Statehood for the District of Columbia Would End Its Unfair Colonial Status

The time has come to place statehood for the people of Washington, D.C., at the very forefront of the nation’s civil-rights agenda.

In 1989, more than 200 years after the U.S. Constitution promised to “secure the blessings of liberty” to all citizens, the District of Columbia’s colonial status is a scandal that must be brought to the attention of the nation and the world.

It is a little-known but increasingly intolerable reality that 650,000 Americans living in the district have only a limited form of home rule that is subject to congressional veto at all times. Even worse, they are denied the right to voting representation in Congress, the very institution that has final say over their land, their property, their laws and, ultimately, their lives.

The people of Washington, D.C., are living under congressional occupation.

But now we have the chance to wipe out this stain on American democracy by passing bipartisan legislation, pending now in Congress, to carve out a separate “federal enclave” of government buildings and designate the rest of the District as “New Columbia,” the 51st state of the Union.

The American revolutionaries who dumped tea in Boston Harbor held up this slogan: “No taxation without representation!” And today that slogan should be raised again by more than half a million patriotic Americans who pay federal taxes, fight and die in foreign wars and are subject to federal laws written by Congress.

The citizens of the District of Columbia have fought in every war since the American Revolution. In the Vietnam War, the people of the district suffered more casualties than the people of 10 states and more casualties on a per-capita basis than the people of 47 states.

The people of the district annually contribute more than a billion dollars in taxes to the federal treasury, which is more in absolute terms than nine states pay and more in per-capita terms than is paid by 49 states.

At a time when democracy is afire in the minds of people all over the world, this shocking colonialism in the nation’s capital threatens America’s claim to be the world’s leader in democracy .

In fact, the United States is the only democracy on Earth that denies parliamentary representation to the citizens of its capital city. Indeed, of 115 nations with elected national legislatures, from Austria through Zimbabwe, only the United States denies representation to citizens of its capital city.

How would we react if the citizens of Paris were denied representation in the French National Assembly, 200 years after the French Revolution, or if the citizens of Bonn were given no voice in the Bundestag?

It would be cause for outrage because it offends common sense, which is the very basis of democracy.

That is why a national survey conducted by former President Reagan’s pollster, Richard Wirthlin, determined that by an overwhelming 8-to-1 margin, Americans agree that the citizens of the district are entitled to the same rights as the citizens of the 50 states. The poll also found that, by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans support bipartisan legislation now before Congress to make “New Columbia” the 51st state.

That is why the 1988 Democratic Party platform promoted statehood for Washington, D.C., as a plank, and that is why it should be in the Republican President’s program in 1990.

The arguments against statehood make no sense. For example, it is said that the population of Washington, D.C., is too small for statehood. But the fact is that more American citizens live there than in Vermont, Wyoming, North Dakota or Delaware.

If there is a magic population threshold for statehood, the people of Washington have already passed it.

Perhaps it will be said that the state created by the people of Washington will wield too much power over the federal government. But the supremacy clause of the Constitution makes it clear that federal law and policy prevail over the law of any state.

The rest of the opposition to statehood for Washington is based on partisan political motivation or--we must be frank--racism. The next time someone tells you that the people of Washington don’t “deserve” statehood, ask him if he would feel the same way if the city were two-thirds white.

Such selfish and antiquated motivations should have no place in a matter of basic citizenship rights under the American form of government.

President Bush has said that he is in favor of statehood for Puerto Rico, when the people of Puerto Rico have not even applied for it. The people of Washington, D.C., on the other hand, adopted a “Constitution for the State of New Columbia” on Nov. 2, 1982. This Constitution and a petition for statehood were sent to Congress on Sept. 9, 1983. Yet President Bush, who lives in the district, has not yet declared his support for statehood for the people who live there.

Surely President Bush and those members of Congress who were indignant about the Supreme Court’s flag-burning decision love American democracy enough to extend its rights and privileges to all American citizens. Or is the rhetoric of democracy inside the Capitol not to be made the reality of life in the capital city?

More than 650,000 good and patriotic American citizens are waiting for an answer.