By RYAN SIBLEY
Observer Staff
Nov. 8, 2007

Observer photo by Ryan Sibley
Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., rallied at the Capitol Wednesday

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., along with D.C. residents and veterans, rallied at the Capitol Wednesday to once again demand full representation in congress.

The driving force in Wednesday’s rally was the injustice being done to D.C. veterans by asking them to fight for democracy around the world while they were not granted that privilege at home.

A group of about 30 people, including veterans, residents and organizers, protested the filibuster the senate enacted on bill S. 1257, the D.C. Voting Rights Act.

The bill fell three votes short of the 60 needed when the Senate voted in September.

The House approved the bill in April.

The crowd gathered outside of the Senate office buildings and listened to a statement from Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C.

Norton assured that the bill would pass the Senate in the next vote because supporters had done too much work to turn back and start over.

“It is just too late to stop us now,” Norton said.

Supporters hope the bill will get another chance at cloture by the end of the calendar year, but expect that it will be voted on between February and April at the latest.

Norton praised the veterans who came to ask the federal government to end “taxation without representation” that District residents have experienced since 1775.

Norton said asking for such a thing seemed to her to be a “rhetorical question” and was “not too much to ask.”

After rallying, the group marched to the office of presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to deliver a letter requesting approval and voicing concerns about the lack of representation.

D.C. Vote, an educational and advocacy organization, hopes McCain will stop the filibuster and open the bill up for debate on the Senate floor.