What the District of Columbia lacks in democratic representation at the federal level, it makes up for in local pro-democracy groups: There's the Deaniac-led DC for Democracy, the adorable/annoying DC Young Suffragists (decide for yourself) and the the umbrella group DC Vote, under which other groups lend support to the movement. And there is another symbol of the District's yearning, one that doesn't move at all: the Democracy Tree at 21st Street and New Hampshire Avenue NW.

The tree was planted five years ago this past weekend by Mark Schaefer, then a seminary student at American University and today a chaplain there. For about two years before then, the little elm sapling grew in a flower pot on his sixth-floor balcony across the street. Schaefer hadn't planted it in the first place -- the wind probably took care of that -- but once it was there he took care of it anyway, until it became clear that the limited space was hampering the tree's growth.

Looking across New Hampshire, he spied a row of empty tree boxes -- rectangular plots of earth surrounded by concrete, not actual boxes -- that looked like good candidates for the elm's relocation.

Schaefer called around city government offices to find out how to get permission to move his tree there, but no one could give him an answer. Eventually he figured out that the owner of the adjacent building is responsible for the upkeep -- and like the lot just up the street that had become a memorial to Sonny Bono a year earlier, the so-called tree boxes were suffering from pretty extreme neglect.

Over the next few years, the tree finally shot up like it couldn't before. Its branches, er, branched out over the sidewalk and street like an overgrown shrub, and eventually city workers came by and pruned the tree back, removing all appendages below six feet. Schaefer was a little alarmed -- he could never bring himself to cut it -- but it turned out they knew what they were doing. Not only did the three grow substantially over the next year, but now it actually looked like a tree.

While not a very political guy, Schaefer is a strong proponent of voting rights for the citizens of Washington, D.C., and a few years prior had helped start the Foundry Democracy Project, one of several community programs run by the Foundry United Methodist Church at 16th and P streets NW.

It only made sense to use this opportunity to remind people of the cause.

Shortly after moving the elm to its final location, Schaefer added a handmade plaque explaising the raison d'arbre, but it wasn't quite enough: Dogs knocked it over. Some guy (who probably hates democracy) kicked dirt on it. Sometimes it even blew away in the wind. "At one point, someone just walked off with it," Schaefer told DCist. In the spring of 2001, Schaefer finally had it replaced with a sturdier bronze one, which says:

The group also posted an informative website telling the story of the tree's planting, plus a recreation of a related W. Post story that ran at the time.

For Schaefer, voting rights for District residents is a moral and ethical issue, rather than a political one. As he argued in a 2002 essay, Christian Ethics and Voting Rights for the District of Columbia:

"It is not the right of the District of Columbia to be represented in the Congress that is at issue. Framing the question in terms of the rights of the people as opposed to the rights of the political entity allows for a much wider range of potential solutions."

This openness to different systems is a bit different than the two-senators-or-bust perspective of DC Vote, and different as well from the retrocession-or-nothing argument put forth in the Wall Street Journal last year. Schaefer takes no position on which of the most commonly-suggested solutions -- statehood, virtual statehood, retrocession or virtual retrocession -- would be "more moral," but any one of them would certainly be more moral than where things stand now.

Neither does the Democracy Tree call for any particular course of action. It's an implied complaint, not a protest per se. "It's a little more subtle that way," he says.

If, as Tom Jefferson once wrote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," then... well, we're not sure what implications this has for our tree of democracy -- but at least it should make you think.

Middle photo courtesy the Foundry Democracy Project.