jonetta rose barras: The agony of statelessness in DC
So, there I was watching CNN, experiencing the news loop that can be mind-numbing, invigorating or depressing — sometimes all three simultaneously. What’s a news junkie to do when the DC Council is on recess? Watching the local government cable channel during these dog days of summer can be profoundly boring, marked by weeks of repeated showings of old public hearings and roundtables.
CNN was supposed to be a balm. Then, Kelly Knight Craft appeared on the screen, igniting rage while reminding me about the injustice the District has endured for decades because of its stateless state.
Fortunately, on Sept 19, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform will hold a hearing on HR 51, which in theory could lead to DC becoming a state. The bill has 216 co-sponsors in the House; Democratic Sen. Thomas R. Carper of Delaware introduced a companion bill although Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has declared there won’t be a vote on it. More than 100 national and local organizations have “endorsed” statehood for the District, according to Bo Shuff, executive director of DC Vote, a national nonprofit that advocates for statehood.
The Craft interview being shown last week was from 2017; at the time, she was asked among other things her views on climate change. “Both sides have results from their own studies,” she replied. “There’s science on both sides that’s accurate.”
Her comments were Trumpian — as in President Donald J. Trump. “There are fine people on both sides,” he famously (or infamously) said two years ago following the racial upheaval in Charlottesville, Virginia, when neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched through that city, shouting “Jews will not replace us.” One of their race-hating members subsequently plowed into the crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer on Aug. 12, 2017.
Despite Craft’s shaky 2017 performance and the absence of any significant diplomatic experience, she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on a voice vote as ambassador to Canada. Last week, the majority of senators poured salt into the wound, confirming Craft’s appointment by a 56-34 vote as the country’s next ambassador to the United Nations, notwithstanding criticism that she had frequently been away from her post in Canada.
Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey asserted that “Never in our nation’s history have we nominated such an underqualified person to such a critical post.”
Actually, former South Carolina Gov. Nimrata Nikki Haley was underqualified when she was appointed to the same post in 2017; she stepped down last year.
Craft is just plain ‘ole unqualified.
Add her name to a long list of wholly incompetent, intellectually challenged individuals District residents have had to watch being confirmed in recent years to top-level positions in their national government and whose salaries they have had to pay without having a voice or a vote in the matter: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. And who could forget Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who has been helping to dismantle public housing in this country. The damage done by these and other individuals in the Trump administration has been breathtaking.
Local activists and elected officials have argued the District deserves statehood with bona fide voting members of Congress because the American Revolution was fought against taxation without representation. “The Founders, who went to war because they paid taxes without representation, did not intend for 700,000 taxpaying American citizens in the capital they created to be the only Americans left without a voice in their own national legislature,” DC Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said in a recent statement. “Taxation Without Representation was the rallying cry that founded this nation. It was unjust in 1776 and it still is in 2019.”
Nevertheless, a national Gallup Poll conducted in June found that 64 percent of Americans oppose statehood for the District; only 29 percent are in favor. Shuff dismissed the poll when I spoke with him, taking issue with how it was presented, including the wording of the question and the lack of any mention of taxation without representation. “There are at least two other polls — one shows support at 48 percent and the other shows support at 66 percent,” he said.
Local taxpayers helped fund grants of $200,000 annually to a variety of organizations, including DC Vote, to get the message out around the country about why District residents desire and deserve statehood. The city is expected to spend a total of $1.1 million in fiscal year 2019 on statehood and self-determination activities, according to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer; $1.2 million is budgeted in 2020. Tax dollars have also paid for the maintenance of that monstrosity outside the John A. Wilson Building that keeps count of how much DC residents have paid in federal taxes. I hate that thing.
Has it all been a waste of our money? Maybe not.
Shuff is optimistic, although he acknowledged that his organization’s strategic plan does not envision passage of the statehood bill this year. Using a beach metaphor, he said, “There are things in the atmosphere that you have no control over that create the waves.
“But you have to have training, knowledge, background and power to catch the wave and win,” Shuff continued. “That’s what we have been spending our time on.”
I confess to being a recent convert. I have come around to statehood and full congressional representation for those of us who live in the nation’s capital. I doubt that I am the only District resident who has had a change of heart.
Previously, I worried about the quality of local leadership and the city’s precarious financial situation. As a result, I subscribed for years to a kind of incrementalism, advocating for seemingly small but ultimately significant changes like legislative and budget autonomy.
Honestly, I continue to have those same concerns. Undoubtedly the fact that District residents are taxed without representation in their federal government is a fundamental contradiction of the country’s democractic foundation. That’s not what prompted my shift, however. I’ve watched in horror over the past two and a half years as the erosion of crucial public policies and various programmatic protections has occurred without DC having a voice through formal representation in any of those debates, all of which have been important to District residents. That is what troubles me most.
Consider, for example, that DeVos has dismantled college loan protections; she also has aggressively blurred the lines between church and government. Under Carson, public housing has deteriorated. The maintenance of federal parks has declined. DC residents would have been walloped by that citizenship question Ross tried to sneak onto the 2020 census form; already there are federal dollars the city should receive that it doesn’t because of undercounting 10 years ago. Then, there is the appointment of two conservative Supreme Court justices whose decisions over time could jeopardize the freedom and rights of DC residents, particularly women. While there has been bipartisan support in the House for gun reform and election security protocol, the Senate has failed to act.
Residents in the nation’s capital deserve to be represented in the Senate on committees where vital public policy decisions are discussed and made. They deserve to have members who can stand on the floor and speak to a national audience about their concerns and considerations. Citizens from other states enjoy this kind of ordinary relationship with the federal legislature and with their federal government. DC does not. It’s time for all of that to change.
This post has been updated to correct an earlier version that indicated $200,000 in grants went to DC Vote for statehood messaging; that is the total amount divided among several nonprofit groups. The post also includes new information from the Office of the Chief Financial Officer on DC funds spent on statehood-related activities in 2019 and 2020.
jonetta rose barras is an author, a freelance journalist and host of The Barras Report television show. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.
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