Mayor Vincent Gray
Mayor Vincent Gray spoke out on thegrio.com after his arrest during an action in support of DC rights (video below). His arrest drew national media attention, and he’s using the spotlight to send a message that DC is sick of being shut out:
As our Congressional leaders engaged in ideological posturing and haggled back and forth over the budget and the federal government teetered on the brink of a shutdown, one critical segment of the nation, the District of Columbia and its 600,000 citizens, became collateral damage in this bipartisan bickering. Why? The simple answer is that the District of Columbia does not enjoy the protections and sovereignty of statehood and is treated, dismissively, like a federal agency.
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This threat to the District’s fiscal health and resident safety could have been averted if Congress had passed a bill that exempted the entire District’s locally collected revenue from the restrictions of the Anti-Deficiency Act as offered by the District’s non-voting delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. The statute should be amended to permit the District, like every other state and local jurisdiction, to spend its own locally collected funds for services during the federal shutdown but, ultimately, the District needs full representation in the Congress, full self-determination and recognition of statehood.
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This threat to the District’s fiscal health and resident safety could have been averted if Congress had passed a bill that exempted the entire District’s locally collected revenue from the restrictions of the Anti-Deficiency Act as offered by the District’s non-voting delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. The statute should be amended to permit the District, like every other state and local jurisdiction, to spend its own locally collected funds for services during the federal shutdown but, ultimately, the District needs full representation in the Congress, full self-determination and recognition of statehood.
Check out video from the protest:
You can see the rest of the Mayor’s post over at the grio.