Overview of the 31st annual Athens Human Rights Festival

“Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights,” said Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “You will make a better person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.”

The noble struggle for human rights comes to life once again this spring when the 31st Annual Athens Human Rights Festival makes College Square in downtown Athens a liberated zone on May 2 and 3. Through more than three decades while six presidents of both major parties have occupied the White House, the Athens Human Rights Festival has been a local political and cultural tradition that mixes music, dance, street theater and soapbox oratory on the town square here in the Classic City.

Music is a mainstay at the annual rights festival, and this year’s event features a rocking roster of performers including the Michael Guthrie Band, Pride Parade, Dictatortots, Pocket Full of Claptonite, Kite to the Moon, Grammy Award winner Art Rosenbaum, Tommy Jordan and friends, Kaitlin Jones & County Fair, The Plague, Grogus, Dancing Flowers for Peace, an “All-Star Worldbeat Jam,” the crowd-pleasing drag queen stagecraft of the Diva Experience, and many other entertainers from a town known worldwide for its vibrant music and arts scenes.

Speakers on a wide variety of timely issues will trumpet their causes from the rights fest microphone. Civil rights pioneers Bob Zellner and Constance Curry will discuss their part in movement history as brought to life in their riveting new book, “The Wrong Side of Murder Creek.” William Ayers, author of the book “Fugitive Days” and former Weather Underground radical turned honored educator, will speak of his odyssey from youthful revolutionary to progressive professor who was lambasted by the GOP’s John McCain and Sarah Palin during the 2008 presidential campaign because he was acquainted with Democratic standardbearer Barack Obama.

Other speakers at the 31st Annual Athens Human Rights Festival include firebrand attorney Millard Farmer, antiwar campaigner Brooke Campbell, whose soldier brother was killed in Iraq in 2004, crusading University of Georgia Law Professor Donald Eugene Wilkes, and representatives from such organizations as Planned Parenthood, UGA NORML, the Economic Justice Coalition, the Living Wage Campaign, Habitat for Humanity, Women in Black, Athens Justice Project, Invisible Children UGA and many more. A special Hispanic-flavored portion of the festival will include Latino music, speakers, and a lively solidarity march. In all, some two dozen issue-oriented speakers will “raise issues, raise consciousness and raise hell” at the Athens Human Rights Festival this year.

Progressive activists using the politics of protest are a noble and inspiring part of the history of this nation. Courageous and committed women and men like Susan B. Anthony, Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez and a host of unsung others have struggled through the decades of history to seek racial equality, secure voting rights for women, stop child labor, and ensure better working conditions in America’s mines, fields and factories. The struggle for human rights is an ongoing struggle in a nation where history is not a spectator sport, and the Athens Human Rights Festival honors and continues that struggle. As former President Jimmy Carter said, “America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way around. Human rights invented America.”