Apr
12
2011
Mayor, councilmen arrested during protest on Capitol Hill
Posted by: John Flanagan in News, Vox Populi, tags: DC Voting Rights, Vincent GrayAt 6:05 PM yesterday, Capitol Police arrested Mayor Vincent Gray, Council Chair Kwame Brown, and Councilmen Tommy Wells, Muriel Bowser, Yvette Alexander, Sekou Biddle, and Michael A. Brown during a demonstration for D.C. voting rights and home rule. The lawmakers have been charged with “unlawful assembly” and face a $50 fine.
The bright side: at least the Council is sticking up for someone’s rights, and we can now also say that more D.C. mayors have been arrested for civil disobedience than for drug use (former Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly was arrested during a similar protest in the 1990′s). The downside: Mary Cheh was in charge until everyone was released.
h/t DCist
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This is awesome!
I like how Republicans push for low federal involvement, unless it has something to do with abortion or needle exchange, let alone poor minority groups. Their platform has nothing to do with ideology, but imposing a religious, regressive ideology on everyone they can.
I’m disappointed Catania wasn’t there.
Thanks for covering this, Vox, if a little late. More DC politics news would be great, though I guess if most students aren’t DC residents there’s likely little interest.
MOST students are DC Residents—although they may not be registered to vote here. As the lottery folks say, “you gotta play to win.”
I’m personally pleased that our elected officials were sufficiently outraged to take action. It is long overdue.
I was this close to being there! And not all of them got arrested-around 200 people protested and 41 voluntarily got arrested.
DC Vote is holding another event Friday morning if anyone’s interested! No arrests will likely be made.
http://www.dcvote.org/events/event.cfm?eventID=584