04/13/2007

By LUBNA TAKRURI  / Associated Press

From blogs to rock music, District of Columbia voting rights advocates are tapping into popular culture as they seek to educate the public about the city's lack of a full vote in Congress.

Web pages on the popular social networking sites MySpace.com and Facebook.com urge students and sympathizers across the country to raise awareness for a D.C. vote. And on Monday, a march and rally on Capitol Hill likely will include more than the city's political establishment. Independent bands and bloggers say they plan to participate, too.

The push comes as Congress prepares to take up legislation this month that would give district residents voting rights in the House for the first time in more than two centuries. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill, saying the Constitution allows congressional voting representation only to states.

On DCist.com, a Web site about the city, bloggers have rallied support for the march by posting frequent countdown reminders and holding a joint happy hour with the advocacy group DC Vote, a nonprofit group that has worked for nine years to get the district a vote in Congress.

"There is a lot more political awareness in general among young people on the Internet since the Iraq war and the proliferation of the blogosphere pretty much coincided with each other," said Sommer Mathis, DCist's managing editor.

"Our lack of voting representation is considered by a lot of people here to be local issue No. 1," she said.

The blog's popularity was evident last month when a congressman who opposes granting the district a full vote in the House said in a televised debate that D.C. residents already have all 535 congressional representatives looking out for the city.

"Meet your new Representative!" the blog said, and urged their readers to contact Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., with their complaints about potholes, rats and other city services.

But C-SPAN, and in turn the blog, had misidentified the representative, and Boustany's office was overwhelmed with calls and comments before the correction was made. Faithful readers then started calling Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, the true speaker behind the statement.

"This is the sort of thing that really gets D.C. residents worked up — the idea that since the federal government is located here, things will automatically be taken care of in our city. Of course it's preposterous," Mathis said.

The cultural movement behind the issue is evident locally, but advocacy groups say many Americans don't realize that D.C. residents have no vote in Congress.

A group of local independent bands are trying to change that with the Indie Roots D.C. Voting Rights Tour. The bands are holding five concerts along the East Coast before returning to D.C. to rock at Monday's rally. They plan a nationwide tour later in the year.

Indie Roots members also filmed an interview for a documentary about the tour this week with D.C.'s nonvoting House delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton.

"Thank you for singing us into freedom." Norton told the group during a meeting in her office.

Rob Getzschman, the founder of Indie Roots, says their rock music is a way to emotionally connect people to the issue, joined with a strong educational component.

"It connects them on a different level than, say, an e-mail petition," he said.

Getzschman said he often hears from people who are surprised the district doesn't have a vote in Congress.

"People have the idea of Washington as this political epicenter where all these politicians and lawyers and lobbyists live, but not normal people. That's another thing we want to share, is that D.C. is a really rich city," he said.

But perhaps the most far-reaching cultural manifestation did come from a politician, when Del. Norton appeared on the "Better Know a District" segment of Stephen Colbert's popular Comedy Central television show in July. Unfazed by his taunting mock-interview, Norton was tough right back in her defense of voting rights.

Although Norton says she doesn't usually watch Colbert, hundreds of thousands of young viewers across the country do — a sign that she, too, has found a place in the popular culture movement.