Friend,

Last week, the House held a groundbreaking hearing on the Insular Cases, a series of Supreme Court rulings that have left the U.S. territories in a perpetual state of colonialism.

Our second-class treatment is unfair and un-American. More than 3.5 million Americans don’t have the right to vote simply because they live in a U.S. territory like the Virgin Islands. (That’s equivalent to the five smallest states COMBINED!)

And more than 98% of the people living in the territories are racial or ethnic minorities like me.

The justices in the Insular Cases viewed the people who lived in the territories as “half-civilized,” “savages,” “alien races,” “ignorant,” and “lawless.” Yet while other cases written by the same Justices during this era of racism have been overturned, such a Plessy v. Ferguson, the Insular Cases remain in effect to this day.

We cannot continue to deny the residents of the U.S. territories access to voting rights and critical federal programs that we pay taxes for based on these racist doctrines.

Will you please add your name to my petition and call on my fellow members of Congress to REJECT the Insular Cases?

Thanks,
Stacey Plaskett