This episode of The Dig is brought to you by our supporters at patreon.com and by University of

North Carolina Press, which has loads of great titles perfect for dig listeners like you.

One that you might like is Democracy's Capital, Black Political Power in Washington, D.C., by Lauren Pearlman.

From its 1790 founding until 1974, Washington, D.C., capital of the land of the free,

lacked democratically elected city leadership. Fed up with governance dictated by white stakeholders, federal officials, and unelected representatives,

local DC activists catalyzed a new phase of the fight for home rule.

Amid the upheavals of the 1960s, they gave expression to the frustrations of black residents and wrestled for control of

their city. Bringing together histories of the carceral and welfare states, as well as the civil rights

and black power movements, democracy's capital narrates this struggle for self-determination

in the nation's capital. It captures the

transition from black protest to black political power under the Lyndon Johnson and Richard

Nixon administrations and against the backdrop of local battles over the war on poverty and the war on crime.

Through intense clashes over funds and programming,

Washington residents pushed for greater participatory democracy and community control.

However, the anti-crime apparatus built by the Johnson and Nixon administrations

curbed efforts to achieve true home rule,

laying the foundation for the next 50 years of D.C. governance.

Democracy's Capital, Black Political Power in Washington, D.C. by Lauren Pearlman.

Out now from University of North Carolina Press's Justice, Power, and Politics series. Hello, this is your host, Daniel Denver.

I was going to take last week off and repost an old episode from the archives on settler colonialism for Thanksgiving.

But I thought it was important to get my interview with Jeff Weber on the coup in

Bolivia up in a hurry. And so that's what I did. Instead, I'm taking this week off,

...