Friday, November 28, 2003

Speaking truth to power or are you just here for the free lunch?   Recently I attended the Washington D.C. citizens’ summit. The mayor’s organizers billed the event as the largest citizens event in the country. About 3000 citizens showed up to discuss issues facing the capital of the United States of America.  It wasn’t a true town hall meeting; the government has little more obligation to listen to participants then it has to listen to a focus group. We did get to voice our opinions, but pretty much the only thing the D.C. government had to do was keep notes of our comments and give us a free lunch. The lunch was good and D.C.'s Mayor, Anthony Williams, personally responded to many of the comments, so I know he listened.   I came a little late and Anthony Williams was talking on the stage when I arrived. He said the city’s political situation was a “difficult rubric” we must operate within. I laughed both because it was an understatement and because it’s a lot like Anthony Williams to use a word like “rubric”.  The rubric is generally called home rule, and is largely a system to make it appear as if the district is in charge of its own affairs but cannot participate in national politics. We have a mayor, city council, and school board just like any other city, and most of the time they make the decisions. They don’t make the decisions when somebody in Congress gets mad or gets an idea and wants to test it on D.C.   For example, the D.C. about four years ago a few committed citizens got a ballot referendum to provide allow medical Marijuana and all was well with democracy until at the last minute a member of Congress decided he didn’t really believe in democracy and passed a law forbidding the D.C. from spending any money to count the results of the ballot. To add additional insult it turned out that the cost of counting was less then a dollar. So the results of the referendum were made illegal and the issue died.   Making decisions for people that never voted for you and certainly never asked you make those decisions is exactly what colonialism was all about. As I understood Colonialism, it was the proposition that a bunch of people with more power then another group of people should rule and take advantage of resources of the weaker people. Usually the colonial powers are of a different race then the people losing power, this is the case with D.C.   What is different in D.C. is that no ever had to declare war or because the Constitution never envisioned that the District would grow to roughly the size of a small state. The district population did grow to about the size of Vermont or Wyoming, fueled largely by runaway slaves. There were people that didn’t want those slaves to have political power and there are people that don’t want their descendants to have political people now. D.C. is the only capital in democratic world that does not have full voting. D.C. and Congress. Congress is mostly white and D.C. is mostly black.     What is different in D.C. is that no one ever had to declare war, because the Constitution never envisioned that the District would grow to roughly the size of a small state. The district population did grow to about the size of Vermont or Wyoming, fueled largely by runaway slaves. There were people that didn’t want those slaves to have political power and there are people that don’t want their descendants to have political people now. D.C. is the only capital in democratic world that does not have full voting rights.   After the mayor stopped talking, The summit began a discussion on healthcare in D.C. I heard a local community activist say that it took twenty minutes for an ambulance to reach a student named Devin M. Fowlkes when he was fatally shot in front of his High school. This is important because the District government closed a hospital in the region of the city that he was shot in, and another hospital, Greater Southeast Hospital is being closed, leaving the closest hospital on the other side of a river. An ambulance leaving from the closed hospital likely would have gotten there ten minutes earlier, perhaps enough time to save his Devin's life. A scenario like that wasn’t hard to imagine and the closing of the hospital was controversial and strongly contested by residents of D.C. Ultimately Anthony Williams made the decision that D.C. General Hospital had to be closed.   There are already plans to support a new hospital in the region, so harping on the issue is irrelevant other then to say that the whole affair reminded me that political power isn’t about a having an office in the Capital building, but rather about who decides which communities have hospitals and other life and death issues.      A few hours later I left the summit reminded of the real importance of political power and maybe feeling a little better that I had a chance to voice my opinions, and they listened, took notes, and gave me a free lunch.   I read recently that there was a bill that would reverse the District’s firearms laws. The constitution says Congress, not the mayor or the citizens have final control over the District, so until someone changes the constitution it will be somebody from Michigan that can make life and death decisions for me and my neighbors. I didn’t vote for Anthony Williams, he isn’t from D.C., if he hadn’t closed D.C. General Hospital maybe Devin M. Fowlkes would still be alive.  I also know for a fact some of his people have been corrupt. None of that matters really, because he was elected by the residents of D.C. and he did listen at the summit and his people took notes, and they gave me and 3,000 other people a free lunch, and that’s how it supposed to work in a democracy. Now somebody wants to change the fire arms laws where I live and work, and they that never came to the Citizens Summit, never listened to me, never took notes, never gave me a free lunch, and certainly never got a single vote from anyone in D.C.   Then I realized the Citizens’ Summit was a model that could alleviate some of my problems with the process. Maybe there could be a law that before any bill that would over turn a D.C. law was passed, the member or members of Congress that sponsoring the bill would have to hold an advisory session open to residents of D.C. So I am going to write the Congressmen southern Maryland, the Suburb directly next to D.C. and tell him to introduce a law saying just that. And maybe they could give us a free lunch too. 4:38:00 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2003 Christopher Brown. Last update: 12/7/2003; 5:23:57 PM.