Wednesday, February 29, 2012
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.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
On Attending a Trial for Attempted Murder
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
THE ULTIMATE URBAN EXPERIENCE
It was the ultimate urban experience; my own micro-neighborhood (i.e., the three vehicular pathways in my neighborhood - Corcoran Street, Que Street and 17th Street) were the subject of a threatened bomb attack, and for this reason the streets had been blocked off. It seems that some crazed persons had been shouting curse and threats that he had a bomb in his car, which he had apparently abandoned on the 1600 block of 17th Street. In a nutshell, he threatened to blow up everything that I hold dear. While I had no fear my home would be going up in flames any time soon - I calculated it was just a little too far away for that to be likely - it certainly did lend a certain piquancy to an otherwise eerily silent hometown scene.
A bombing threat certainly puts matters into a clear, if alarming perspective. It wasn't that the neighborhood had never before had threats made against it - for good reason, Corcoran Street was commonly known as Stab Alley when i first moved into the area in 1965. I have seen several gun battles, up close and personal, taking place in real time on or immediately adjacent to my block. In fact, a bomb went off at the nearby Argentinian Embassy two decades ago, that Embassy being located just across new Hampshire from the alley between Corcoran and Que - known to its inhabitants at Flat Rat Alley. The difference in character between a gunfight and a bombing, especially when one's own immediate neighborhood is the potential scene, is that of anticipation vs. reaction.
What it does best is to put into sharp outline all the reasons for and against living downtown, everything that is dear seems dearer, and everything that seems tawdry or tacky becomes tawdry beyond one's ability to bear one minute longer. Some neighbors seemed either anxious or anticipatory, and the rest seemed somehow frozen in place. No one seemed willing to accept the concept of a radically-changed neighborhood - and what could produce more change than a bomb? There were overtones of grandiosity, as people made juicy comparisons with Bomb Threats They Had Known before, or merely imagined. Possibilities were tossed around like a Soviet Safeway salad, and then subsided.
The talk finally ebbed fully when it became evident that nothing bad was really going to happen. Anticipation had deflated to mere comparison. All they had left for discussion was the results of uniting Diet Coke with Mentos candy, and that paled in comparison, at least it did until the shadows became darker and our Dupont Circle neighborhood retreated to the smartphones, the cell phones, the iPhones, iPads and other momentarily popular means of communications upon which it absolutely depends, to comment ruefully on the passing of one bright shining moment of real fear that had, for once, merely dissolved.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
ON KNOWING THE CURRENT DARLING - a poem of mine
I knew you when you wrote bad poetry
and didn’t know which fork to use
and wore plaid, flannel shirts
with a slide rule protruding from your pocket.
On the cusp of your currency
we met again
and rushed to share forty years of life
words didn’t come fast enough
as we sought each other’s joys, pains
and marveled at the chance to share once more
our piebald dreams.
Now your face is on every screen
and your words articulate our beliefs
Contenders for public office
proudly wield your opinions
as their implements of campaign war.
People come to me for the favor
of an introduction
desiring to share in celebrity’s hierarchy,
and so, remembering our friendship
I give them the speckled help they seek.
But you have moved on
rushing to interpret today’s breaking news and
guarded by rough crews paid to fend off the unimportant –
those whose claim is old and not for profit –
unmindful that strobe-lit fame may quickly fade.
But old friends still remember fondly
those earlier, golden times
when you wrote bad poetry
Friday, May 13, 2011
DC Residents: Are We Subjects or Citizens? A Draft Referendum
I think it is shameful that we in the District of Columbia are treated as subjects rather than as citizens.When I read in the Declaration of Independence that, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men. deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," I strongly question the assumption that we residents of the District have given our consent to be treated like subjects.
If we get a referendum on consent on the 2012 ballot, it would likely considerably increase turnout at our polls, and would certainly get plenty of national media coverage. And that is what we need. One of the reasons we haven’t been able to get action on voting representation is because most citizens are utterly unaware that we don’t already have it. They are astonished to learn this is not the case, and are angry when they hear of it. (Some actually believe we pay no federal taxes, like Puerto Rico, and assume that is why we don’t have voting representation.) In any case, they are taken aback that Congress can and does change whatever it wants in our municipal budget, paid for by our hard-earned local DC tax money, no matter what we may want to do with it.They know that Congress could not do this elsewhere in the US, and agree that Congress should not be able to do this to us. Finally, other citizens get especially angry when District residents point out that THEIR elected representatives are spending an awful lot of time meddling in our affairs when their time could be better employed working on their own constituents’ problems. So there’s a lot of public education that needs to be done.
One of the most effective ways to educate the public nationwide on this issue would be through the publicity a referendum would engender. There are many ways that such a referendum could be worded; here’s a draft.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men. deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
As a US citizen, do you think that in fact you are governed differently than citizens living in states? Yes No
Do you think that you are being denied rights that other citizens enjoy, like voting representation in the House of Representatives, two voting US Senators, and statehood? Yes No
Do you think that DC citizens have ever given their consent to this arrangement – that is, to NOT having voting representation in the House of Representatives, two voting US Senators and statehood? Yes No
Do you hereby give your consent to being governed without voting participation by representatives you have elected to the legislative branch of national government? Yes No
Finally, would you give up these three rights in return for the permanent elimination of federal taxes? Yes No