Alaska will soon celebrate America's 250th anniversary on the National Mall with towering ice carvings, Alaska Native art, salmon and king crab, part of a 16-day fair honoring the nation's freedom, its independence and its right to govern itself. But the ice carvers won't be the only Alaskans there. A short walk away, the Alaska National Guard has been patrolling the streets of Washington under federal orders, a heavy-handed exercise of federal power over a city whose 700,000 residents cannot elect a single voting member of Congress. The contrast lays bare a profound hypocrisy: that the world's greatest democracy, a nation that defines itself by its ideals, still treats its own capital as a territory.
As a D.C. resident, I look to Alaska's history because Alaskans know the fight for statehood well. The federal government ruled Alaska from Washington for nearly a century, first as a district, then as a territory. Alaskans were taxed by a Congress they could not elect and endured the indignity of distant federal agencies dictating how they lived. One of those fights, over federal control of Alaska's fisheries, helped drive the push for statehood, after Washington sided with the cannery corporations of San Francisco and Seattle over the people of Alaska. So Alaskans fought. They elected a full congressional delegation before statehood was even granted, daring Washington to act, and they won. The Anchorage Daily Times screamed “WE'RE IN” as bonfires blazed from the Panhandle to the Arctic in celebration.
Alaska and D.C. share more in common than many think. The two have similar populations, nearly 700,000 in D.C. and 740,000 in Alaska, both larger than Wyoming and Vermont. Yet D.C. residents still live under the thumb of a federal government that can overrule local elected officials.
The federal government is now ordering Alaska's National Guard to patrol Washington, over the strong objections of many Alaskans and District residents alike. Andrew Gray, an Alaska state representative and Guard veteran, warned that the deployment to D.C. would diminish the military's reputation in the eyes of the public. Meanwhile, Washington's grip on our district has only tightened. Last year, the federal government seized temporary control of the city's police and barred the district from spending more than a billion dollars of its own local tax revenues.
The people of D.C. bear the costs of citizenship: We pay federal taxes, serve honorably in the nation's military, yet we have no vote in the Congress that controls us. We want what Alaskans wanted in 1958: to raise our families and live our lives under rules we have a say in. As America turns 250, D.C. looks to Alaskans not just for inspiration, but for solidarity. We urge you to carry the torch of your legacy forward: Rally for our representation, and call on your congressional delegation to finish the work of American self-governance by making Washington, D.C., the 51st state.