ABSOLUT STATEHOOD // The Daily Render by Nikolas R. Schiller

|| 4/8/2008 || 4:52 pm || Comments Off || ||
ABSOLUT STATEHOOD

Screen grab links to .kmz file for Google Earth

A geovisual response to an LA Times blog entry showing mostly isolationist responses to an alternative history map of North America by Absolut Vodka.

This interactive map for Google Earth shows the familiar Absolut Vodka bottle labeled “Absolut Statehood” and placed inside of the original boundaries of the District of Columbia. These boundaries existed until 1847 after the residents of Virginia voted to cede back the portion of the District of Columbia that was west of the Potomac River.

Absolut Statehood represents the cartographic notion that the nation’s capital can become America’s 51st state*. Today there are over 550,000 American citizens living in the nation’s capital that are being denied the fundamental right of representation in Congress. This ongoing human rights violation currently practiced by the government of the United States has been denounced by the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The United States is the only country in the industrialized world that forbids the residents of it’s capital city the right to elect representatives to their national legislature.

In 1980, the year of my birth, District residents passed an initiative calling for a constitutional convention for the explicit purpose of creating a new state in America. Two years later voters ratified the constitution of the new state called “New Columbia.” By the admission of the District of Columbia into the United States, the territory would become the 51st state according to legislation offered in the 98th Congress in 1983 and routinely re-introduced in succeeding Congresses.

Many feel that the campaign for statehood stalled after the District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment failed in 1985 because it did not receive the required ratification by the legislatures of at least 38 of the 50 states within the required seven years of the amendment’s submission by the 95th Congress. In 1987, another constitution was drafted, which again referred to the proposed state as New Columbia. The last serious debate on statehood in Congress took place in November 1993, when D.C. statehood was defeated by a Democratic Party-controlled House of Representatives by a vote of 277 to 153.

In 2004, the Democratic Party removed statehood from their political platform. Instead of advocating for statehood, the Democratic Party has chosen to promote watered down equality known simply as “voting rights.” Many people accidentally equate voting rights and statehood, yet they are vastly different.

Prior to the revolutionary war, American colonists had voting rights in the British Parliament, yet they did not have political autonomy and were at the mercy of unelected members of Parliament. Without the sovereignty that statehood provides, the residents of the District of Columbia will continue to be under the tyranny of 535 unelected members of Congress.

The misguided form of voting rights that is currently being promoted by Democratic Party, and supported by DNC puppet non-profits like DC Vote, involves giving the Delegate from the District of Columbia full voting power, while denying District residents representation in the Senate, whereby making DC residents only 1/3 represented in Congress. Since the constitution gives power to only states, the only logical and constitutionally legal way to give the residents of the District of Columbia a formal voice in Congress is through statehood.

As presidential candidates stump about bringing change to Washington, please do the intelligent thing and question their words. What kind of change will come to Washington when the people are still denied the sacred right to participate in their government? I maintain the opinion that change will only come to Washington when the people of the nation’s capital are given the voice they rightfully deserve.

* Don’t like odd numbers? If the residents want it, America could give Puerto Rico statehood too; which would bring the USA to 52 states.

#ADDED 4/9/08#
Absolut Vodka’s first Statehood campaign:

In 1991 Absolut began an art commissioning program to select artists from all 50 states in the U.S. and the District of Columbia. Absolut Vodka arranged to run full-page ads in USA Today with images of the commissioned works every two weeks. Artists selected included Romero Britto, Jon Coffelt, Burton Morris and Rev. Howard Finster. A limited edition of 300 lithographs of each work were sold to raise funds for Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS. As a commemoration to this campaign, “Absolut Statehood: 51 Painters, Visions of Their Home States” a book by Glenn O’Brien, was published with a foreword by Michel Roux of Carillon Importers with photography by Antonio Alia Guccione. 51 Absolut Statehood artists were interviewed by Peter Tunney and made into a film about the campaign. “Absolut To The People,” a Peter Tunney Film, was simulcast in New York and Hong Kong, March, 1993.

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