Where is Douglass County, Md.? It isn’t anywhere — yet.
For now, Douglass County, Maryland is the name of my organization, and also of a future county where residents of the District of Columbia have realized full congressional representation and home rule through the process of retrocession.
Full D.C. representation as part of Maryland is our cause. We do not support any political party. We support repairing our democracy right here in D.C. And ours is the only politically viable method for bringing the benefits of congressional representation to D.C.
Arlington County, Va., and parts of Alexandria, were once part of the District of Columbia. They fell back, or retroceded, to Virginia in 1846. As a result, the residents of Arlington and Alexandria have representatives in the U.S. House and two U.S. senators. They are like every American who votes in a state.
The process of retrocession can be repeated. All of D.C., other than the federal land and monuments at its core, where no one lives, could return to Maryland as a new county, just as Arlington County once returned to Virginia. We in D.C. would finally be fully enfranchised and our city governance would no longer fall directly under congressional control (as it currently does under Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution). As a new county in Maryland, D.C. would enjoy both federal representation and local autonomy like any other city or county.
Retrocession is the only realistic path to this outcome. The effort for D.C. to become the 51st state is a political nonstarter and has been so for generations. I know, because I was all about 51st statehood in high school. That was over a generation ago, and it’s no closer to reality.
My disgust with the failure of D.C.’s efforts to gain representation boiled over when I attended a disingenuous Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee hearing on D.C. enfranchisement in September of 2014. At the hearing, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., the only senator on the committee who was even present, begged all those testifying from D.C. if there was anything else that could be done besides for D.C. to become the 51st state. Our representatives answered in unison that there was nothing else that could be done.
However, every one one them, starting with the District’s House delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, knew about the Virginia retrocession. They either avoided the question or lied in their responses right in front of hundreds of us that day. At that moment I decided to form a political organization called Douglass County, Maryland to change the debate, to elevate the discourse.
Our organization, and the county we hope to create, is named after Frederick Douglass. And both share the initials D.C.
Douglass was an inspirational abolitionist who died a second-class citizen — not by nature of his color, but by nature of his residency, in Washington, D.C.
The disenfranchisement of the residents of the District of Columbia is a stain on our democracy. The future county we propose would represent both a reform and a repair to both, in form and substance.
We passionately urge leaders in Maryland, D.C., and around the nation to join with us on the path to reunification. Together we can build the center by transforming contempt into dignity.
David Krucoff is founder and executive director of Douglass County, Maryland.
