Haikus about D.C.’s Unjust Status

By: Miriam Edelman

In honor of the upcoming National Cherry Blossom Festival (March 20 – April 12, 2026), DCNOW created some haikus about the unjust status of the District of Columbia. A haiku is a three-lined Japanese poem. While its first and third lines have five syllables, the second line has seven syllables. The annual festival commemorates Tokyo Mayor Yukio Ozaki’s gift of 3,000 cherry trees to Washington, D.C., in 1912.

The States formed partly

due to taxation without

representation.

Taxation without

representation is not

Constitutional.

Taxation without

representation persists

right now in D.C.

D.C. does not have

voting representation

in Congress today.

Senators? No way.

Representatives? Kind of.

Just one non-voting.

Why does taxation

without representation

occur in D.C.?

The sole capital

of a world democracy

with no rep.? D.C.

More people live in D.C.

than two states: Wyoming and

Vermont. It is true.

Which President signed

D.C. home rule into law?

GOP Nixon.

Does D.C. have full

Home Rule? No, D.C. has just

limited home rule.

Who controls D.C.’s

National Guard? The POTUS,

not D.C.’s Mayor.

Who appoints judges 

of the nation’s capital?

U.S. President.

What do we want now?

Not federal government

micromanagement.

What else do we want?

Statehood. Nothing else would mean

full citizenship.

D.C. residents 

voted to become a state

in 2016.

Twice, the U.S. House

of Reps. voted to make our

capital a state.

In retrocession,

Washington, D.C., would join

Maryland again.

Retrocession is

not ideal for Maryland

and the capital.

D.C. does not want

to join Maryland. MD

does not want D.C.

Muriel Bowser,

D.C.’s Mayor, should really

be Governor now.

Congress can make our

capital a state, like it

has with other states.

Douglass Commonwealth,

hopefully soon to be the

U.S.’s next state.

D.C. statehood is

not a power grab of the

Democrats, so there.

Republicans want

local control. Why do they

interfere so much?

E. Norton is right:

D.C. has been yielding for

centuries. No more.

Washington, D.C.,

must finally become the

nation’s 51^st.

As the U.S. will turn 250 years old in mere months from now, let’s finally make D.C. a state. Its residents do not deserve to be second-class citizens forever.