This afternoon, sprite and I will be marching in the Voting Rights March to help DC finally get the congressional representation it needs.
Isn’t it alarming that we’re trying to force democracy down the throats of Iraq and Afghanistan, while we can’t grant it for the almost 600,000 residents of the District of Columbia? We’re taxed as much as any other United States citizen – if not more so. Yet we have no say in congress about how these taxes are spent.
We have our young men and women fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of them being killed in the line of duty. Yet we have no voice in the halls of congress about whether or not we should go to war against enemies, both real and fabricated.
The men and women of congress use the District of Columbia as their political petri dish, testing out all kinds of policy – both good and cockamamie – far and away from their home constituencies. Why? Because there are no repercussions for doing so when the testing is on the citizens of DC.
We’re the last colony. We are being taxed without representation.
And it must stop now.
So regardless of the gale-force winds that are leaving trees strewn across roads (and parked cars) here in DC, we march.
Alec
16 April 2007 — 13:34
So if DC gets voting rights, would that also give voting rights to Puerto Rico and other territories?
Grand Poobah
16 April 2007 — 15:23
No – that’s a good question.
Here’s the deal: DC can vote for president, whereas Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam can’t. They are much more autonomous – protectorates, rather than “colonies.”