One of the less well-known memorials in Washington, DC, sitting in the wooded area just south of the Reflecting Pool across the street from the new memorial to Dr. King, is this stately and elegant stone memorial:
(photo removed for copyright)
That is the DC World War I memorial—paid for by the citizens of the District of Columbia and dedicated in 1931 to the memory of the 499 citizens of the District of Columbia who gave their lives in service of their country in the Great War.
It's a clear sign to the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit our nation's capital every year that the people who live in the city they're visiting have fought, bled, and died for their country just as much as anyone from Alabama, Nebraska, Oregon, or New Jersey.
That makes it an implicit argument that we residents of DC, like the people in the 50 enfranchised states, are also entitled to the things every other American takes for granted: a voting representative in Congress, two voting Senators, and full home rule.
Which is, of course, the real reason that a Republican from Texas is trying to take it away from us.
Representative Ted Poe (who, unlike the elected representative of DC, actually gets to vote in Congress) is holding hearings this week on the Hill to talk about repurposing this memorial, dedicated to the DC citizens who fought and died for their country, as a general national World War I memorial.
Let's rephrase that for accuracy: Ted Poe wants to unzip his pants and take a whiz on the graves of 499 proud Americans, Americans who fought, bled, and died for their country, by telling them yet again that the country they died for doesn't consider them to be truly Americans, and they don't deserve to have a memorial dedicated to their memory in the city they called home.
There is no other city in this country whose war memorials Ted Poe wants to nationalize, no other city or state whose residents Ted Poe wants to tell they don't matter. That's because he knows that if he tried to pull this crap with any other city or state in this country, they would tell him where exactly to stick it.
But Poe thinks the 600,000 residents of the District of Columbia shouldn't get to make decisions about our own city and shouldn't get to have our own memorials. After all, that might lead us to start thinking of ourselves as if we're real Americans instead of second-class citizens. We couldn't have that.
Poe thinks that DC residents don't deserve representation in Congress and don't deserve two voting Senators, despite having 60,000 people more than the state of Wyoming, whose right to representation in both houses of Congress has never been questioned.
(As an aside, Wyoming's 540,000 people are 96% white while DC's 600,000 are 51% African-American, but I wouldn't dream of suggesting that Republicans like Poe don't think DC residents deserve civil rights because they don't think African-Americans should have the vote. That would be crazy talk.)
It might seem like there are a lot of bigger problems in this country—and there are. We've got an economy that's clawing back from the craphole George Bush left it in, we've got overseas problems up the wazoo, and we've got an election that Democrats need to win in order to keep the Republicans from dominating the Supreme Court for the next two decades.
But this should be on progressives' radar too. Dr. King said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere—and the people of DC are subject to a grave injustice, continually denied the basic civil rights to which we're entitled as Americans.
Fortunately, despite being denied the vote she is entitled to in the US House of Representatives, our representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, is standing up for our rights alongside our mayor and DC's other veterans, who have gone overseas to fight for a country that continues to tell them that they're not really Americans. She's calling for a true national memorial to all Americans who fought and died in World War I—a memorial separate from the one dedicated to DC's fallen.
Call Ted Poe and tell him that you won't accept his dishonoring DC's fallen. Demand that he cancel the hearing, issue a statement honoring the DC residents who died in the Great War, and take action to give the city those fallen heroes called home its rightful position as the 51st State of the United States of America.
Ted Poe:
DC Office: (202) 225-6565
Kingwood, TX Office: (281) 446-0242
Beaumont, TX Office: (409) 212-1997
Web Contact Form
Also, call your representative and Senators and tell them that they need to take a public stand against Rep. Poe's efforts to insult the DC residents who fought and died for their country, and that they need to take action to guarantee the people of DC that we won't have to suffer indignities like this again—by granting us the full statehood to which we are entitled as American citizens.