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A plea to UUs nationwide from one UU in Washington, D.C.

by Anne Anderson

Your votes up and down the ballot in the November election are critical in our struggle to protect and expand democracy! I am calling on all Unitarian Universalists in the U.S. to join D.C. residents and voters to advocate for our right to have equal representation in Congress. We need your help to make the case. (Join our petition.) Please use that vote and cherish your participation and your proper enfranchisement.

As a Unitarian Universalist since 1956 and resident of Washington D.C. since 1964, the first year we in D.C. were able to vote for president since 1801, I keenly feel our lack of genuine participatory power. With a more friendly Congress and President, the almost 700,000 of us who live in D.C. will have a much better chance to end our 223-year lack of full voting representation in Congress by becoming the 51st state. (H.R. 51 passed the House but failed to get traction in the Senate.)

During these recent very difficult years in our political life as a nation, we in D.C. have been forced to sit on the sidelines, unable to participate effectively—and fully— in our national debates. When federal issues of moral concern emerge, we are easily rendered silent. We are marginalized quickly and struggle to have adequate representative influence because we have no Senators and no voting members in the House. Our one Delegate in the House can only vote in committee with the consent of the House leadership and cannot vote on any final bill on the House floor.   

You might think, “Just rejoin Maryland.” Yet HR 51 passed the House twice, and no Maryland official or community said that they wanted D.C. back. 

For D.C. to return to Maryland, what is called retrocession, they’d need to agree, which seems unlikely. The last time retrocession was discussed substantively was in 1990, when a poll of Maryland legislators showed serious opposition to taking back D.C. “Only one senator and six delegates out of the 91 legislators who responded were willing to take the District back.” The last survey of Marylanders, at large, showed 44% opposing; see Q.22. The fact that Marylanders did not signal favorability for retrocession after the two votes on HR 51 suggests that the older data probably holds. To be sure, Marylanders narrowly favor D.C. Statehood, as compared to Americans overall, Wash Post.

Vote your conscience and, in defense of social justice this November, cast your ballots in favor of a better democracy. Get your friends, neighbors, and family to the polls, too.  When you send your Senators and your Representatives to Congress, they have full voting privileges. They are the ones who have the power to admit the residential and commercial parts of D.C. as a state, reserving a smaller federal district for the seat of our national government. 

If you vote for and send representatives who care for full voting rights for universal voting rights, they could make a considerable difference in undoing the longest-standing instance of legalized voter suppression in our nation’s history. Our situation is an example that has been inextricably linked to racial injustice from its origin. (“Historic records are replete with statements of successive members of Congress referencing the ‘negro problem’ and the ‘color problem’ within D.C. as a justification to withhold Congressional representation.” D.C. Mayor Murial Bowser, testimony before the Committee on Oversight and Reform, U.S. House of Representatives.)

Please remember that when you vote, in many ways, you will be voting for those of us in Washington, D.C., too!

Please sign our petition supporting D.C. Statehood to document your commitment to forming a more perfect Union, a more inclusionary democracy.

Your vote is more than just a vote; it’s about your federal legislators’ power to consider root causes, address root harms, and legislate toward justice.

 

Anne Anderson is a Unitarian Universalist and community leader with the Washington, D.C. League of Women Voters (LWVDC) and a clinical social worker (retired). She is the mother of three wonderful children and grandmother of three astonishing grandchildren.  Anne has advocated for D.C. Statehood since 1971.  In her work on D.C. Statehood, Anne brings a deep wellspring of conviction for universal voting rights and commitment to our UU values.