Seventeen D.C. statehood advocates were arrested near the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, protesting a Senate vote to block an overhaul of the District’s century-old criminal code.
About 100 people gathered outside Union Station to support statehood and full representation for the District’s nearly 700,000 residents. Chants of “hands off D.C.” and “Congress shouldn’t decide for me” rang out across Capitol Hill, led by local officials and racial justice activists, who derided the GOP-led measure as one based on fear-mongering and misinformation.
Before the Senate voted to block D.C.’s crime bill, activists were quick to criticize Democrats who voiced their support for the measure, contrary to the party’s historic support for the District.
In particular, President Joe Biden’s announcement last week that he would not veto the resolution was met as a “gut punch” by grassroots organizers in the District, some of whom have spent years campaigning alongside Democrats on the issue of statehood.
“You either support D.C. home rule, or you don’t, there are no exceptions and there is no middle ground on D.C.’s right to self-government,” said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s non-voting delegate in Congress. “I am deeply concerned that the president’s decision to sign the disapproval resolution will only embolden Republicans to interfere in D.C.’s local affairs.”
The bill in question resulted from more than a decade of planning to overhaul D.C.’s crime code, much of which had not seen substantial revision since the early 1900s. Its proponents said a rewrite was urgently needed to modernize the aging code and streamline the criminal justice process. Critics, however, perceived the 450-page bill’s reduction of maximum sentences for some violent offenses as being soft on crime and lacking in support for victims.
The Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022 survived a veto from Mayor Muriel Bowser, but met opposition during its review period in Congress. After a vote to overturn it in the Republican-led House, the Democratic-controlled Senate followed suit Wednesday. It marked the first time in more than 30 years that Congress leveraged the disapproval process to repeal local law.
D.C. statehood advocates are rallying near the Capitol, accusing Congress of caving to fear-mongering and misinformation by moving to block a rewrite of the city’s aging crime code. “Hands off DC,” they’ve been chanting, led by council members and racial justice activists. pic.twitter.com/L9FDjPLBKU
— Alejandro Alvarez (@aletweetsnews) March 8, 2023
Speakers at Wednesday’s protest railed against Democrats who had crossed party lines to back the repeal, seeing their choice as election-driven without regard for democratic values. Ahead of their march to the U.S. Capitol, a local social justice activist told the crowd he’d grown tired “of feeling like a bargaining chip” as a D.C. resident.
Protesters marched on First Street toward U.S. Capitol grounds after their rally. Among their chants were “from Ward 1 to Ward 8, don’t overturn the laws we make,” and “Bowser, shame on you, you told Congress to support your views.”
Marchers had gone for less than a block when U.S. Capitol police officers on bicycles moved to cut them off, ordering protesters to the sidewalk on threat of arrest. The march took to the street again at Constitution Avenue, stopping traffic at the intersection with First Street.
There, more than a dozen activists refused multiple orders from police to clear the street and risked arrest to promote their cause. In a tweet following the event, Capitol police said 16 people were arrested for obstructing the roadway. They were processed on the Capitol lawn and released soon after.
“Tomorrow, it’ll be women’s reproductive justice, the next day it’ll be about our status as a sanctuary city,” a man risking arrest yelled from behind police lines. “We have to keep fighting until D.C. gets statehood.”
At one point, Capitol police pulled a woman out of the crowd who had been scrawling “u got blood on ur hands” with a red liquid on the sidewalk. A number of protesters told officers the substance was makeup; police later said the woman was arrested for vandalism.
Much of the crowd remained on the sidewalk, chanting its support for the arrested.
“You’re supposed to believe in democracy, but you’re not respecting our democracy,” an activist with Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, a Black-led community defense group, said on a loudspeaker directed at the Capitol building.
