D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser Installs 51-Star Flag In Call For Statehood
On Flag Day, June 14, District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser made it clear that the people of D.C. need statehood.
According to WUSA, Bowser installed a 51-star flag on Pennsylvania Avenue, which represents Washington, D.C. as a state. Bowser said in a statement, “I directed our team to hang 51-star flags along Pennsylvania Avenue as a reminder to Congress and the nation that the 700,000 tax-paying American citizens living in Washington, DC demand to be recognized. On Flag Day, we celebrate American ideals, American history, and American liberty. But the very foundation of those ideals, and the basis for our liberty, is representation. DC’s disenfranchisement is a stain on American democracy – a 220-year-old wrong that demands to be righted. The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed the Washington, DC Admission Act, and now the U.S. Senate must do the same.”
She closed with, “We are at an inflection point for American democracy, and it is within the Senate’s power to do the right thing, embrace representation, and move DC statehood forward to the President’s desk.”
The push to make Washington, D.C. a state has been years-long in the making. Democratic lawmakers have argued that District residents have unequal status as compared with the rest of U.S. citizens because they do not enjoy equal representation in Congress. The city, designated as a Federal District, is under U.S. government jurisdiction and operates as a municipality, but does not have the full authority to govern itself.
Mayor Muriel Bowser raised the issue of statehood following the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. The federal rules made it such that she was unable to call for national guard protection when it was clear the Capitol was being attacked. As reported by Vox, only when the governors of Maryland and Virginia ordered their own national guard troops into the District were those protections granted to the residents of D.C.
