Friend,

I ran for office because I care about true democracy—about people having a voice in the government decisions that affect their lives.

But while I’m representing Michigan’s 13th District in Washington, DC, the people who live in DC itself don’t have full congressional representation.

This voter disenfranchisement is a racist affront to our democracy and our country’s struggles for civil and human rights.

Add your name to tell your elected leaders: It’s time to make Washington, DC a state. DC residents deserve a voice in Congress and control over their own local laws.

Why haven’t we rectified this injustice? Well, it’s no coincidence that DC is 50% Black and majority people of color. This is classic voter suppression.

Washington, DC has more residents than the states of Vermont and Wyoming, and it’s close in population to six other states. However, unlike the people in all those states, DC residents are only represented by a delegate to Congress, who can’t vote on the floor.

Their U.S. Representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, has been fighting for years to secure civil rights for her constituents. Finally, DC statehood is getting the national attention it deserves. This September, the House Oversight Committee held the first hearing on the issue in over 25 years. And Democratic federal officials, including me, have overwhelmingly come out to support Rep. Holmes Norton’s bill to make DC the 51st state.

This week on Veterans Day, she rallied with Veterans United for DC Statehood, and introduced a resolution to recognize DC veterans’ service and sacrifices, despite lacking full voting rights or self-government.

Over 30,000 active duty military members and veterans live in DC—but they don’t even get to vote about whether we can enter into war. Rep. Holmes Norton said: “For 218 years, our veterans have lived as unequal citizens in their nation’s capital.”

Her resolution notes that: “Residents of the District of Columbia fought to create the United States, fighting for the Revolutionary War slogan of ‘no taxation without representation’”—an ideal for which they’re still fighting today. In fact, DC residents pay more per capita in federal taxes than any other state.

Add your name if you agree: DC residents deserve the same rights as every other American. They deserve not only the right to vote for President—which they only won in 1961—but full congressional representation.

To make matters worse, the federal government also dictates DC’s local laws, courts, and budget.

Since DC is more progressive than Congress, that means that Congress has blocked a number of laws that DC has already passed with overwhelming local support.

Those laws include: publicly subsidized abortion for low-income women, recreationally legal marijuana, assisted suicide, gun control laws, needle exchange programs in the midst of an HIV epidemic—all laws that disproportionately support DC’s residents of color.

This is modern-day colonialism. DC’s residents are still fighting for their right to vote and for “home rule”—self-governance, or control over their local affairs.

Why do they lack control over their own local laws?

Old paternalistic, explicitly racist government officials stripped DC residents of their local voting rights long ago. Their rhetoric about how DC’s Black residents were “unfit to govern” themselves is still in use today by those who claim DC shouldn’t become a state.  

This is unjust and offensive. We have to come together as a country and prioritize DC statehood as a top civil rights issue.

Join me to demand justice: Washington, DC residents deserve a voice in Congress and control over their own local laws.

Thank you,

Rashida