For years, I worked in the U.S. Capitol building as a political reporter and lived in its grand shadow on Capitol Hill. I interviewed lawmakers from around the country about issues facing their constituents, but I never talked to a voting member who represented my concerns in Congress. I paid my share of federal taxes and served jury duty, but I never got the opportunity to vote for a lawmaker who represented me.
I was then – and am now – a strong supporter of statehood for Washington, D.C., for the obvious reason that we won’t have a true democracy without it. The framers fought a war over taxation without representation, though of course representation was only for White male landowners. We’ve made significant advances in enfranchisement since then, but more than 700,000 U.S. citizens — a plurality of whom are Black — today have no real voice in their government.