Abstract

A selective excavation of labor history and an analysis of recent worker experiences in Detroit's bankruptcy expose the conflict of rights that shapes the US capitalist society. Masked by myths, forbidden memories, and selective values, the trumpeting of "workers' rights" in the United States today weakens workers' claims to rights, denying many "an existence worthy of human dignity". Thirty years ago, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Economic Justice for All called for a "New American Experiment" establishing positive economic human rights. Today, the problems they identified have worsened, and the conversion they called for is absent from dominant political and economic discourse. The survival strategies of marginalized communities suggest a praxis of conversion creating possibilities for a future of human dignity.