This is becoming something of an annual tradition for me, sadly enough.
It's April 15, 2015, and as good American citizens, my wife and I filed our federal income taxes yet again this year. (We actually filed them a couple of months ago, but who's counting.)
We don't mind paying our taxes, since much of that tax money goes to things we support, like food assistance for the poor, healthcare for the poor and elderly, the National Weather Service, NASA, and the National Park Service.
But what continues to get to me is that despite dutifully paying federal income tax every single year since I started working at the age of 15, I don't have any representation in the governmental body that decides how those tax dollars are being spent.
That's because I'm one of the 660,000 residents of the District of Columbia.
The District of Columbia, which has existed as a separate political entity from Maryland and Virginia since 1791, continues to be a black mark on all of America's claims to leadership in the free world as a democratic republic.
Right in the backyard of the very government elected by the residents of the 50 enfranchised states are 660,000 Americans who are being denied the most basic rights of citizenship in a free country—the right to vote.
Sure, we get to cast a ballot every two years for our citywide offices as well as for federal office, but the only federal election our ballot counts in is the one for president.
Our other federal officials—our delegate, the excellent Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and our "shadow" senators—get no say in the laws that govern us. And our citywide officials can be overruled at any time by Congress; heck, they can't even pass a DC city law without Congress getting 30 days to decide whether or not to veto it before it can be implemented.
And with Republicans in control of Congress, they're all too eager to sit as tyrants over the District of Columbia—as they did back in December with the so-called "Cromnibus" bill, which contained a rider prohibiting the DC government from spending any money to implement the legalization of marijuana, which passed overwhelmingly in a voter initiative in the 2014 election.
The best answer remains what it always has been: The District of Columbia deserves to be recognized as the 51st state in the Union, and its 660,000 residents deserve to have the voting representative in the House of Representatives and the two voting senators in the Senate to which we are entitled as Americans.
If Congress decided tomorrow that the 650,000 residents of Memphis, Tennessee would no longer be represented in Congress, and that their votes for Senate would no longer count, the progressive movement would be in an uproar. We would be demanding that every Congressional candidate and every presidential candidate take a strong stand and make an ironclad promise to restore the civil rights of Memphis residents. We would make it the top issue of the 2016 campaign.
And yet, the major progressive organizations can't seem to make the 660,000 residents of Washington, DC a priority. And the progressive grassroots isn't holding anyone's feet to the fire on this—whether it's the organizations or the lawmakers.
With the 2016 campaign already upon us, it's time for the progressive movement as a whole to ask the candidates where they stand on DC statehood. It's time for all of us to demand that our presidential candidates lead on this issue. It's time for those in the 50 enfranchised states to demand that their congressional candidates take a stand. If we're truly serious about our commitment to civil rights, we'll make this a priority.
Because we stand with our nation's founders in saying that no American should be taxed without representation.