Addison Sarter, a former At-Large DC Council candidate, is predicted to push a ballot initiative that would seek to create African American autonomous zones in Washington, DC, complete with their own mayor and city council members.
Sarter started to write about the initiative back in April, detailing what the African American autonomy Act of 2021 would bring to the world.
The proposal would consider East of the Anacostia River and Langdon Park/Brentwood in Northeast DC, as well as Colonial Village and Shepered Park in Northwest DC as historically black areas that would fall under the act.
In other words, it would create segregation all over again. It sounds like Sarter wants to create a federal Reservation if you will for African Americans. They already have a mayor and city council.
“These African American autonomous regions, would be turned into their own cities, with their own mayor and own city Councilmembers, operating separately and free from control by the present DC government,” wrote Sarter.
Sarter claims that east of Anacostia is about 90 percent black. He refers to the area as “the perfect area for a African American autonomous region” thanks to the population demographic and its segregation from the rest of the city.
“To deny African Americans autonomous regions in DC, would be denying us our basic human rights,” Sarter wrote.
There are no basic human rights that African Americans are being denied today in Washington, DC and Sarter knows this.
Here’s where it gets really goofy.
Sarter is making the argument that African Americans have the right to an autonomous zone because under the United Nations’ definition, they classify as an “indigenous people.” That’s some Olympian-style stretching being done.
I read the definitions and though there are a lot of so-called rights listed, there is nothing there that says that African Americans, who came from Africa, are indigenous people in the Washington, DC area. Of course, it depends on if we use the traditional and still maintained definition of indigenous people which means they were the first people in an area, like aboriginal people who existed in a land from the earliest times and before the arrival of colonists. In other words, indigenous people were in the land before anyone else and that certainly does not include African Americans in Washington, DC. Sorry, but that’s the simple truth. It sounds more like this movement is about a self-created segregation plan so that African Americans can get a bunch of goodies given to them at the demands of UN orthodoxy.
What about the Piscataway Conoy Tribe, the Piscataway Conoy Creations, the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, Nentego tribe, The Confederation of Sovereign Lenape Tribes, or the Mattaponi? They were Native American tribes who were in the Washington, DC area,many long before Europeans or Africans settled. Do they get UN-scanctioned goodies at the expense of everyone else too?
Sarter says that in the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Rights, indigenous people are defined as, “the descendants of those who inhabited a country or a geographical region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived. The new arrivals later became dominant through conquest, occupation, settlement or other means.”
The problem is, if you visit the web page Sarter mentions you will not find that definition. I looked for it and it doesn’t appear on the page. And even so, you can’t say that neighborhoods that are predominantly black, white, Hispanic, Asian, or whatever are indigenous people just because they dominate the area.
Sarter comes up with his own definition of indigenous people claiming “African Americans are descendants of Africans who inhabited West and Central Africa at the time when a people of different cultures and ethnic origins, known as Europeans, arrived. These Europeans later became dominant through their conquest to Africa known as the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery.”
If Africans were brought to the area by white Europeans and were outnumbered by said Europeans who stayed in the area, then they are not indigenous peoples any more than white Europeans. They just don’t fit the definition, even by radical progressive standards.
Sarter argues that people making the laws in the majority black areas don’t live in those areas and therefore are polluting neighborhoods and destroying low income housing. I guess by his standard no state legislature should be able to make laws that cover any areas of the state where they might not live. It’s a ridiculous stretch at best.
And he goes on to say that what he proposes is not segregation.
“I believe white people should also have the right to control the institutions in their community. They already do control. I believe Latinos and Asians should also have the right to control the institutions in their community as well,” Sarter states. “All races should have the right to control the institutions in their community. Unfortunately, African Americans continue to be systematically prevented from controlling the institutions in our communities. This is why this initiative is being proposed.”
In other words, it’s segregation.
Why does everything have to be broken down by race with leftists? What is it with their obsessions of making it about race?
Austermuhle pointed out that one of the challenges Sarter’s proposal would face is the Home Rule Act.
He wrote about the idea a few months ago here: https://t.co/6YKBcheEdC A critical outtake is below: pic.twitter.com/eKmtYTTKkz
— Martin Austermuhle (@maustermuhle) July 21, 2021
The whole thing smells like a grift, but at this point in time Sarter may actually get something out of his scam. Today, progressives will give in to anything so long as it’s made racial. I think you can get anything passed so long as you add the words, “it’s systemically racist.” I just feel that black Americans are much more successful when they don’t make everything about race.
