人教版高二英語課文下冊(cè)Unit 14 Freedom fighters - Integrating Skills 1
NO VOICE , NOT HEARD…
Freedom fighters can be found everywhere, and they are of all times. Each age has its own struggle for rights. Between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries the struggle was for freedom of religion. People struggled for the right to be free in their choice of which god to believe in.
From the late eighteenth to well into the nineteenth century different groups of people struggled for their rights. These struggles started with the ideas of the French Revolution and the American War of Independence. There were famous books about the rights of man and later the rights of woman. The main ideas were that all people are brothers and sisters, and that all people should be treated equally. It was the beginning of a struggle of more than 200 years for unconditional rights of men and women of all races.
First there was the struggle of black people in America who fought for their rights. After the American Civil War, slavery was abolished. Slaves were now free people, but the southern states did not want to give black people their fights. For more than a hundred years black people had to fight to be given the fights to vote, choose where to live, study and work. Nelson Mandela was a great freedom fighter, who fought for the fights of black people in South Africa.
Starting at almost the same time were the international movements for the rights of women. There was a time when women had no right to vote, could not go to university or choose their jobs. In the nineteenth century, women all over the world started asking for equal rights. In 1893, New Zealand became the first country in the world to give women the right to vote. By 1920, women in the US, Canada and most European countries had the right to vote.
In modern times there are still organisations that fight against prejudice and for equal rights of people. There are action groups that fight for the rights of black people, women, children, people with AIDS / HIV and prisoners. What all these groups have in common is that they ask to be treated with respect, share the fight to work, good housing conditions and education, and be treated equally to other people, regardless of race, religion or sex.
When Samuel Butler wrote two chapters about the fights of animals and the fights of vegetables in a novel in 1872, everybody thought that was ridiculous. But in the twentieth century organizations were formed to give a voice to groups that do not have a voice to speak for themselves. The largest is the animal rights movement. As a part of this movement there are now also action groups that struggle for the rights of plants, the oceans and the earth. There are already people wondering whether we should fight for the rights of robots and machines.
