Trump’s Occupation Of D.C. Fuels Calls For Statehood
The District of Columbia faced an overwhelming federal law enforcement presence this week as its residents protested police brutality against Black people. And the district could do little to stop it, thanks to politically motivated opposition to granting statehood to the majority Democratic city — with its plurality of Black residents — or giving it voting members in Congress.
Residents of the district have pushed to be admitted to the Union as a state as far back as Frederick Douglass. The famed writer and abolitionist called the city “the one spot where there is no government for the people, of the people, and by the people” and said its people, “are relegated to the position of neuters.” Even then, Douglass’ call for D.C. statehood was linked to the issue of race, as thousands of freedmen and women had fled to the city during and after the Civil War.
Since then, district residents have been subjected to countless indignities over the years. More than 700,000 residents lack any voting representation in Congress. Racist lawmakers in Congress were able to impose segregationist and discriminatory policies on the district in the 1930s and ’40s.
More recently, Congress blocked laws passed by the locally elected district government. It blocked abortion funds in 1988, domestic partnership benefits for same-sex couples in 1992, clean needle exchanges in 1996 and the legalization of marijuana in 2014. Residents have seen these intrusions as acts of racial paternalism by white lawmakers acting as if a Black municipality could not govern itself.
But since the passage of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act in 1973, the city had not seen itself occupied by the federal government against its wishes until this week. That action is prompting renewed calls to make the district the 51st state or at the very least to finally take action to give local officials authority over the deployment of the National Guard and to restrict the president’s...
