As Kelsye Adams gears up for D.C. Emancipation Day festivities, she’s focused, now more than ever, on driving home the point to District residents that her hometown’s lack of statehood exacerbates many, if not all, of local policy issues.
“We’re not able to make our laws, rules and regulations,” said Adams, a founding core organizer of Hands Off DC, a coalition of more than 50 organizations dedicated to rebuffing congressional interference in local affairs. “It’s blasphemous that residents don’t have a voice.”
More than a year ago, Adams joined Nee Nee Taylor, Makia Green, Alex Dodds and a litany of other organizers and organizations in launching the Hands Off DC movement. They did so after President Joe Biden announced, in a tweet, that he wouldn’t veto a congressional disapproval resolution striking down the Revised Criminal Code Act.
Biden would later follow through on that pledge. Adams touts that situation, among others, as further confirmation of D.C.’s precarious status as a colony.
That’s why part of Adams’ strategy in changing the tide involves educating District residents about the importance of statehood. Since spring of last year, she and other Hands of DC coalition members have utilized artistic activism by hosting rallies, conducting workshops, creating art installations, and taking the message of District self-determination on a national tour.
For Adams, D.C. statehood stands as one of the most significant racial justice issues for Black and brown residents who face several layers of opposition as they advocate for change.
“D.C. was the first city to grant Black and brown residents emancipation,” said Adams, executive director of Long Live Go-Go and organizing director of DCVote, a national engagement and advocacy organization geared toward securing equality for the District.
“With us…lacking a federal government voice, it’s beyond time to change the topic of conversation from gun violence, to climate change, to reproductive rights, to solution-oriented conversation like statehood,” she added.
Congressional Republicans Continue to Take Aim at District Laws
Other disapproval resolutions over the course of a year have targeted council-approved voting rights to noncitizens and police accountability measures. Budget riders meanwhile focused on the banning of traffic cameras and criminalization of marijuana.
Despite what appears to be their concern about public safety, Congressional Republicans proposed budget cuts to the Public Defender Service and Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency.
Within that same timeframe, they brought D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), D.C. Councilmember Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), Deputy Mayor of Public Safety and Justice Lindsey Appiah, and D.C. Police Union Chief Gregg Pemberton before the House Committee on Administration and Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
On March 21, Pemberton and U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger testified before the House Committee on Administration during a hearing about the U.S. Capitol Police’s response to crime in portions of Ward 6 that are part of its jurisdiction. The hearing served as a response to assaults, attempted assaults, and carjackings of congressional members and staff members near the Capitol grounds.
The hearing took place a couple of weeks after Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), a member of the House’s Committee on Oversight and Accountability, introduced legislation to prevent District lawmakers from changing sentencing laws, lower the qualifying age of the Youth Rehabilitation Act from 24 years old to 18 years old, and require the Office of the Attorney General to publicly post juvenile crime data.
During the hearing, Pemberton, a staunch opponent of the council’s post-George Floyd police reform efforts, recounted what he called his unsuccessful efforts to engage the council on matters of police accountability.
In response, Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) questioned whether the District deserves statehood.
“D.C. wants statehood and this is the type of legislative body that they demonstrate themselves to be?” Murphy said on March 21. “How in hell could people want that– and even reasons being political — do they want two votes in the Senate? They haven’t shown the ability to protect their citizens.”
Charles Allen Recall Campaign: A Question of Outside Influence
Since December, a contingent of Ward 6 residents with ties to Congress and political donors have been immersed in a campaign to remove Allen from the Ward 6 council office.
Members of what’s known as the Recall Charles Allen campaign are currently petitioning to include the recall question on the 2024 general election ballot. They, and organizers who are waging a similar battle against D.C. Councilmember Brianne Nadeau in Ward 1, need to collect signatures from at least 10% of the registered qualified electorate (61,439 voters as of December 31, 2023) by August 12 to achieve their goal.
While more than 2,000 signatures have been collected, half of which are verified, some people, like Sandra Moscoso, plan to not sign the recall petition.
Moscoso, a Capitol Hill resident, described the Recall Charles Allen Campaign as misguided and bogus, due to what she calls misinformation that doesn’t paint the entire picture of the District’s public safety infrastructure.
She told The Informer that, throughout his career as a council member, Allen has maintained transparency and open communication about his response to issues affecting Ward 6 residents.
As Moscoso expressed her concerns about the recall campaign, Moscoso said she remains fearful that it could distract and divide her community over what she considers the wrong target for frustrations about violent crime.
“It’s not one person,” Moscoso said. “The whole council has to vote and the mayor has to sign, then the law has to be implemented,” she added, later delving into other aspects of local governance. “The fact that we can’t prosecute cases is connected to statehood. We don’t have control over guns. Regardless of how you feel about the Revised Criminal Code Act, we can’t control our own laws.”
Allen, with the help of former Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, recently launched a counter campaign named Neighbors United for Ward 6.
He raised more than $100,000 at a rate surpassing any previous campaign he organized. That phenomenon, he said, speaks to the frustration that Ward 6 residents, some of whom are congressional staffers, have about the recall efforts.
Allen characterized such efforts as an orchestrated attack by congressional Republicans that, if successful, would cost District taxpayers millions of dollars and six months without a ward-level council member.
“I think that D.C. and Capitol Hill neighborhoods have always had an interesting relationship with Congress,” Allen said. “But when staffers see this effort to overturn local elections, it rubs people the wrong way.”
Recall Campaign Member Rebuffs Claims
The January 31 report submitted to the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance shows that the Recall Charles Allen campaign raised $56, 524 from 402 people.
Nearly one out of 10 of those contributions (34) came from jurisdictions outside of the District, amounting to a total of $7,200.
April Brown, campaign treasurer and founding member of the Recall Charles Allen campaign, said that, as of April 9, the campaign has raised $115,946 from 784 donors. She and her colleagues are conducting a demographic analysis in the lead up to August, when the next campaign finance report is due.
Brown launched the Recall Charles Allen campaign with Jennifer Squires, a wargaming analyst whose experience includes stints at the U.S. State Department and Booz Allen, and her husband Ned Ertel, former president and CEO of data processing company RegScan and former treasurer of Chander Jayaraman for D.C. Council.
Efforts to oust Allen, Brown said, formed out of frustration with frequent occurrence of crime throughout Ward 6 communities throughout the pandemic and beyond. She confirmed that the recall campaign consists of Hill staffers and federal government employees.
“There are a lot of carjackings and shootings going on,” said Brown, a realtor who lives in Ward 5 and is the mother of a Ward 6 resident. “That’s why [community members] are signing the petition. “They’re concerned about their safety and their children’s safety,” Brown said.
Other Recall Charles Allen campaign members include Brown and Rich Masters, former House Democratic aide to Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.). Moses Mercado, former Hill aide and 2008 Barack Obama superdelegate and Cindy Von Kannon, wife of the late conservative fundraiser John Von Kannon, count among several volunteers.
Qualms with the Ward 6 council member, as explained on the Recall Charles Allen campaign website, involve the passage of legislation during his tenure as chair of the council’s Committee on Public Safety and Justice that expanded the Youth Rehabilitation Act and Second Look Act.
Campaign members also credit Allen as the key architect of the Revised Criminal Code Act.
Brown pushed back against the notion that the Recall Charles Allen Campaign further encourages or facilitates congressional interference due to its founding members and supporters working in the federal government.
“We wholeheartedly believe in home rule. We support it 100%,” said Brown, a Ward 5 resident. “We also think that crime is a nonpartisan issue… Our donors come from various backgrounds and political affiliations, demonstrating broad support across the spectrum of society.”
Centralizing the Fight for Self-Determination
Hands off DC coalition member Dante O’Hara said that the Recall Charles Allen campaign can be traced back to the overturn of the Revised Criminal Code Act and what he called other tactics employed by wealthy white D.C. residents who spew tough-on-crime rhetoric on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
O’Hara, outgoing organizing director of the Claudia Jones School for Political Education, said the rise of federally connected centrist and conservative elements in local affairs happened amid the slowdown of D.C.’s independent statehood movement, its co-optation by nonprofits, and backlash from the George Floyd-related uprisings of 2020.
Though he admitted not having an affinity for Allen and Nadeau, O’Hara told The Informer that the current recall campaigns demand a grassroots response that demonstrates the collective strength of District organizers.
Failure to counter the recall movements, he said, could lead to Allen and Nadeau’s replacement with far greater conservative elements that challenge the District’s fight for self-determination from inside the John A. Wilson Building.
That’s why, for him, D.C. Emancipation Day provides the ideal opportunity to remind D.C. residents what’s at stake for a city still fighting for full congressional representation and a level of self-governance bestowed onto states.
“The right to self-determination should be a central pillar during each D.C. Emancipation Day to let folks know that we need to get to this goal,” O’Hara said. “There’s the question of how we are fighting for total control of our public safety.”
O’Hara emphasized what Washningtonians should consider and how they can take action this Emancipation Day.
“What does it look like for people to have their way over the budget and public safety,” he questioned. “It’s about self-empowerment, being organized and building mass movements to build more political independence.”
This may be the most biased article I’ve read yet, and that’s saying something! Calling one of the female democratic organizers a “wargamer” because she worked for the federal government on national security issues?! You realize not everyone that works for the federal government is some war plotter. And you said Brown “confirms” that the recall effort is made up of government workers and people who work on Capitol Hill. Yes, people who work on Capitol Hill also live there. But there are also a ton of Moms and Dads who do not work in government that support the recall effort. You failed to report on all of those voices.