Indivisibles,

Our monthly newsletter is back! You may have noticed that our October
newsletter did not arrive as expected -- that’s because we had our own
early arrival, Ezekiel Singer Jones Levin! He’s now four months old, he’s
sleeping through the night, and he’s smiley and wonderful -- and we’re
excited to be back to our ritual of sharing our current thinking and
asking for your thoughts on what’s up in the Indivisible movement. As
always, feel free to reach out to us directly on Twitter at [ [link removed]- ]@ezralevin
and [ [link removed]- ]@leahgreenb. 

Without further ado, let’s get on with the newsletter.

Politics, Power, and Oppression in the Nation’s Capitol

It’s Black History Month -- and [ [link removed]- ]Black Futures Month -- so we wanted to
take this newsletter to reflect on a piece of Black history that we all
should know better: the history of Washington, D.C.’s disenfranchisement,
which is rooted in racial backlash against growing Black political power,
and the fight by Black civil rights leaders for D.C. statehood.  As we
campaign for D.C. statehood -- a fundamental part of a democracy agenda
for this country -- we know it’s important to understand this history. 

In the decade after the Civil War, the demographics of the District
shifted rapidly, with more than 25,000 Black people moving to the
District. Black men in the District received the right to vote in 1867,
and they voted in large numbers to elect their own representatives. This
did not sit well with white, wealthy residents of the District, or their
friends who dominated congress, and they decided to give unified District
power to a local white political boss in the 1870s. That political boss
drove the city into financial ruin. In response, Congress acted again to
take away local control from the District, blaming its largely Black
population for lacking the capacity for self-government.

It would be nearly a hundred years before Black activists would win back
some modicum of local control in the 1960s. But even then, they were
second class citizens of America. The first District mayor, Walter
Washington, had to contend with a chair of the House Committee on the
District of Columbia who was a vicious southern segregationist. When Mayor
Washington sent over his first Mayor’s budget request, the chairman
responded by sending him a truck full of watermelons (more history of that
racist trope [ [link removed]- ]here).

That chairman was eventually defeated by the Black voters of his own
district. But the basic structure of control and contempt for the wishes
of D.C.’s residents continues to this day. The District’s 700,000 majority
Black and brown residents are still treated like second-class citizens.
The District has more residents than Wyoming or Vermont. Its taxpayers pay
more federal taxes than 22 other states. Its families send their children
to fight and die in America’s wars. And yet, District residents still lack
representation in Congress and control over their own local laws and
budget! This has a real impact -- in 2011, congress prohibited D.C. from
spending its own money to help low-income residents get abortions. 

If you’ve read this far you should be shocked and disgusted, because this
is a shocking and disgusting mockery of democracy and ongoing miscarriage
of justice in America’s very own Capital city. It’s this basic reality
that leads local activists like Anise Jenkins of Stand Up! for Democracy
in DC to label the District, America’s “last plantation.” 

And it’s not just District activists making this argument. In 1993, a D.C.
statehood bill got its first vote in the House. Congressman John Lewis
took to the floor of the House in support:

Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of DC statehood. I rise in support
of what is fair. What makes sense and what is right. Almost thirty years
ago on a Sunday afternoon just like today in a little town called Selma
in the heart of the blight belt of Alabama some of us was beaten with
billy clubs and bullwhips, bloody and trapped up on by horses. Why? Just
because we want to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the Alabama
river on the way to Montgomery. We wanted to dramatize to the nation
that people of color could not register and vote. We have one simple
message: One man one vote… It is not right that we have to be here in
1993, debating whether to give American citizens living right here in
the shadow of the Capitol, the right to be represented in Congress. To
give D.C. statehood...The time is now to do what is fair, what is right,
and what is just. I urge you to support statehood for the District of
Columbia.

The statehood bill failed to pass the House 28 years ago. Last year, in
the wake of nationwide protests against anti-Black police brutality, the
Democratic House brought D.C. statehood up for a vote again. In scheduling
the vote, the Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer noted the bill was necessary
in no small part to “show respect to a city who has a very large African
American population. They matter, and they ought to be treated equally,
with respect, and that’s what we’re going to do.” And indeed they did --
for the first time in history, D.C. statehood passed the U.S. House of
Representatives in the summer of 2020.

The Jim Crow Filibuster

But nothing in this world worth fighting for comes easy. 

As Representative John Lewis was battling late-stage cancer in his
adoptive hometown of Atlanta, Mitch McConnell was using his power as
Senate Majority leader to kill the D.C. statehood bill. The bill never
even received a vote in the Senate. Lewis passed away within a month of
House passage of the statehood bill, but his fight lived on and lives on.
At his funeral, President Obama gave a moving eulogy celebrating his life
and his fight (read and watch it [ [link removed]- ]here). He concluded with a rousing
call for what honoring John Lewis’s life would look like.

You want to honor John? Let’s honor him by revitalizing the law that he
was willing to die for. And by the way, naming it the John Lewis Voting
Rights Act, that is a fine tribute. But John wouldn’t want us to stop
there, trying to get back to where we already were. Once we pass the
John Lewis Voting Rights Act, we should keep marching to make it even
better.

...

By guaranteeing that every American citizen has equal representation in
our government, including the American citizens who live in Washington,
D.C. and in Puerto Rico. They are Americans.

...

And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster — another Jim Crow
relic — in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then
that’s what we should do.

The “[ [link removed]- ]Jim Crow Filibuster,” is how Indivisible friend Heather McGhee
labeled it (look for us to go deep on [ [link removed]- ]her new book soon!). On the face
of it, the filibuster is just a boring procedural feature of the Senate,
requiring 60 votes instead of a simple majority to move forward on most
legislation. That’s a race-neutral description, but the impact has been
anything but. Using the filibuster, senators representing a small minority
of the population can block legislation supported by senators representing
the vast majority of Americans. And historically, it was southern
segregationists who pioneered and popularized use of the filibuster after
the Civil War in order to block all civil rights legislation in the coming
decades. 

This too is not history -- it’s still reality. The list of reforms Obama
mentioned in Lewis’s eulogy are real pieces of legislation that could
become real laws. They’re called H.R. 1 (the For the People Act), H.R. 4,
(the John Lewis Voting Rights Act), and H.R. 51, the Washington, D.C.
Admission Act. Each of these bills passed the House in the last Congress.
Then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to bring any of them
up for a vote. 

But in January, McConnell got a demotion. With John Lewis no doubt smiling
down on his state from above, McConnell lost the two senate special
elections in Georgia, and with that lost his majority. As Minority Leader
today he doesn’t have the numbers to defeat them in an up-or-down vote,
but he does have the power to filibuster these bills to death. 

McConnell will wield the Jim Crow filibuster to block popular civil rights
legislation. He will wield it to kill the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. He
will wield it to deprive brown and Black voters in D.C. of statehood. He
will wield it to kill H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and its campaign
finance, voting rights, and election security reforms that would
revitalize democracy in Black communities (see a Demos report on that
[ [link removed]- ]here). Like southern white minority leaders of the post-Civil War era,
McConnell will wield the Jim Crow filibuster to its full effect to secure
his and his allies' power against a diversifying American electorate. 

McConnell (on the left) will wield the Jim Crow filibuster against all
democracy reforms

But only if we let him

At the end of the day, it is up to Senate Democrats to decide if we’re
going to pass transformative legislation or if we’re going to look back on
this as time as another shameful episode of inaction. But while it’s up to
the senators to vote, that effort to unify and act is the task in front of
all of us. That’s why we released [ [link removed]- ]a new Indivisible guide. It’s why
Indivisible is running the largest advocacy campaign in our history. We
fight alongside those deprived of their rights in this moment because it
is fair, and it is right, and it is just. And we know that by doing that
-- by standing indivisible together to enact the reforms our nation
desperately needs -- we can save this democracy. 

Here’s our question to you: [ [link removed]- ]this Black History Month, how are you
working personally or with your local Indivisible group to build a truly
inclusive democracy in our country?

Thanks for reading through and offering your thoughts. We are so thankful
to be building this movement for justice and democracy together. It’s an
exciting time full of as many possibilities as there are dangers, and we
are just thankful to have this community to weather the storms and chart
the course forward. 

In solidarity,
Ezra and Leah
Co-Executive Directors and Co-Founders, Indivisible

 

PS: If you want to do your own personal deep dive into D.C. statehood, the
local NPR station ran an [ [link removed]- ]excellent short podcast series on D.C.
statehood last year, and we’d also recommend the recently updated
[ [link removed]- ]Dream City by two local Washington Post reporters, and [ [link removed]- ]Chocolate
City by a pair of historians. 

PPS: In response to overwhelming demand, here’s a picture of the now
16-week-old Zeke (#AdvocacyWorks!). He will learn about the Trump Era only
in his history books, and that’s the best gift we could have asked for.
Thanks to you all for making that happen, and building a brighter future
for him the rest of his generation.

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