Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland’s 8th Congressional District and Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s delegate to Congress, made impassioned pleas for DC statehood as Raskin introduced Norton as the 2024 recipient of Moment’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg Human Rights Award at its annual benefit and awards dinner on Sunday night.
Raskin extolled Norton’s work in getting a DC statehood bill passed in the 117th House of Representatives, and also invoked the residents of the District of Columbia, saying, “I wanted to thank 713,000 tax-paying American citizens.” He also made reference to January 6, remarking how the residents of DC submitted their grievances peacefully, rather than in the manner of the protestors who tried to overturn the 2020 election results. “The people of Washington have done it the right way,” he argued.
Representative Raskin. Photo credit: Bruce Guthrie.
In his characteristic enthusiasm and passion, the congressman also addressed the recent election and his concerns about the incoming Trump administration, urging clearheadedness and perseverance. Raskin quoted Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in a 1798 letter to a friend, John Taylor, decrying the hysteria surrounding the Alien and Seditions Act, that “a little patience and the reign of witches shall pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight restore their government to its true principles. But if the game runs against us, sometimes we must have patience, because this is a game where principles are at stake.”
Earlier in the day, Raskin said he had taken a hike with 150 constituents in local Rock Creek Park; he hook a similar hike in January 2017, opting to forgo Trump’s inaugural ceremonies. A friend of his pointed to an oak tree, noting how old it was, older than the U.S. Constitution in fact, and how it had weathered hundreds of years, its roots intertwined with those of the surrounding trees. “And so,” said Raskin, “I said on that day, we’re going to be like those trees getting through this, and we’re going to be like those trees again.”
In introducing Norton, Raskin expounded on the two sides of justice, passive and administrative, and the way that Representative Norton embodies them. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, too, he said, perfectly represented this idea of passive justice by “taking the rules as they are and applying them to the facts of the cases.” Raskin also explained how Norton embodied active justice, “taking the body of rules as they exist and measuring them against principles and values of justice and freedom and equality that have not been incarnated in law yet.” He argued that she had done so in her work as a civil rights activist and as a tireless champion of DC statehood.
Nadine Epstein with Eleanor Holmes Norton. Photo credit: Bruce Guthrie.
In accepting the award, Norton reflected on her 50-year friendship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, recalling how she introduced Ginsberg at her senate hearing, and how she served as assistant director of the ACLU when Ginsburg founded the organization’s Women’s Rights Project.
“The struggle for civil and human rights for all Americans has been the central theme of my own professional life,” said Norton. “This country was founded on the principles of no taxation without representation and consent of the governed,” and the federal government, she argued, was not living up to this promise when it comes to the people of Washington, DC.
“DC residents are treated as second-class citizens. There is only one political solution that would give DC residents voting representation in the Congress and complete control over their local affairs. That solution is to make the District of Columbia a state,” Norton concluded.
Featured image: Eleanor Holmes Norton giving her acceptance speech. Photo credit: Bruce Guthrie.