Everyone here is rooting for the Iraq war hero/combat veteran Paul Hackett in Cincy today, who is gunning for a seat in the United States Congress. But I wanted to come here today and ask you guys to join another campaign - which is to fight for voting rights for the residents of Washington D.C. Citizens of OH-02 are voting for a congressional representative, who will actually have a vote. Earlier this Jan. we saw the citizens of Baghdad braving deadly violence to vote and giving us those unforgettable images of their raised purple-inked fingers. But as heroes like Major Hackett gave it all their all so that citizens of Baghdad could vote, here in D.C. folks watched those images of puple inked fingers knowing they are still without any representation in Congress. In fact, expatriate Iraqi citizens living in DC voted in the Iraqi election, while their neighbors have gone more than 200 years without representation in Congress.
More after the flip.
Join us today and sign our petition urging our Senators and Representatives to support voting representation in Congress for Washington, DC residents:
http://www.commoncause.org/EndTaxationwithoutRepresentationLast week, Congress left Washington, DC, for their summer recess. Once again, they left the half-million Americans who live in the District of Columbia without a vote in Congress. Despite all the talk about spreading democracy around the world, we have failed to take care of democracy here in the nation's capital. Sadly, the slogan on Washingtonian's license plates,
"No Taxation Without Representation," is still relevant.
DC residents pay taxes, fight and die in wars, including the one in Iraq, and live and work in the city that houses the United States Congress. Yet they have no real voice in the institution that represents all other Americans. This is not right. Sign our petition today and
pass it on to your family and friends, urging them to join our campaign to obtain full voting representation for Washington, DC, residents. We want to gather 50,000 petitions by Labor Day and deliver them to the Congress.
Ironically, while Congress has failed to act, it took an international group, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, meeting in Washington, DC, earlier this summer, to point out this injustice. They
voted in support of a
resolution calling on the United States to give Washington residents voting representation in Congress.
It's appalling that it takes foreign visitors to remind America about this outrage. With the United States now preaching democracy around the world, it is wrong that we continue to deny full democracy to 500,000 residents of the nation's capital. So, please join our campaign to put pressure on Congress to give the vote to Americans who live in the District of Columbia. If the citizens of Baghdad can proudly show off their purple-inked fingers proving they voted, surely the citizens of DC should be able to do the same:
http://www.commoncause.org/EndTaxationwithoutRepresentation During the coming weeks and months, we are going to be in a full campaign mode to fight for voting rights for Washington, DC, as we will be collecting petitions, lobbying Members of Congress, engaging our activists and working with our coalition partners to pass legislation providing voting rights for Washingtonians through a politically pragmatic approach.
We need you help. Join our campaign by
signing the petition
today. After you sign it, please
pass it on to everyoneyou know so we can have true representation for Washingtonians, who pay their taxes and die in our wars, but have no representation in our Congress.
As always, lot more on
CommonBlog.
Thank you again so much for making Common Cause feel like a part of this wonderful community.