Name: Nan Raphael

Occupation: Freelance Professional Musician; Former Military Band Piccoloist (U.S. Army Field Band) 

Hometown: Washington, DC 

Tell me a little bit about yourself. How long have you lived in DC?

I came here right out of college for a job with the U.S. Army Field Band at Fort Meade. That was in 1977. I actually lived in Maryland for the first year and a half, and I fell in love with DC — I caught Potomac fever! I moved into DC and I haven’t left. I’ve been in the same neighborhood the whole time too. I love Capitol Hill, it’s like a small town in the city — a lot of cross-connection, a lot of conveniences. It’s hard to imagine living anywhere else, except for getting away in the wintertime. 

Why did you decide to move to DC?

I did move to DC primarily for a job. But back when I was ten-years-old, we came to DC with my family as tourists and we stayed at what is now the Washington Plaza Hotel — it used to be the International Inn. When I first came here and I was living in Maryland, I’d come into town with a friend to go to Georgetown, shop, and stuff like that. As we were going to Georgetown, we’d pass this hotel and I recognized it. I said ‘that’s where we stayed when I was ten!’ DC is the first city I really fell in love with. So, I really feel that there can be soul connections with cities, and I feel a soul connection to our city. Little did I think that twelve years later [after visiting with my family], I’d be living here. 

What do you love most about living in DC?

So much! I love everything it has to offer — museums, arts and culture, very active arts community, the convenience of everything. My car is ten years old and I have 38,000 miles on it; I can take the Metro, I can walk to the pool, I can walk to the bank, the dentist, the post office, the grocery store, my eye doctor, just about everything. There’s so much to do — there’s almost more to do than there’s time for. 

Could you talk about your own experience being disenfranchised, or in other words, what it has been like to lose the rights you had when you were living in one of the 50 states?

I’ve been aware of it practically since I’ve been here. At first, it didn’t really have as much of an impact other than paying federal taxes. But now, it’s having more of an impact than ever because Donald Trump has just meddled so much between taking over the Kennedy Center — I was supposed to play a concert there as part of WorldPride and the orchestra that was supposed to play there, the International Pride Orchestra, was disinvited, so we ended up playing at Strathmore, and thanks to Strathmore for stepping up for us — and then putting National Guard in our city without the Mayor’s permission. And that’s the other thing, the Mayor doesn’t have the authority to call up the National Guard and if she did, January 6th would have never gotten to the point that it did, because she probably would have called the National Guard much sooner. So that’s another impact. 

There’s no barriers to us being his battering ram, and we sure have. And the shutdown, and the National Guard, and the takeover of the Kennedy Center have had a really negative effect on our economy. Ticket sales at the Kennedy Center are way down, like forty-some, fifty percent. And restaurants are hurting, restaurants are closing or they’re sitting empty. People are afraid to show up to work because of ICE raids. It’s really affected us very deeply this time around, to the point where I would love to have the Mayor or somebody start a campaign, maybe, to hold our federal taxes in some kind of an escrow account until we become a state.   

What does achieving statehood mean for you?

It would mean that we would have a say in the making of our laws. Right now we have no say. We would have a representative that we can call to say ‘stop this or stop that or push for this or push for that.’ 

What do you think needs to be done to get closer to achieving statehood?  

First of all, having a Democrat [majority] in the House, the Senate, and the White House. Although, that hasn’t done us any good in the past — it didn’t seem to work. The support for statehood does seem to be gaining in Congress. Republicans I doubt would ever support it, so we would have to have at the very least, a deep majority in the House and Senate in order to do that. 

Is there anything else you would like to say? 

I do think there needs to be a campaign to better educate people around the country about [statehood]. We need to hit people in a more mainstream way. I think a lot of my friends are aware of it, because I’ve made them aware of it. And I ask them when I forward an email for them to take an action and share it with their friends. But still, somehow, the message is not getting out. I’m not really much of a marketing guru, [but] somehow it needs to get out to the mainstream. And if it is getting out, people just don’t care because it’s not impacting them. 

As soon as Trump won the election, I knew we were in big trouble. He had three goals — stay out of jail, pardon his criminal cronies, and revenge. Any Democratic city is on his list and we have been suffering because of that. And our Mayor, she’s in such a difficult position. I know a lot of people are criticizing her, but no matter what she does — she’s damned if she does, and damned if she doesn’t. I think she’s doing her best. 

And having the National Guard on our streets is doing nothing. First of all, it’s costing $500 a day per soldier — about $1 million a day — for them to stand around Metro stations and just watch people go by, doing absolutely nothing. They say they’re freeing up the police to go to parts of the city where there is more crime — maybe that is the case, I don’t know for sure if it’s really doing any good, but it seems to be a big waste of our money. It gives me the kind of feeling as I had when I was a teenager when my mother would walk into my bedroom and invade my privacy — that’s what it feels like. I was a member of the military, so I feel for them too, having to do this duty that they probably don’t want to do any more than we want them here. Again, we have no control over that, and they’re going to be here indefinitely. I’ve heard anywhere from through the end of the year to next summer, and it’s a waste of our tax money. 

[this interview was conducted in November 2025]