Voting Rights Activists Get Aggressive

Anyone who is involved in the fight for D.C. voting rights is likely often frustrated. Now some activists are now taking those frustrations directly to their source.

At noon today, residents and D.C. voting rights advocates organized by DC Vote will walk into the office of Rep. Travis Childers (D-Miss.) and forcefully tell his staff that they want him to stay out of the city's business. Childers is one of the conservative Democrats who has in the past sponsored legislation that would gut the District's gun laws and joined a recent effort alongside Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) trying to do so again. DC Vote organized a similar action in Tester's office last month, successfully forcing him to meet with them, though only briefly.

DC Vote has organized advocacy days and even traveled to the home districts of some of the city's biggest congressional foes, but these two actions indicate that the movement's most established activists are stepping up their tactics in hopes that being more aggressive means that certain members of Congress will think twice before attempting to impose on local affairs. The folks at DC Vote aren't stupid, though -- they're focusing their efforts on Democrats that might be more sympathetic to demands for home rule than many Republicans have been.

Maybe they can gently remind Childers that two recent D.C. foes, Sen. Jon Ensign (R-Nev.) and Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.), were also involved in extramarital affairs, one of which ended Souder's career in the House. Bad karma, maybe?

Acts of civil disobedience have not yet been planned, but may well be in the cards in the future.

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http://dcist.com/2010/06/voting_rights_activists_get_aggress .php

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