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. 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. 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 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.

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