SELF-DETERMINATION

WHEREAS, the District of Columbia, the Nation's Capital, is a colonial state in America; and

WHEREAS, the people of the District of Columbia, the Nation's Capital, are subjected to taxation without representation; and

WHEREAS, the people of the District of Columbia, the Nation's Capital, are not allowed even the basic democratic right of election of local government save a powerless school board which must acquiesce to the demands and designs of the subjugators, the Congress of the United States; and

WHEREAS, the people of the District of Columbia, the Nation's Capital, have a commissioner and city coun­cil all selected by the President of the United States, thus imposing a colonial government upon the people of the "Capital of Democracy and the Free World;" and

WHEREAS, the continued denial of self-determination to the Nation's Capital's 70 percent black population serves to perpetuate on the people of the District of Columbia, a conservative, reactionary, racist House District Committee:

RESOLVED, that the American Federation of Teachers shall request in the October issue of the American Teacher a relevant lesson plan on self-determination for the people of the District of Columbia; and

RESOLVED, that the Executive Council of the American Federation of Teachers shall actively solicit through correspondence and state programs support from all members of Congress for self-determination for the people of the District of Columbia; and

RESOLVED, that teachers and union locals be encouraged by the American Federation of Teachers to mount a lobbying campaign to secure self-determination; and

RESOLVED, that on National Election Day, the American Federation of Teachers, in conjunction with Local 6, sponsor a demonstration on the Capitol steps revealing the prevailing political hypocrisy in the District of Columbia; and

RESOLVED, that the AFT support in Congress Senator Kennedy's proposed constitutional amendment to give congressional representation to the District of Columbia.