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For a discussion of the Courts or Crime, head to the Justice page.

My Position: In January, America observed its annual celebration of a remarkable figure in American history, Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we honor as a longstanding tradition that always feels new, and fresh, and poignant each time. The next day witnessed the inauguration of this great country's 44th president – a man, Barack Obama, who has broken barriers, become the first African American leader of the free world, and whose message and agenda for the country remain still the most transformative and unprecedented aspect of his ascendancy.

Forty years ago, King stood before a marble and limestone Lincoln, a reflecting pool, and his fellow Americans, announcing a dream he had of a more perfect union that allowed its citizens to get ahead based on the content of their characters and not the color of their skins. It was an audacious thought at the time, but if anything, he and our new president have taught us that the audacious dreams are often the ones most worth fighting for. I, along with 600 protesters, famously marched in Selma, Alabama in support of this audacious dream – a march broken up by armed state troopers who brutally assaulted participants, including my dear friend and colleague Rep. John Lewis, who was beaten unconscious and nearly left for dead.

This history is sufficiently important to keep near. Pain is not best forgotten but best converted into lifelong lessons. Until 1865, it was the brutal separation of the African and African-descendant family, units to be sold in auction to the highest bidder. It became the unfulfilled promises of Reconstruction, a rapid deterioration of the political, social, and economic gains our men fought and died for on the battlefield. Until 1954, it was the official racial segregation of our children, a prevailing and perverse view that a Black child and a White child were irredeemably alien to one another.  And while those divisions have ceased to be so pronounced, have waned in the face of marked social, economic, and political progress for African Americans, they are obstacles that still impede the upward-bound paths of many.

The right to vote is the most basic privilege of citizenship and the lifeblood of our democracy. But today an estimated 5.3 million Americans, 2.4 percent of the voting age population, are barred from the voting rolls as a result of felony convictions. This estimate includes approximately 2 million Whites, 1.4 million African-American men, and 616,700 women. There is no justification to withhold voting rights to the 2.1 million Americans who have completed all terms of their sentences for felony convictions – incarceration, probation and any period of parole – and adequately paid their debt to society. Restoring this right recognizes that ex-offenders – now free, everyday Americans attempting to reclaim their old lives – are full-fledged citizens whose voices should be heard.

Granting Washington, D.C. a vote in Congress is of historical import. That's because the city is home to one of the largest percentages of African American residents nationwide. Alongside our many triumphs as a democracy were certain failures in our not-so-distant past that we must never forget or recommit. We once legally, routinely, and unabashedly kept the vote from our African American brothers and sisters, and it would be a powerful symbol if a region as diverse as this one were not similarly kept from exercising its right to be heard. Anything short of that represents an unnerving setback in civil rights, one that indisputably has a racially disparate effect, if not intent. This country was founded on the notion that, at the very least, by contributing to the purse, a citizen and his district ought to be afforded an electoral voice. 'No taxation without representation!' they shouted then, and they (rightfully) still shout today. For too long, the District of Columbia has been robbed its voting seat in Congress. For too long, voices have been silenced and democracy been severely hemorrhaged.

Not just disenfranchised at higher rates, African American families and other families of color will suffer the most from a recession because they are disproportionately poor and do not have the safety net enjoyed by others. They carry a significant and disproportionate share of the burden, victim to an economic downturn that will harm working- and middle-class Americans most – unless we offer fresh and bold solutions to cultivate an economy that works for us all. Not just the wealthy. Not just the politically connected. But us all. ■