Land Back and Reparations,” KOTA-TV, 2026.06.29].
Day One proposes to fix our Constitutional Bill of Rights with a more comprehensive Bill of Essential Rights, “a new framework that gives all humans and Mother Earth the rights and dignity we deserve”. The first two of the ten proposed Essential Rights address not universal human rights but specific claims of two oppressed groups against the unjustly ruling majority:
1. Right to LANDBACK: The land that the United States of America was founded on was stolen from Indigenous Peoples who have existed and thrived here for centuries beyond the establishment of the USA and continue to remain as sovereign Peoples. Return of land, Honoring the Treaties, and reclaiming everything that has been taken by colonization, is necessary for collective liberation.
2. Right to Reparations: The land on which the United States of America was founded was built with the exploitation of African peoples who were forcibly removed from their homelands. It is the right of all generational survivors of these atrocities to receive acknowledgement, compensation, restitution, and rehabilitation for the enslavement of our peoples and all the harms that flowed from slavery’s legacy, including racial segregation, mass criminalization, forced sterilization, family separation, land theft, and militarized police violence. These reparations must be determined and driven by Black people, and must include lasting repair and change at the individual, communal, and systemic levels [this quote and the following from “Bill of Essential Rights,” Day One Movement, retrieved 2026.06.30.].
There may be a conflict between these two reparative rights. The first asserts the right of Indigenous people to reclaim “everything…taken by colonization”. The second posits that the forced labor of black slaves gives their descendants just claim to the land and wealth they built. Slavery reparations “must be determined and driven by Black people,” so what happens if Black people determine they want ownership, individual or collective, of the land their enslavers took by colonization, the land the first essential right says must be returned to Indigenous people?
3. Right to Self-Determination and Sovereignty: People have the power and autonomy to make choices for ourselves without political influence, state-sanctioned violence, or external pressure. Indigenous peoples can freely exercise their sovereignty and choose their governance structure. When there is disagreement, people have the right to freely organize, mobilize, and protest.
This third right includes the vitally important freedom of expression that headlines our current Bill of Rights. But this declaration of self-determination needs to clarify its terms. Does “people” mean this right applies only to groups, or does it recognize individual self-determination and expression as well?
This third right also needs to clarify the things its says intrude on sovereignty. “State-sanctioned violence” is certainly bad, but what about “external pressure”: does that preclude the ability of anyone outside a group to explain or campaign for policies that might affect that group… or, if “people” includes “persons”, does it mean I can’t try to persuade a friend or neighbor to vote for Democrats? The same question goes for “political influence”—isn’t “political influence” exactly what the Day One organizers are trying to wield, uniting and mobilizing Black and Indigenous peoples to influence change in the body politic?
4. Right to Consent: We choose what we consent to—in terms of our lands, bodies, mind, health, knowledge, data, and education, including but not limited to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent.
5. Right to Basic Needs: Access to safe, sustainable, and quality housing; clean drinking water; nourishing food; and clean air for all peoples and living beings. Access to comprehensive, universal healthcare and utilities we depend on. Access to education that is representative of the true history of this nation-state and all the cultures that reside within it.
6. Right to Religion and Culture: This includes the protection and preservation of history, traditional languages, spirituality, religion, and cultural traditions, sacred sites, and ways of life without the threat of genocide and nation-state sanctioned violence.
These three rights all make sense. #5 in particular recognizes that liberty is a practical matter: you can’t fully exercise your rights to free speech and self-determination if you are starving, suffocating, or sick and dying.
7. Right to Dignity and Bodily Autonomy: Every human has the right to make informed decisions about their health, body, and life, while sharing in the collective responsibility of public health. Everyone deserves to be able to express their fully realized selves, no matter who or where they are.
But #7 reminds us that liberty doesn’t exist in a personal vacuum. Liberty is a community affair, and the community has to be as healthy as the individual. Translation: shots. You don’t get to invoke some absolute individual autonomy to evade getting the vaccines for measles and flu vaccines that protect the entire community from diseases that would hamper their exercise of their rights.
8. Right to Safety: Every person and every community deserves to be safe. That means an end to empire, state-sanctioned violence, war, gun violence, police, ICE, border patrol, and prisons. It means an end to the patriarchal, capitalistic, and punitive systems that harm everyone, and accountability practices rooted in restorative justice instead of punishment. We believe that all people have the right to protect and defend themselves against violence.
Here the Bill of Essential Rights mentions guns and self-defense. But #8 does not explicitly grant people the right to carry firearms. Nor does this document, coming from groups explicitly seeking to overthrow the existing power structure, explicitly embrace armed rebellion. Instead, this right names guns and the violence they support as a threat to rights that must be ended, along with prisons, police, war, and empire.
9. Right to Move Freely and Belong: Every human has the right to move freely around the planet. This means colonial borders must be dissolved, violent entities like border patrol and ICE must be closed down, all genocides and wars must be ended, and travel bans and restrictions must be lifted.
Freedom to go and live wherever you want—that’s not a new concept. That’s the right the Pilgrims invoked when they hopped in the Mayflower and came to settle in Massachusetts… uh oh.
In framing its Bill of Essential Rights as a repair/replacement to the U.S. Bill of Rights, Day One ostensibly addresses an American audience. But #9 looks outward and calls for international cooperation. Dissolving colonial borders is an interesting idea, but even if we shut down ICE and our border posts, the Canadians and Mexicans will still need some persuading (external pressure? political influence?) to stop stopping and questioning Americans who come to visit.
Right to Regenerative Food Systems and a Protected Planet: Traditional ecological knowledge, Indigenous food systems and waterways, and proven solutions to the climate crisis must be centered, respected, and allowed to flourish, in order to protect Mother Earth, humanity, and all living beings. Our communities deserve access to localized food systems that withstand the geopolitical upheavals without dependency on the federal government.
#10 finally gets to the “Mother Earth” stuff promised in Day One’s preamble. This final right extends the idea of Maslovian idea that we can’t enjoy liberty without meeting our basic needs, and all of our basic needs flow from a habitable and productive ecosystem. #10 also embodies some Wendell Berry farm philosophy: we need to ditch the corporate, government-subsidized model of industrial agriculture and return to small local farms that feed our neighbors, our bodies, and our souls.
The Bill of Essential Rights raises come questions about language and practical application, just like the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution. While reparations are messy—especially given the possibly conflciting claims of Black and Indigenous Americans—this document provides a useful focus on the basic practical conditions necessary to human liberty.
Are “rights” merely rhetoric? Or is there some philosophical basis for them?
I mean what’s to stop anyone from casting all their wants as rights? What’s the difference between my daughter saying “Dad, I want a pony” and “Dad, I have a right to a pony”?
The rights in the US Constitution are mostly based on setting the limits of governmental reach… The government won’t take your guns, make you quarter troops, force you into a particular denomination, search your house without probable cause, subject you to cruel or unusual punishment, etc.
The list here contains actual material goods being provided… land, a house, clean water, health care, etc. Trading material goods will always have tradeoffs… the lumber for the house and the pipes for the water has to come from someone. When they break, they need maintenance. The doctor needs a salary. A pony needs food. Typically these transactions are negotiated voluntary and individually through the free market to the mutual satisfaction of both parties.
Kind regards,
David
The Black Hills are broken because the white race steals the ground, plunders the resources, pollutes waterways, depletes watersheds, and encourages ponderosa pine to infest lands once dominated by aspen and sage.
Issued in 2021, Joint Secretarial Order 3403 directed the Departments of Interior and Agriculture to increase tribal co-stewardship agreements and memoranda of understanding (MOUs). Co-stewardship focuses on collaboration where tribal nations provide input, share traditional ecological knowledge, and look after lands alongside federal agencies like the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service but the Feds retain final decision-making power. Co-management focuses on joint authority and represents a legal partnership where decision-making power is shared mutually between the tribal nation and the federal government.
The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 recognized over 38 million acres of land as official Crow or Apsáalooke territory, stretching across parts of modern-day Wyoming and Montana. This vast expanse included areas surrounding the Yellowstone River, the Three Forks region, and the Bighorn Mountain range. Negotiated on May 7, 1868. The Crow agreed to cede a large portion of their traditional 1851 territory, establishing a smaller reservation in Montana than aligned with the US Army.
Also known as the Sahnish, the Arikara (along with the Mandan and Hidatsa) signed agreements and were included in the broader peace treaties at Fort Laramie and Fort Berthold. Their lands in North Dakota were affirmed to allow for a combined joint territory, though they faced successive land losses shortly after.
But today, under the General Mining Law of 1872 Canadian miners have carte blanche to rape the Black Hills, so they are.
Project 2025 and the extreme white wing of the Republican Party want a not so civil war over critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI because oligarchs fear an admission of guilt implies liability and they will be compelled to pay reparations to Indigenous and to the descendants of enslaved people. But, according to some estimates there is nearly $2billion in the fund for the Black Hills Claim just for instance so some day tribes will buy some of their own land from the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in occupied South Dakota and Wyoming.
David, I think there is a difference between aspiration and the eventual reality that we create from that aspiration. “All men are created equal” and “LIfe, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” get ground down in a Constitution and Amendments that fails to free slaves while keeping many people from having a say in their government.
I think such highfalutin aspiration is a waste of my time, but I guess some of that highfalutin rhetoric can inspire people, as it does me. I prefer, though, to deal with present day reality and try to make small improvements.
Reparations Are Due – The longer we wait, the more we owe.
There is a difference between a right and a privilege. For example, we have the right to move freely, however it’s a privilege to have a driver’s license which can be revoked. We have the right to legal counsel; however, their confidences are a privileged. We have the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, yet it’s a privilege to own property, pursue a college degree, or see the Twins play now and then.
The rights in the first 10 amendments are to protect citizens from a tyrannical government. They are clear and concise and written and from experience. Rights cannot be revoked.
Our society consists of the haves and have nots. Privilege rules.
Its good to view. It makes people respond and think why they vote the way they do.
What are the basics of each party.
For instance, Republicans can’t stand that the 10 people who are trans actually play in college female sports nationwide. Its an idea that has worked wonders for them. Its the principal of the thingy or lack thereof. Democrats are live and let live, oh well.
Good movement, good comments, Cory. What about global warming? Protection of science?
Long urging the simplified notion two issues are fundamental to democratic voting:
1.) GLOBAL WARMING: First and foremost, Climate Change action now, is fundamental in implementing scientific guidance at the expense of the polluters, US residents and global actors.
2.) ECONOMIC INEQUALITY: Second, Economic Inequality is at the heart of political machinations that create millionaire, billionaire and trillionaire outsize influence and power monopolization now exemplified on the right, destroying and capitalizing life giving and fundamental values idealized in the constitution, instead utilizing physical and emotional violence enabling mass hardship on the great majority of people of diverse race, class, culture, and even sex. Major economic principles must receive wholesale equitable, enforceable change. Political and financial fraud must be neutered, nationally and globally.
Day One is a significant ground swell movement in this direction. The 70 year Republican movement underpinning the incompetent and criminal Trump debacle, undermining the US constitutional ideal as flawed as it has been for 250 years, is recognizable now as unpatriotic and broadly treasonable.
The Dems and the Indians together with diverse peoples are fundamentally engaged in these bring these changes.
I say we take our que from Maslow: people must have the right to food, shelter, and health care. The economy of this nation can easily absorb these rights.