DC Emancipation Day: Injustice and Progress
Floor Speech
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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, in advance of D.C. Emancipation Day, and I know that it is not a national holiday, but it is, yes, a holiday in the District of Columbia. It commemorates the day when the slaves in the District of Columbia were liberated by the Congress and Abraham Lincoln 9 months before the national Emancipation Proclamation.
Astonishingly, 150 years later, full freedom and equal citizenship have not yet come to the residents of the District of Columbia.
You don't have to be the Holmes family in the District of Columbia, who have lived three generations here paying taxes without representation. Indeed, my great grandfather, Richard Holmes, was a runaway slave from Virginia. When Lincoln and Congress freed the slaves 150 years ago, Richard Holmes was not freed, because he was a runaway slave rather than a slave whose master lived in the District of Columbia. So he had to wait the 9 months for the Emancipation Proclamation, but he was working on the streets of Washington like a free man as they were building Washington. He became free, but his great granddaughter--grateful for all that my family has done--cannot say that we are free today.
The greater shock will not come from those of us who are longtime residents. It will come from those who moved to D.C. yesterday, from those who are not three generations here but who are one day here, when they find that their rights are gone, that the rights they had in every State of the Union have vanished except for a few.
They can vote for President, but they can't vote for whoever represents them on this House floor. They have Congress interfering with their local business. This will astonish the average American, and most Americans have no idea this is the case for the 650,000 residents who live in their Nation's Capital. People have taken for granted that the vote that is emblematic of statehood would follow them--I don't know--from Utah and California, from Alaska and Maine to the District of Columbia when they moved here. They had no idea that their local budget, for example, which is a budget raised exclusively in the District of Columbia, would have the big foot of the Federal Government kicking it around--indeed, that it would even be in the Congress.
Emancipation Day in the District of Columbia is not a mere commemoration. It is not like George Washington's birthday. It is alive with a fervor against this rank injustice that I have begun to speak about this evening. I am going to speak about the injustice, but I am also going to talk about progress because we have been encouraged--we who live in the District of Columbia--and the many allies we have to fight as we begin to make some substantial headway.
Most Americans--indeed, all other Americans--obtain their full rights by going through a citizenship ceremony or by simply being born here. All you have to do to have your full citizenship rights, when all is said and done, is to pay taxes. You don't even have to have participated in all of the Nation's wars or any of the Nation's wars the way the residents of the District of Columbia have done ever since the first war, the war that created the United States of America. You don't have to have paid all the taxes ever since you have been in the Union of states the way the District of Columbia residents have.
The reason you don't is that the statehood simply comes with where you live, and that is what has not happened to us. Where do we live? We are proud to live in the Nation's Capital. There, you would expect rights to flourish first and foremost.
When I spoke of not having the vote, do understand I have the vote in committee, and I am very grateful for that vote because it does allow me to carry home some important benefits to the District of Columbia, but what I don't have is the right to come to this floor and have the same vote that each of my colleagues has on business that affects the District of Columbia and the Nation.
Even matters that affect the District of Columbia, our own budget comes to Congress; and every other Member, who had nothing to do with raising the funds, gets to vote on that budget, but not the Member elected by the people of the District of Columbia. How painful it is that I have been able to speak on a number of wars that our country has entered, most recently Afghanistan and Iraq, have gone to Arlington to bury those killed, residents killed in those wars who went to war, secured the vote for residents of Afghanistan and Iraq but came home to find no vote or, in the case of those who died, did not come home at all.
And yet I am in a Republican House where ``federalism'' is the byword. Indeed, I understand why, because nothing was more important to the Founders than their own local laws and keeping the Federal Government, which was then kept deliberately weak, out of their affairs. What mattered to them was what was most local. So the very notion of interfering with the local business of a jurisdiction of any kind was unthinkable for our Framers.
It is the very meaning of statehood, this localism, this thing that says that there is territory and there are laws, there are habits for you only. They will differ vastly across the country, but that is your prerogative; that is the prerogative of statehood. That is why the residents of the District of Columbia seek to become the 51st State, and know it will happen. Perhaps later than sooner, but it must happen because of the principles I have begun to describe.
It must happen because we have been called out and continue to be called out internationally, because we have signed treaties where we are now in violation. We are in violation of a treaty we signed in 1977, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The Human Rights Committee, the U.N. Human Rights Committee, has called us out once again as it did in 2006, and they recited the reason for it.
The Human Rights Committee, looking at what has been done or, as it turns out, not been done said, and I am quoting them, the United Nations delegation to the U.N. ``remains concerned that residents of the District of Columbia do not enjoy full representation in Congress, a restriction that does not seem to be compatible with article 25 of the covenant.''
Then they cited article 2, and I won't quote from it entirely, but it says that the treaty we signed requires that we ``adopt such laws or other measures as may be necessary to give effect to the rights recognized in the present covenant.''
What are those rights? In this covenant, in this treaty that we the United States has signed, says all persons are ``equal under the law and are entitled, without discrimination, through the equal protection of the law. In this respect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any ground,'' and then they name the grounds. Here are the grounds: ``such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth--and here is the one that applies to the District of Columbia and its residents--``or other status.'' What is our other status? That we reside in our own Nation's Capital--and for that reason, and that reason alone, are denied equal rights with other citizens of the United States of America.
Worse than being denied your rights is getting a right and then having it taken from you. Even that has happened to the residents of the District of Columbia. Shortly after I was elected to Congress, I wrote a memo indicating that since, as a Delegate, by rules of the House, I could vote in the Committee of the Whole, it followed that I should be able to vote in the Committee of the Whole when it meets on this floor. The Democrats were in control, but even they said: We must send this to outside counsel. Nobody from the District of Columbia has ever voted on this floor.
They sent it to outside counsel. They said that the District of Columbia votes by rule in committee, so by rule, yes, if the majority pass a rule, the District can vote on the floor of the House of Representatives. That rule was passed. Every time that the Democrats are in power, I get to vote on the House floor--by no means on all business, but certainly on business in the Committee of the Whole, and some of that really affects and is important to the District of Columbia. It is not the whole and complete vote. It is not what we are entitled to.
Why would anyone want to take it from us when we pay taxes without representation? But sure enough, when my good friends on the other side of the aisle write their rules, they write the District right out of the rules and take from us a vote that we have actually exercised on the House floor with the concurrence of the Federal courts of the United States. Right after we were granted that right and after I began to exercise it, my Republican colleagues actually sued the Congress for giving the District the vote in the Committee of the Whole. The District Court said: It is your discretion. What Congress has done is legal; the matter is legal and constitutional. And the Congress--the Republicans, not the Congress, took their suit against the Congress, the Democratic Congress to the Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals, the Federal Court of Appeals said: Yes, what Congress has done is legal, in its discretion and constitutional. And I proceeded to vote.
I think it is probably unheard of except in coups or dictatorships to snatch a vote or a right that someone once held, but that is what happened to the residents of the District of Columbia. No wonder there is rage in the city about such treatment.
Now, you might say: Well, there surely must be some reason why the residents of the District of Columbia don't have the vote. No one has found any such a reason yet. They have only found reasons why we should have the vote.
Some will say: Oh, you are much too small to have the vote. After all, you are only a city. Well, a city is whatever you call it, so is a State. But if the size determines that you have the vote, then Vermont and Wyoming should not have the vote because we have more population than either of those two States.
Vermont and Wyoming are not alone. Those are the states where we have notably more residents than they have. We have more than 650,000 residents. But there are more than half a dozen States that are in the same range of population as the District of Columbia and have a Representative--no more than one, just like the District of Columbia has one in this House--and two
Senators. The District of Columbia has no Senators.
Who would say that that is fair?
And yet if you look down to the states with comparable population, the first tier that are almost exactly like the District of Columbia: North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, of course, and Wyoming. And then there is another tier that are above us but very close in population: Delaware and South Dakota. I want them to keep their vote, and I want them to keep their two Senators. All we are asking is that District of Columbia residents be treated equally.
I have been speaking all week in preparation for Emancipation Day tomorrow, April 16. I began with two important, what I call debt-paid, paid-in-full obligations of citizenship. The first is participation in the armed services--although we know nobody is required to participate in the armed services today--and the second is payment of taxes. Pretty much today, April 15, if you have earned enough money, even a relatively small amount, you are going to have to pay some taxes.
It is hard to say which of those is most important. They all, of course, surround citizenship. Both support our government: those who go to the service, those who pay their taxes. I won't say what is most important, but I started with military service for a reason: anyone who enters the service, especially today, does so voluntarily, knowing she is taking personal risk of her life.
Service in the armed services is so important to our country that undocumented immigrants have been granted citizenship by serving in the Armed Forces, and that has now been formalized. Young people who grew up in the United States but came with their parents as undocumented children without any legal status have always joined the armed services. In recognition of that, our country has now said that, at least for those who have special language or medical skills, if they join the armed services, after 6 months they can apply for citizenship.
Just consider the premium that we are placing on service in the Armed Forces, a premium that is more than deserved, and yet there is no cognizance taken of the fact that our residents who lived in the District of Columbia since its formation in 1801 have fought and died in the armed services; and even before that they fought in the Revolutionary War that led to the formal formation of the United States and the District of Columbia. So by any measure, District of Columbia residents have gone beyond the call of duty in serving their country and earned the right--earned, earned painfully, with their lives--the full right to be treated as full and equal citizens of a State.
This chart shows how the right to be the 51st State has been tragically earned. In World War I, there were more casualties from D.C., this small territory than three States; in World War II, there were more casualties from the District of Columbia than from four States--and it only rises.
In the Korean war, there were more casualties than from eight States of the union, almost all of which were larger in size and had more population. The Vietnam war, where we have the very most casualties--more men and women were killed than from 10 States in the Union.
There is a very special part of our service in the Armed Forces. The District of Columbia was not a majority African American city until almost 1960. Today, it really is not a majority African American city. I grew up in a city that was largely White.
During that period, for most of its history, the District of Columbia was a segregated city, segregated by the Congress of the United States. I went to segregated schools, for example; yet look at how residents of the District of Columbia who had no vote of any kind at that time, had no home rule government. The city was run by three commissioners--no mayor, no city council, nobody to go to who was responsible to you--yet look what its residents did.
The first African American Army general was born and raised in the District of Columbia. The first African American Air Force general was also born in the District of Columbia.
The first African American Naval Academy graduate was born right here in the District of Columbia. The first African American Air Force Academy graduate was born in this city. The roster continues into recent years, where we had the first Deputy Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard and the first African American female aviator in the D.C. National Guard.
Don't tell me District residents haven't paid their dues and then some; yet I have sometimes had some difficulty getting our armed services personnel duly recognized.
Perhaps the most poignant was a mother who wrote me--and I thank this Congress for helping me to correct this injustice. It may seem small to you, but it didn't seem small to my constituents. They are the parents of Jonathan Matthew Rucker, a D.C. native high school graduate who then proudly joined the Navy, instead of going to college.
He graduated from Naval Station Great Lakes. His parents went to see him graduate. Tomi Rucker, his mother, is an investigator with the D.C. Fire and EMS Department. His father, Michael Linwood Boyd, is a sergeant in the Special Operations Division of the D.C. police department.
They enjoyed attending their son's graduation from naval boot camp. The Navy called out the names. As the name of each young person was called, the Navy raised the state flag. The name of Jonathan Matthew Rucker was called, and no flag was raised. Why? What in the world? What could they have been thinking, that we weren't a State, so the flag shouldn't be raised?
Well, this Congress, controlled by my good Republican friends, was also amazed. I very much appreciate that they passed my bill that was attached to the Defense authorization bill that the Armed Forces now must display the D.C. flag--and we learned only with the visibility of this incident that there were D.C. veterans who had come home from wars and, every flag was raised, except the D.C. flag.
I must tell you, I think it was because D.C. is not a State, for God's sake. At some point, you just have to draw the line. Just make us a State, and maybe those kinds of things won't happen.
Take our World War I memorial. Every State had a World War I memorial--paid for by people in that State--so was ours, 100 percent. Indeed, they collected money even from schoolchildren.
There has actually been an attempt to take our D.C. War Memorial--because it happens to be located on the Mall--and convert it into a national World War I memorial because there is no World War I memorial on the Mall.
Well, sorry about that, but we paid--not only in treasure, but in the lives of almost 500 D.C. residents. I thank my Republican colleagues for working with me to maintain the D.C. War Memorial. The D.C. World War I memorial had become, really, a war memorial for all D.C. veterans.
What I did was to work closely with my colleagues so that we would get a real World War I memorial that could be respected. That means there is going to be a wholesale redevelopment of the Pershing Park, which many always considered a World War I memorial.
It is not located on the Mall, but it is located right in a prime location on Pennsylvania Avenue, near the White House, and we were able to come to a compromise, the kind of compromise that makes the world go round and makes this House look good.
Today, of course, was tax day, and my Republican colleagues came forward with any number of bills. Some were worthy bills, bipartisan bills. Some were nonsense. Some were just straight out demagoguery. My colleagues are very concerned with tax cuts, even bills this week.
Many will be surprised about the District of Columbia and taxes. This is one of the great unknown factoids of the United States. Residents of the District of Columbia, per capita, per resident, pay the highest taxes in the United States, Federal taxes, more than any Americans.
If you are in Mississippi, you pay the lowest per capita, at just about $4,000, compared to our $12,000. If you go to my Web site, you will find out where your State stands.
I will go down the top 10: the District of Columbia, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts--this is in rank order, by the way--Maryland, New York, Nevada, Wyoming, New Hampshire, and California.
The largest States--let's take California and New York--they each pay in the $8,000 range. D.C. is $12,000 per capita. This is all per resident.
You say: well, look at the small States; they must be like you.
No, they are not. Small States, like Rhode Island--we are $12,000, and they are at $7,000. We are at $12,000 per resident, and in Vermont, they are $6,000. North Dakota is at $6,000. Montana is at $5,000.
Those are the States with small populations, so population can't be the cause. The cause is that the District has middle-income people, rich people, and, yes, because it is a big city, poor people, and when you add it all up, Uncle Sam gets more than his due without D.C. getting statehood and the rights that come with it.
Only statehood can end this bucketload of injustice. Only statehood can end no vote for the Member from the District on this floor, no matter what the bill, even if the bill is about the District of Columbia. Only statehood can end the outrage of bringing the District's local budget for Members to vote on who have nothing to do with it and have contributed not one penny to it.
Only statehood can keep this Congress from interfering with the local laws of our local jurisdiction, using their own preferences to overturn the democratic will of the legislature of the District of Columbia.
But, it is not all terrible. We have made progress. This is a country that makes progress slowly, so we are not about to give up. We are trying to get the elements of statehood even as we try to get what we are entitled to.
Budget autonomy--so that our budget won't have to come here--was not only in the President's budget, but my bill for budget autonomy was in the Senate appropriations bill last Congress. They put it in their budget. That, I am afraid, did not pass because we cannot get yet the kind of consensus we need from the House.
The residents of the District of Columbia want to have sole dominion over their own money. That is $7 billion that we raise ourselves in the District of Columbia, so residents put it to referendum.
The city was sued after that referendum which passed by almost 85 percent of the vote. Now, that is in court to see where it goes. But residents are not going to give up. If they can't get statehood, they are trying to get any part of it that they can.
Other elements of statehood have also been introduced in the House and the Senate so that our local laws don't have to come here, for example.
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time I have had on the floor for Emancipation Day. I want to leave you looking forward, not backward. We are overjoyed by making some progress.
We know that, ultimately, the denial of rights will be seen as un-American, especially when that denial concerns the residents of our own Nation's Capital.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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