For those who aren’t aware, we residents of the District of Columbia pay full federal income taxes every year. We can be drafted to fight in America’s wars. Yet unlike every other taxpaying American citizen, we do not have representation in either house of Congress, and our laws are subject to review and veto by a Senate subcommittee that is completely unaccountable to us and our city’s interests. We are, in essence, second-class citizens, residents of a colony. We suffer under that which the founders of this country fought against – taxation without representation.

Many bills have gone before Congress to rectify this injustice – including one just this year, that almost passed – until Republican John Ensign attached an amendment stripping DC’s post-Heller restrictions on gun ownership. Whether it was intended as a poison pill or just another part of the Republican Party’s irresponsible “let’s all have guns” cowboy politics, it killed the DC Voting Rights bill.

Let me put that a bit more clearly: Republicans don’t care about DC residents’ rights – or at the very least, don’t care about them enough to put their ideology aside and do the right thing. They think I should have a right to keep an AR-15 assault rifle in my house, but they don’t think I should have the right to representation in Congress. (Of course, the real reason I suspect that Republicans are trying to kill DC’s congressional representation is that we’d invariably send a Democrat – and, of course, to the contemporary Republican Party, political gain trumps all principles, ideals, morals, or values.)

There were questions about whether the bill would pass constitutional muster, and it’s still only half-a-loaf – even if we do get a voting representative in the House, we would still be second-class citizens because we would lack representation in the Senate as well as the right to make our own laws without Congressional veto. But still – half a loaf is better than the none at all we currently get.

It’s becoming all too clear to me now that the only acceptable option for the District of Columbia is full statehood rights – at least one representative, two Senators, and full, unrestricted home rule. Anything less is continued acceptance of the colony status for DC – and that is absolutely unacceptable in a democratic republic.

Democracy begins at home. Those of you who have voting representatives have an obligation to contact them and demand statehood for DC.