Democrats in the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of admitting the majority of Washington, D.C., as the Union’s 51st state, and partially renaming the area after abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
“The United States is the only democratic country that denies both voting rights in the national legislature and local autonomy to the residents of the nation’s capital,” Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s non-voting member of the House, wrote in prepared remarks ahead of the vote.
“Congress has two choices. It can continue to exercise undemocratic, autocratic authority over the 705,000 American citizens who reside in our nation’s capital, treating them, in the words of Frederick Douglass, as ‘aliens, not citizens, but subjects.’ Or Congress can live up to this nation’s promise and ideals,” she said.
Congressman Collin Peterson (D-MN) was the only Democrat to note vote in favor of Norton’s legislation. – READ MORE
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