9◼ REMARKS Bloomberg Businessweek March 1, 2021JEREMY
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altogether surprised. From the bollards that stud many city
streets to now-ubiquitous metal detectors inside museums
on the National Mall, security apparatus has encroached on
more and more of the city since the 1990s, giving spaces that
were designed to celebrate open democracy the tense feel of
a demilitarized zone.
The escalation started after the 1995 Oklahoma City truck
bombing, which killed 168 people and is still the worst domes-
tic terror incident in U.S. history. New federal standards led to
the installation of blast-resistant glass and hardened perime-
ters at D.C.’s many government office buildings. At the behest
of the U.S. Secret Service, President Bill Clinton banned vehicle
traffic from the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the
White House, where inaugural parades traditionally passed.
Following Sept. 11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks, the west
front of the Capitol, where Krepp liked to go to watch the sun
set as a college student, closed to the public for good. The
Supreme Court shut its grand front doors to visitors in 2010,
shunting people through a side door instead. Justice Stephen
Breyer called the change unfortunate and unnecessary. “To
many members of the public, this Court’s main entrance and
front steps are not only a means to, but also a metaphor for,
access to the Court itself,” he wrote at the time.
At the White House, which now sits behind temporary
fencing with large buffer zones, a permanent fence with taller,
denser pickets to deter intruders is under construction. It
will make the building harder to see from the outside, espe-
cially on the south side, where the nearest sidewalk has been
closed—for security—since 2017.
“Fortress D.C.,” as it’s sometimes called, puts locals and
tourists alike on edge. “I walk through Washington now and
I feel less secure than I did 20 years ago, because every-
where there’s a signal of fear,” says Elizabeth Meyer, a pro-
fessor at the University of Virginia School of Architecture
who served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, a federal
board that advises on the design of government buildings
in D.C., from 2012 to 2020.
Washington’s security architecture is designed to stymie
vehicle attacks and lone-wolf assailants more than large mobs.
Opponents of a Capitol fence point out that the key failure onJan. 6 was the disorganized response by the Capitol Police and
other law enforcement agencies, not a lack of physical barriers.
“Physical design alone cannot protect you from every-
thing,” says Meyer. But for federal agencies, “it’s easy to
point to something physical” as a security improvement, as
opposed to less visible changes to protocols and training.
The U.S. Capitol Police, which did not respond to requests
for comment, hasn’t announced when it will take down the
temporary fence or when a permanent one could go up. The
Associated Press reported on Feb. 18 that the police force
wants to keep the current fence up until September, citing
ongoing threats to lawmakers and the complex.
The odds of a substantial walk-back on the permanent
option look good, however. In addition to D.C. officials and
residents, members of Congress from both parties have
voiced their disapproval. Meanwhile, D.C.’s 700,000 resi-
dents have a potent symbol of their political quandary. “It
kind of dovetails with our political status,” says Krepp. “Who
are we going to call, our senators?”
As a federal district outside of any state, D.C. has no vot-
ing representation in Congress. The District of Columbia
Home Rule Act of 1973 gave it the right to elect a mayor and
council. But Congress ultimately controls the district’s bud-
get and reviews all legislation passed by the D.C. Council
before it becomes law.
This last provision of the Home Rule Act has become
absurdly difficult to comply with under current circum-
stances, says Allen. District lawmakers physically deliver
their bills to Congress to be reviewed for a period of 30
or 60 days, depending on the bill. Because of the fence, they
can no longer get inside the Capitol, so they had to find a
workaround with Vice President Kamala Harris’s staff. “We
had to literally hand off some of the bills in a hotel lobby
because we weren’t allowed to deliver our legislation,” Allen
says. He cites this as evidence of a “complete disregard and
disrespect” for the people of D.C. “More people live in D.C.
than Wyoming, than Vermont. I guarantee you, if we had
statehood, this wouldn’t be happening.”
The House of Representatives voted 232 to 180 in favor
of D.C. statehood in June 2020, only for the bill to die in the
Republican Senate. With Democrats now controlling the
Senate, momentum has grown. In 2016, 86% of District voters
approved a statehood referendum, and President Joe Biden
has said D.C. should be a state.
The hurdles remain high. Passage of a bill in the Senate
would require eliminating the filibuster or skirting it through
a rule change. With the chamber split 50-50 and West
Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin a defender of the filibus-
ter, that’s unlikely.
Even if it does gain statehood, D.C. would still contain
a federal district at its heart. Conflicts between locals and
the federal government would continue. But statehood
advocates say at least they’d have voting representatives in
Congress to express what petitions and yard signs say now:
Don’t fence us in. <BW>Where the District of Columbia Would Rank as a State#D.C. and the states that would rank just above and below it51Percentage Black*Biden’s share of voteINCOME, POVERTY, RACE, AND ETHNICITY RANKINGS AS OF 2019. GDP AS OF Q3 2020. VOTING IS FOR 2020 ELECTION.*BLACK OR AFRICAN AMERICAN ONLY (EXCLUDES THOSE IDENTIFYING AS TWO OR MORE RACES). POPULATION,
DATA: CENSUS BUREAU, BUREAU OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS, U.S. ELECTIONS PROJECT, 270TOWIN.COMState GDPPopulationShare of people in povertyPercentage HispanicMedian incomeVoter turnout
▶ VTND ◀ ▶ NYNE ◀ ▶ OK▶ MSAZ ◀ ▶ GA▶ HIKS ◀ ▶ ARAK ◀MD ◀49 ▶ VT
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