I’m standing on the second floor of a parking garage in Bellevue, WA. Opposite me is the headquarters of Quadrant Home–Washington’s biggest homebuilder, owned by Weyerhaeuser the worlds biggest lumber company.

Two RAN activists dangle in climbing harnesses from the roof-line. Surprised office workers crane their necks inside. Twenty minutes after they hop from the roof, they unfurl a massive banner. A TV news helicopter swoops below the clouds to record

the scene. Traffic on I-90 slows to a crawl as morning commuters slow to read the message: “Weyerhaeuser: Human Rights Abuser”.

Strong Words provoke strong emotions. Since leveling the accusation against Weyerhaueser we’ve heard strong reactions. An executive at the company told me that we were being “reckless”. They said labeling the situation in Grassy Narrows as human rights abuse minimizes “real” abuses around the world.

An executive at a different forest products company presented a similar sentiment with a more thoughtful question (to paraphrase): How would the plight of those in Grassy Narrows compare to “a slave laborer behind a loom”? It’s an excellent question that deserves a better answer than dismissing the charge as “reckless”.

The rights at issue in Grassy Narrows are basic: access to food and medicine, spiritual freedom, self determination. Most of us recognize these rights as pillars of a just society. But how do they compare? Is slavery worse than the denial of culture? Is freedom better than tradition? These lines are not black-and-white.

My point here is not that comparisons are impossible. The Universal Declaration on Human rights affirms everything from “life, liberty and security” to “periodic holidays with pay”. Forced to choose, I’d work President’s Day.

My point is that human rights aren’t ranked, they’re universal. Naming the abuse of one right doesn’t minimize the abuse of another. Quite the opposite; naming human rights abuses helps us (all of us) recognize and better understand how abuses happens and how to prevent them. At least this has been my experience in Grassy Narrows.

But what about the abuser? In the executive’s comparison, is the slave owner better or worse than the imperialist? What about the girl who buys the sweater from the loom? What about the company who buys logs from “crown forest” against the collective will of a First Nation who lives there?

Who decides what constitutes a human rights abuse and who benefits from the definition?