The war against woke has come for the people of Washington, DC. More specifically, the war against woke names, led by Republican Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia, targeted Black Lives Matter Plaza in downtown DC (just north of Lafayette Square along 16th Street between H and I Streets). His legislation threatened DC with the loss of transportation funding unless these two blocks of 16th Street were renamed “Liberty Plaza.” Black Lives Matter Plaza was created during the outrage that swept the country after the murder of African American George Floyd in the spring of 2020. Sadly, the Congressman’s threat has already caused Black Lives Matter Plaza to be removed.
Unlike other Americans, residents of the District of Columbia can’t laugh off what might just seem like a minor example of Congressional grandstanding. If Black Lives Matter Plaza was in Utah or Maine, people would say, “It’s up to the state legislature and governor to decide this, not Congress.” But in Washington DC, where threats to withhold federal funding are so often combined with threats to overturn local laws — and even totally abolish our local government (another bill making the rounds in Congress does exactly that) — federal threats carry an added meaning that goes beyond the challenges faced by states. “Do what we say, or we’re shutting you down.” Sound familiar?
The District of Columbia’s lack of autonomy invites cheap attacks on our local government by federal officials with little or no real connection to the people who live here. For Congressman Clyde and too many of his colleagues, local laws in DC deserve to be overturned anytime they offend a member of the current Congressional majority. What this all amounts to is electoral colonialism, an especially distorted type of democracy based on the idea that the superior members of Congress should have virtually unlimited authority over the inferior local officials elected by the federal district residents.
The residents of Gainesville, Georgia, which Congressman Clyde represents, would be outraged if Congress tried to change the name of their James Longstreet Memorial Bridge, which spans the Chattahoochee River, on the grounds that it is named after a Confederate general. Washington DC, like every other American community, deserves the right to name its streets, plazas, bridges and any of its other local monuments without interference from Congress.