Results tagged “shadowdelegation”

Though being a part of the District's shadow delegation has a somewhat super-hero sound to it, Representative Michael Panetta, Senator Paul Strauss and Senator Michael Brown toil in almost total obscurity in their fight for D.C. statehood and self-governance. With no salaries and none of the usual congressional perks, the three members of the city's shadow delegation don't have much at their disposal to wage what's already a tough fight.

Let's face it -- a local election in an off year and in the midst of a heated presidential campaign won't attract much attention, much less lots of voters. And tomorrow's District primary likely isn't much of an exception.

Call them merely symbolic acts, but the D.C. Council and Mayor Adrian Fenty have made a number of gestures this year to express their collective anger at the continued disenfranchisement of District residents. Today there's one more.

Remember those billboards that popped up in the 1980s that counted up the national debt, dollar by dollar? Pretty scary, huh? Well, District voting rights activists want something similar for their cause. Today the D.C. Council held a hearing on legislation that would allow the city to place two large LED billboards -- one outside the John A. Wilson Building and the other outside the new Washington Nationals stadium -- that would display the amount...