Content Warning: This email includes mentions of police brutality.
Indivisibles,
Today, we planned to send you a celebratory message about the end of our
Digital Week of Action for D.C. statehood, and honor Emancipation Day, the
anniversary of the end of slavery in Washington D.C. We’d planned for the
message to be about civil rights, and enfranchising the residents of a
plurality-Black, majority-minority city and excitement over all the work
Indivisibles did this week.
After a week where the news has been full of horrifying body cam videos
and coverage of the Chauvin trial, celebration is the last thing we want
to do. But even as we continue our work against police violence and for
Black Lives, we’re also moving forward our broader civil rights work, and
our work for Black liberation nationwide. And because of that, we still
want to talk about Emancipation Day.
April 16th is significant because on this day in 1862, President Lincoln
signed the bill that abolished slavery in D.C. a full nine months before
the Emancipation Proclamation. The District quickly became a haven for
recently-freed Black people and escaped slaves to go, find work, and
settle, and they turned April 16th into an annual celebration of freedom
with parades and civic events. It’s an official holiday in D.C., with
public schools, libraries and DMVs all closed. [ [link removed] ]You can read more about
the history of Emancipation Day here.
Though Emancipation Day celebrations have continued for over 150 years,
D.C. residents still don’t enjoy full civil rights: racist politicians
have prevented the plurality-Black, majority-minority city D.C. from
becoming a state precisely because they want to maintain their white
political power.
So today, in honor of D.C. Emancipation Day, we’re asking you to join us
in demanding that our government fulfills the long-delayed promise of
democracy for everyone, including the 700,000+ people who’ve been
disenfranchised in D.C., hundreds of thousands of whom have lived in the
District their entire lives.
With a vote in the House on this next week, there’s no time to waste to
demand Congress put an end to the legacy of voter suppression and racism
and give D.C. residents equal representation. [ [link removed] ]Click here to tell your
Member of Congress to vote YES on H.R.51.
We can’t forget that America was founded on the oppression of Black
people, Indigenous people, and people of color (BIPOC). Weeks like this
make it painfully obvious how much more work we have to do in the path
towards a democracy that works for all of us.
If we hope to make our democracy as inclusive and representative as
possible, we’re going to have to demand change, and prepare for a backlash
from those who are in power. We’re already seeing that backlash, as the
Koch dark money machine [ [link removed] ]scrambles to stop democracy bills that are
popular even with Republican voters!
We’ve got to look back at the struggle for Black Americans to work, vote,
and even simply exist in this country, as we work to dismantle the systems
of oppression that have made their subjugation possible. We can draw a
line from the Jim Crow South to the ongoing civil rights movement to the
fresh wave of voter disenfranchisement bills targeting BIPOC Georgians to
the struggle for representation and statehood in D.C. to the unwillingness
of prosecutors to charge police officers for murder -- they all stem from
this nation’s foundational white supremacy.
Democracy reforms like D.C. statehood are critical to ensuring a truly
representative democracy for all Americans.
[ [link removed] ]Honor D.C. residents past and present by making calls today to your
representative and tell them to support D.C. statehood.
In solidarity,
Indivisible Team
[ [link removed] ][IMG]
[ [link removed] ][IMG]
[ [link removed] ][IMG]
You can unsubscribe from this mailing list at any time:
[link removed]
