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Items tagged: utah

DC Voting Rights and Asian Americans/ Pacific Islanders: Still Second Class Citizens?

I first moved to the Washington, DC metropolitan area when my twin brother had just been shipped off to Guam where he was to be stationed as part of the U.S. Navy.  We noted the irony that with the two of us living in the nation’s capital and the far-off Pacific Island U.S. territory of Guam, neither of us had a voting representative in Congress.  Delegates Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) and Robert A. Underwood (D-GU) both served their districts and this nation admirably over the years, but they were, quite literally, second class citizens compared to their colleagues in the House of Representatives.  They were able to participate in committees, where some of the important work of legislation happens, but when it came to an actual vote on the laws of the land, they were denied.