After many years around Congress and more hearings than I can count, I know how rare it is to walk out of a hearing feeling inspired and invigorated.
That's what happened today in the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee's hearing on the DC Voting Rights Act (S 1257). It was the usual setup - two four-person panels, elected officals first, then the advocates and experts. Nice to see Republicans supporting the bill - Sen. Hatch, Viet Dinh (author of Patriot Act), Rep. Tom Davis, the father of this bill. Mayor Fenty testified and Wade Henderson of LCCR, one of the finest people you'll meet, who told his own DC story.
Eleanor Holmes Norton and Jack Kemp were the inspiration. Norton spoke at eloquently about the Framers of the Constitution, telling the committee they never intended to disenfranchise DC - that the Framers knew how to disenfranchise people (blacks and women) but didn't do it to DC. She told the story, in a cracking voice, of her great-grandfather walking off the plantation as a slave and coming to settle in DC, where her family has lived ever since.
Jack Kemp, just as emotional, pointed his finger at the ranking Republican, Susan Collins, and challenged her to break from the politically destructive path the Republican Party has gone down the past few decades: from Nixon's refusal to call Martin Luther King's wife while King was in jail in GA, to Barry Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He lambasted the White House staffers who are talking about a veto and promised to make a strong argument to President Bush to sign the bill.
This bill has momentum and is headed to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, DC, 20500 - who's resident does have a voting representative in Congress.
Every once in awhile someone says, let's just wait until after 2008 - there'll be a Dem prez and we won't have to worry about a veto. Here's my response on the DC listserv "themail":
Ed Barron's post calling the current fight for DC voting representation a waste of time and energy [themail, May 9] was way off the mark. He says wait until Dems control Congress and the White House. Wait? That's what DC's been doing for over two hundred years. Wait for Dems to win the presidency? That's not a strategy, that's giving up and expecting someone else to help us win the fight. The current effort will succeed, but even if it does not the history of all civil rights legislation is that you have to be in the fight for the long haul. You build on the success and momentum from the previous Congress. That's what's happening with the DC Voting Rights Act, which started in the 108th Congress. No way advocates are going to sit down now and wait. We've waited long enough.
