Hi Indivisibles, 

Welcome to the Independence Day 2020 edition of our monthly newsletter! We write these letters to share with you what we’re thinking and what we’re hearing from Indivisible groups around the country. As always, feel free to reach out directly to us by Twitter: @ezralevin and @leahgreenb.

Independence Day in America’s Capitol

D.C. held its first convention to draft a state constitution in preparation for admission as a state nearly forty years ago. It took another decade, but the House of Representatives finally held a vote on D.C. statehood in 1993. The proposal went down in flames -- Democrats and Republicans alike voted against it. Undeterred, advocates including Eleanor Holmes Norton -- D.C.’s nonvoting member of Congress -- have introduced a D.C. statehood bill in every single Congress since then. But the legislation never got enough support to get a vote in the House.

Times change -- or rather, times are changed. Prompted by the historic, inspiring, powerful nationwide Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd -- and Trump’s appalling use of the military to occupy Washington D.C. in response -- Democratic leaders in the House moved forward on the D.C. statehood bill. Last week, for the first time in history, the House passed a bill that would make Washington, D.C. the 51st state in the union. The new state would be admitted as the state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth -- named after famed abolitionist and civil rights leader Frederick Douglass. 

Why is D.C. statehood a response at all to nationwide Black Lives Matter protests? To answer that question, you’ve got to ask another: why does a geographic area in America with more residents than two states, and that pays more federal taxes than 22 states, lack any voting representation in Congress?

The answer to that question goes back long before that first D.C. state constitution draft. You could of course go all the way back to the founding of the country, but let’s jump to 1890. In that year, a southern conservative Senator gave a speech to explain why Congress chose to disenfranchise D.C. residents at the precise moment that the Black population was becoming a political force in the District. The full quote is worth a read:

"Now, the historical fact is simply this, that the negroes came into this District from Virginia and Maryland and from other places...they came in here and they took possession of a certain part of the political power of this District...and there was but one way to get out...and that was to deny the right of suffrage entirely to every human being in the District and have every office here controlled by appointment instead of by election...in order to get rid of this load of negro suffrage that was flooded in upon them. This is the true statement. History cannot be reversed. No man can misunderstand it."

Those are the words written into the congressional record. No one can misunderstand it.

Fast forward 130 years.

After the House passed the D.C. statehood bill last week, another southern Senator took the floor of the U.S. Senate to discuss voting rights for D.C. residents. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas explained why Wyoming’s overwhelmingly white population of 578,000 should have two senators, while D.C.’s majority Black and brown population of 705,000 should have zero senators. Wyoming, he pointed out, "has three times as many workers in mining, logging and construction." 

Huh? But it wasn’t just the lack of lumberjacks in D.C. that bothered Cotton. He went on to call into question the competence of two Black D.C. mayors: "Would you trust Mayor Bowser to keep Washington safe if she were given the powers of a governor? Would you trust Marion Barry?"

This isn’t subtle. Cotton’s message was loud and clear. No one should misunderstand it.

Now, Tom Cotton’s speech was mostly just bombast and bluster. He didn’t need to even give the speech, because he knows perfectly well that as long as Mitch McConnell serves as Senate Majority Leader, D.C. statehood will never even come to a vote in the Senate. Last year McConnell took to the Senate floor to describe D.C. statehood as "full-bore socialism."

This isn’t complicated. Trump tweets videos of his supporters shouting “white power” and his supporters in the Senate block enfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of Black voters. 

D.C. statehood may have felt like a far-away dream even a few months ago. But the Democratic House has now signaled its support. The Democratic senators have signaled their support. Joe Biden has signaled his support. If we build a Democratic trifecta this November, we could be welcoming D.C. to the Union as soon as next year. It’s the right thing to do. And it’s long -- like a hundred years plus -- overdue.

What are your thoughts on D.C. statehood?

One of the things we love about these newsletters is that it’s not all a one-way street -- we get to get your thoughts on issues of the day too, which helps inform our thinking as we lead Indivisible at the national level. So this week, we want to hear: what do you think about D.C. statehood? Happy to hear your thoughts on self-determination for Puerto Rico and the other U.S. territories as well! Please let us know here -- and we’ll read through all your responses before the next newsletter.

What we’re reading

In honor of this momentous event, we’ve been re-reading Dream City, a sweeping history of politics, power, and racism in D.C. (and it’s where we got that 1890 anecdote). From it, you’ll also learn that congressional leaders sent a truckload of watermelons to D.C.’s first Black mayor when he submitted his first budget request. 

For a quick read, Indivisible’s Director of Democracy Policy Meagan Hatcher-Mays (she’s on Twitter here!) co-wrote an op-ed with us last year on the role of D.C. statehood in fixing serious problems with the U.S. Senate.

As mentioned above, Mitch McConnell is a sworn enemy of D.C. statehood, and if he winds up as Minority Leader next year, he will use the power of the minority to filibuster any D.C. statehood bill to death. Even if we defeat him, his replacement GOP doppelganger Minority Leader will attempt the same. Former Obama speechwriter David Litt has an educational new article on the true origins of the filibuster -- and how it’s been used by segregationists and white nationalists for more than a century to stop progress. Litt is also out with a new funny, engaging book on democracy and democracy reform: Democracy in One Book or Less. 

Mitch McConnell is one of the gravest modern threats to American democracy, but if you’re interested in going deeper on the origins of his brand of extremist, institution-wrecking partisan warfare, you might be interested in Julian Zelizer’s new book on Newt Gingrich, Burning Down the House. Zelizer is an American political historian by training, but this is no stuffy academic book. He knows how to tell a story -- and this is quite a story to tell.

Until next month

It’s hard to believe we’re halfway through 2020. It feels like we’ve crammed several lifetimes into these six months, and at the same time, it feels like we’ve lived them all in a blink of an eye. And history seems to be coming at us faster and faster. Four months from now, we believe we’ll be celebrating an incoming Democratic trifecta and preparing to fight for D.C. statehood and democracy reforms to make our government a government that’s truly of, by, and for the people. 

That’s not blind faith -- it’s a faith rooted in what we see with our own eyes from the Indivisible groups we talk to around the country every single week. We take nothing about the future for granted, but we see the power you’re building in rural, urban, suburban, exurban communities. In red, blue, and purple states we see this grassroots force is relentless, unyielding, and growing. And while the unending onslaught of natural catastrophe and Trump-manufactured disaster may seem destined to define 2020 -- we believe 2020 will ultimately be defined by you and this nationwide movement of grassroots activists standing together, indivisible, in their own communities. Together we will win.

In solidarity,
Ezra & Leah
Co-founders & Co-Executive Directors, Indivisible

P.S. Thanks for all the well wishes from the news that we’re expecting our first child! Leah is now 24 weeks in, and everything seems to be developing just fine. Here’s a photo Ezra took of the 22-week ultrasound last week!