Dennis L. Boaz’s vision while writing Seven Rights for Citizen Slackers was never simply about publishing a book. It was about bringing forward an idea that had followed him for decades, an idea rooted in human rights, personal freedom, civic responsibility, and the belief that society could be organized around the deeper needs of the people it is meant to serve.
At 86, Boaz speaks with the clarity of someone who has lived many lives within one lifetime. He has been a lawyer, a prosecutor, a defense attorney, a teacher, a political observer, a seeker of spiritual systems, and a writer who never fully walked away from the idea that first took shape in his early thirties. His book blends memoir, philosophy, civic critique, and social vision into an unconventional roadmap for a more balanced society.
The foundation of Seven Rights for Citizen Slackers begins with a question Boaz believes Americans have not asked deeply enough:
What does it truly mean for a government to secure the rights of its people?
In the book, Boaz returns to the Declaration of Independence and its assertion that governments are instituted to secure unalienable rights. From there, he argues that the American constitutional system has never fully built itself around a comprehensive understanding of human rights. In his view, the Bill of Rights remains essential, but incomplete. It protects certain liberties, especially against government intrusion, while leaving significant gaps in areas such as education, culture, safety, healthcare, economic stability, and the emotional and creative development of citizens.
Boaz’s answer is what he calls the “seven rights schematic,” a framework built around seven fundamental rights, which are the right to survive, the right to play, the right to power, the right to love, the right to truth, the right to freedom, and the right to a future. These rights are placed within four larger categories such as social rights, cultural rights, educational rights, and safety rights. Together, they create what Boaz sees as a holistic model that could be applied not only to government, but also to education, business, and social institutions.
The result is a book that resists easy categorization. It is political, but not traditionally partisan. It is spiritual, but not confined to religion. It is philosophical, but grounded in Boaz’s lived experience as a lawyer, citizen, teacher, activist, and lifetime observer of society. Rather than presenting theory alone, Boaz uses his own journey to help readers understand how his ideas developed and why they continue to matter.
His path to the book was anything but ordinary. After studying law and beginning his career as a prosecutor, Boaz later found purpose in criminal defense and labor arbitration. His experiences in the courtroom, along with his exposure to Berkeley’s political and countercultural movements, helped shape his belief that rights, desire, consciousness, and human potential were deeply connected. Over time, his interest in systems such as chakras, Egyptian Tarot, and psychology became part of a larger intellectual project for finding a structure through which human rights can be understood as universal human wants/desires.
That idea became the seed of Seven Rights for Citizen Slackers.
The title itself carries Boaz’s humor and provocation. A “citizen slacker,” as he presents it, is not necessarily lazy in daily life. It is someone who may work hard, care for family, vote, pay taxes, and still fail to oversee the government’s responsibility to secure human rights. Through this concept, the author challenges readers to move from passive citizenship to active partnership. In his view, democracy requires more than participation at the ballot box, it requires citizens who understand their rights well enough to hold institutions accountable.
One of the book’s most compelling qualities is its balance between serious civic ambition and personal honesty. Boaz does not avoid the controversial or unusual chapters of his life. His involvement in the Gary Gilmore case, his attempts to draw attention to his ideas, his experiments with mysticism and symbolism, and his long struggle to find the right form for his philosophy all appear as part of a larger truth: the path toward purpose is rarely simple, predictable, or clean.
For him, the book has always been about value, the possibility that a better understanding of human rights could help create a happier and more humane world.
That belief is captured in the book’s simple credo:
“Do what you will–with love.”
In Boaz’s framework, love is not merely sentiment. It is a social principle which is the center of a rights-based society and the balancing force behind freedom, power, truth, survival, play, and future planning. Without love, power becomes domination. Without truth, freedom loses direction. Without a future, survival becomes short-sighted. His system asks readers to think of rights not as isolated legal protections, but as interdependent and fundamental wants/desires.
The book also calls for structural change, arguing that a government truly based on human rights would require constitutional reform, including an Article Five Convention to propose more than thirty amendments.
Whether readers agree with his specific proposals or not, Seven Rights for Citizen Slackers invites them to reconsider what government is for, what education should develop in a human being, and what kind of future citizens should demand.
At a time when many people feel disconnected from politics, distrustful of institutions, and uncertain about the future, Boaz’s book arrives as an unusual but timely invitation. It asks readers to rethink citizenship, rediscover responsibility, and imagine a society organized around the full range of human potential.
For Boaz, Seven Rights for Citizen Slackers is not just a reflection on what has gone wrong. It is a call to what can still be right.