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{"id":10652,"date":"2016-11-07T12:54:37","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T16:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=10652"},"modified":"2016-11-07T13:06:17","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T17:06:17","slug":"why-im-voting-for-dc-statehood-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2016\/11\/why-im-voting-for-dc-statehood-tomorrow.html","title":{"rendered":"Why I’m Voting for DC Statehood Tomorrow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It\u2019s not because I think DC should be a state.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t even think that\u2019s the real point, frankly,\u201d D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton<\/a> says, in the very first quote of this depressing piece<\/a>. My ballot tomorrow is going to be a fractal of civic helplessness. Let\u2019s explore!<\/p>\n

So first of all, even if the statehood proposal wins in a landslide, it will not happen. It is a pure protest vote. For some people it\u2019s a protest vote for left-wing and especially socially progressive politics\u2013cf. the role abortion plays in that City Paper<\/em> piece<\/a>. For me, and for I think pretty much everyone (including the abortion-rights voters), it is more centrally a vote against \u201cJohnny Mac\u201d MacMillan. That\u2019s the South Carolina Democratic congressman who sent Walter Washington\u2013the first mayor of DC chosen by his city\u2019s voters\u2013a truckload of watermelons<\/a> to welcome him to office. The fight for home rule is a fight against not just disenfranchisement, but specifically racialized disenfranchisement.<\/p>\n

Nobody has convinced me that DC is economically viable as a state. What might work would be carving out a federal district and returning the rest to Maryland\u2013\u201cretrocession,\u201d which is what happened with the part of Virginia that used to be D.C. (That\u2019s why the city is a broken diamond rather than a whole one. Build your own metaphor.) But retrocession isn\u2019t on the ballot, I\u2019m guessing because Maryland doesn\u2019t want us; so yes, every part of this picture gets more humiliating the longer you look at it, like a Seurat of shame.<\/p>\n

I have had I think only one conversation with an opponent of statehood which didn\u2019t very quickly boil down to, \u201cLol everybody knows you guys aren\u2019t capable of ruling yourselves.\u201d Which translates as, \u201cYou, unlike others, deserve to be ruled. Trust us to do it.\u201d Why on earth would we?<\/p>\n

Voting for statehood is as much as we can do to say to Congress, \u201cWe don\u2019t trust you to rule us.\u201d I trust them even<\/em> less than I trust myself, and that is really saying something.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"