D.C. Voting Rights Rally to be Held April 15
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 4/15/2003
On April 15, D.C. Vote, the Mayor of Washington, the City Council and other esteemed community leaders will call national attention to the issue of taxation without representation at the "2003 D.C. Voting Rights Day Rally". The event will be held at 5:00 p.m. at the Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets NW.Last year hundreds of activists destroyed their 2002 federal income tax forms in Washington, D.C.'s Farragut Square to protest the District's lack of representation in Congress.
The event, dubbed "Bonfire of the 1040's", was organized by D.C. Vote, a coalition that strives to educate the public and members of the U.S. Congress about the need for the citizens of D.C. to exercise full voting privileges.
Currently D.C.'s half-million residents lack complete representation in the national government, though they pay over two billion dollars a year in federal taxes. D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who serves the district as a nonvoting member in the House of Representatives, points to the fact that D.C. offers more to the government than tax money. In fact, plenty of its residents have been enlisted in the war against Iraq.
Wade Henderson, Executive Director for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, describes the lack of full voting rights for residents of the nation's capital as "one of the most fundamental civil and human rights issues of the 21st Century".
At a recent Washington, D.C. town hall meeting Henderson, Congresswoman Norton, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams, D.C. Vote Executive Director Illir Zherka and Stand up for Democracy President Anise Jenkins discussed ways of ensuring democratic rights for D.C. citizens by "adopting" members of Congress and by educating the largely unaware public.
The campaign to inform the public proved successful when D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams signed legislation setting the date of the D.C. presidential primary on January 13th 2004 " making it the first such contest in the nation. D.C. Democracy Fund, an organization that supports federal candidates who want to give Washington citizens the right to vote, launched the campaign.
