“We are treated as second-class citizens”
Did you know that Americans living in Washington, DC, the federal capital of the US, have no right to vote for Congress?
Activist Jamal Holtz tells TRT World that US policymakers have until now refused to give statehood and the full right to vote to Washingtonians, the majority of whom are blacks and Latinos, for racist reasons and political calculation.
Holtz — who co-founded the 51 for 51 platform in 2018 — says he feels “disenfranchised” and “voiceless” when he sees that other states less populated than DC such as Wyoming and Vermont are allowed to elect senators and representatives.
The 700,000 residents of Washington, a historically black city, are allowed to vote in the presidential election and can elect a delegate for the House of Representatives who has no voting power.
In 2014, the United Nations Human Rights Committee called on the US to immediately provide “full voting rights to residents of Washington, DC”.
But Jamal Holtz says that Republicans have repeatedly vetoed bills granting statehood to DC out of fear of changing the political landscape in Congress and that Democrats have refused to consider this issue as a priority.
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