I'm beginning to wonder what in the world the political establishment in this city could possibly be thinking of when it won't concentrate any attention to the question of who will be representing the District of Columbia at the DC National Convention.  Who will be the face, the heart and most importantly the voice of the citizens of DC - we who face second-class citizenship that is in today's world the moral equivalent of 3/5th a citizen.  Why isn't all of our luxuriant media going over candidates with a fine-tooth comb, culling out the duds and holding the earnest, capable ones up for public review and some words of encouragement?  Does it make any difference?  Heck yes, it makes more difference for us than it does for any other voting jurisdiction in the good old USA!

We need to be represented not by folk who come to the convention to partee, partee, partee, but by people who will have spent months researching every single legal thing they could possibly come up with to gain the attention of every single delegate to that convention of to the essential unjustness of a two-tier level of citizenship. Was it unjust that my husband and thousands of other DC residents like him served loyally in Viet Nam despite not having any elected representative able vote in his and my name on the rightness or wrongness of that war?  Yes - it WAS unjust.  It WAS unfair.  Is it equally unjust to have my military-serving son-in-law, along with my daughter and baby grandchild posted in a place of danger (the capital of a country in the Middle East) when my congressional delegate has no means of voting on what the American response should be to events in that country or any other tinderbox in that region?  Unjust!  Unfair!

The unique patch of land known as the District, is home to over half a million people who are de facto  subjects, not citizens.  There is at least one state with fewer people in it, and most people don't question their residents' right to be represented. I  do. We all should.   The idea of a democracy is all or nothing  They've got it all, and we have close to nothing.


Why is this still happening?  Because it's convenient to have a whipping boy.  Because it's useful to be able to divert attention from the dreadful actions of their own pigheaded politicians by pointing out the sorry state of ours.  Every politician wants some place to point at, some place other than his/her own constituency to hold up as the epitome of everything wrong.  It's safe - heck, it's fun to throw curses at the District and its citizens. It happens every day.   We are not allowed to be seen as citizens because the shameful awfulness of some of our political class - the people who claim to speak for us  - is, in fact, no better and no worse then the bozos who represent our detractors, but they are bozos who have votes to cast, and we don't.  Their votes shield them;  we have no defense.

Residents of DC! (I will not call you citizens because I don't think you are) Come out and vote on Saturday. It's important to do this. Vote for people who aren't slick, for people who aren't being subsidized by folk you wouldn't want to meet in a DC alley at night. Come on out and vote for people who will work hard, who will support Obama not just in DC but in the surrounding states where the vote really counts, people who want all of us to be living in an urban area that takes good care of its residents and who will work to make that happen, people who are prepared to make that happen, in a place that sooner rather than later can be respected because it will have achieved the same rights as the capitals of almost every other major country in the world –– at least the ones that truly deserve to be called democracies. Unlike this one.  We Americans have a blind eye to our deficiencies - and lack of voting representation is a deficiency that has blinded our otherwise democratic country.  We can change that.  Elect people who will work to make that happen.  

On Attending a Trial for Attempted Murder

I've been attending an attempted murder trial this week. Hmm, you say, she must have been a juror. Not. Wish it were that simple. For the last 35 or so years, I've been the godmother to a family that used to live on my block before it became fancied up. It started out simply because our kids played together. One day the youngest, who couldn't have been more than five, told me that his mother had died that day. Shocked, I ran over to see what I could do, and what that turned out to be – to arrange the funeral - turned into a lifelong commitment. I think I've been very blessed.

Without going into details, one of the children of the godchildren was marked by a gang for execution after a fistfight. He was shot three times in the head - and survived. Three other people, standing nearby in the wrong place at the wrong time, were also shot, if not as drastically. What strikes me most about the trial is the placidity even triviality in the enumeration of other crimes that these young men have committed. Of course, the criminal justice system deals with that sort of thing every day, and can't help but be a little tired, a little bored by it all. The officials do their work, but there is no - dare I say majesty? - in the recounting of how lives came close to being cut short.  

I am astounded by one thing - the vastness of the rewards that was offered by the witness protection program to a person whose criminal record was astonishing in its depth, breadth and general frighteningness.  It is understandable that a protection program might be offered in a case if really top-level criminals, otherwise unreachable, could with a high degree of certainty, be convicted as a result of testimony by their underlings.  This, however, isn't what I saw.  There was no high-level ring of criminals who would otherwise have gotten off;  we are talking about ratting on a group of teenage thugs, highly dangerous, indeed, but local, strictly local, and with every chance of of doing serious time for the attempted murders, based on the testimony of a lot of witnesses and some excellent police work.  In return for his testimony, a witness protection program was offered to someone who already had convictions for at least two murders, three armed robberies and a rape - there might have been more charges, but these stand out in my mind.  At well over six feet and weighing in the neighborhood of 275 lbs., we're not talking about the sort of person one might feel safe riding along side in an elevator.  We're talking about a one-person serious crime wave who would be put into witness protection.  God help those around him if he gets put into a new life! I know a bit about witness protection programs, as it happens; I've known two persons, both in that same family, who were witness to and victims of attempted murders.  They needed safety so they could testify; neither had a criminal record of any sort.  The guy on the stand breaks the bank for well-founded terror in his presence; he should never see the outside of a cell, much less government-sponsored freedom among an unsuspecting populace.

Only two people I've heard bring me to my feet by the power of their belief in the law's potential for justice. Two women earned my deep admiration. The first is the mother of the victim. She's going blind, has diabetes, heart conditions and god only knows what else. But what she doesn't have is a thirst for revenge. Not one angry word in her. In addition to caring for her stricken son - his life now permanently ruined by seizures and personality changes - her heart has reached out to take in another child, deserted by his mother, and to raise him well. What a class act! The other woman who totally earned my admiration testified at the trial. She was driving by when the crime occurred right before her eyes. She didn't flee and hide. No, she did her civic duty; she called 911, reported the shooting, and returned into the city to testify about what she saw. Not a lot of people would be so brave, these days. Two fine Americans, doing the right thing as they see it.  God bless them both.