Photo by Ronnie R

City Desk reports that the D.C. Council has killed the Special Committee on Statehood and Self-Determination — and it’s Council member Marion Barry’s (D-Ward 8) fault.

Well, kind of. When the council took away Barry’s chairmanship of the Housing and Workforce Development committee earlier this year, it replaced him with Council member Michael Brown (I-At Large), effectively pulling Brown away from his perch at the statehood committee. That committee was created by Council Chair Vince Gray in 2009 as a way to better coordinate advocacy, outreach and education efforts for D.C. voting rights, statehood and home rule.

With no members of the council free to lead up the statehood committee, it has been unceremoniously lumped under the jurisdiction of Yvette Alexander’s (D-Ward 7) Committee on Aging and Community Affairs. Well, it’s only appropriate, right? We’re all getting older, and the District’s lack of voting rights is getting any less lacking.

The statehood committee met monthly since its creation, but without much of a budget and a somewhat opaque mission, it didn’t accomplish much. That it no longer exists as a stand-alone committee doesn’t mean much for the cause, but it is an accurate symbolic representation of the lull spreading through the voting rights movement.