Call your U.S. senators today in favor of S. 1257 - DC Voting Rights!

According to DC Vote, today is the second annual National Call-In Day for U.S. voters to ask their U.S. Senators to vote YES on S. 1257 - the DC Voting Rights Act. DC Vote says Senate Majority leader Harry Reid has committed to bringing S. 1257 to the Senate floor tomorrow, 18 September. You can call your two U.S. senators on the following 866 number before 5PM U.S. Eastern time today. Ask them to please vote to pass the DC Voting Rights Act - tel: 1.866.346.3008. Or call on 1.202.224.3121 and ask for your senators' offices. Ask friends, family and colleagues to do likewise. If you're not American but know others who are, ask them to do the same. And thanks. What's at stake is (finally) granting equal participation in the House of Representatives to the people of Washington, DC. You'd think we already had this right, huh?

Americans whose home is "the Nation's Capital" - Washington - have waited patiently and protested very peacefully for a very long time. We're again asking our sister and fellow citizens for a modicum of equal status. Even if we win tomorrow, we'll still be unrepresented in the U.S. Senate. 

One battle at a time. The House of Reps already has approved this change. Now the decision is up to the 100 senators who control DC's future yet are only based in Washington to represent all the other Americans out in the lower 48 States plus Alaska and Hawaii.

"Washington City", as we once were called, has been the US capital since the early 1800s. Enslavement of Black Americans in DC only ended in 1862. So why have Washingtonians been so long excluded from equal representation?

Earlier today, a Democratic email colleague shared the fact that Sept. 18 is "Constitution Day" in the U.S. I'd never heard of it but as a proud native of the District of Columbia it's hard to wrap my mind around, and just as difficult to describe, how it feels knowing every moment I've lived in Washington, I've been de facto excluded from, politically voiceless in and invisible to, our national system of "representative democracy."

No matter the constant press, books and movies in which Washington is central to political plots, each day that Washington is refused voting representation in Congress, the "Nation's Capital" has little more than a water-carrying, marginal role in American "democracy."  Help us change this. Call your senators by 5PM Eastern Time today. Show all of us and the world that the U.S. can change something positively for the better. Politely inform your Senators today that as soon as S. 1257 is up for a vote, you expect them to vote for full representation for Washington, DC in the House of Representatives. As of Monday, Sept 17, 2007, Washington, DC is the world's only capital city in which its citizens are not allowed a representative vote in the national government. 1.866.346.3008 or 202-224-3121. Thanks in advance to everyone who makes these calls today.